After years of regarding pirated video on YouTube as a threat, some major media companies are having a change of heart, treating it instead as an advertising opportunity.

In the last few months, CBS, Universal Music, Lions Gate, Electronic Arts and other companies have stopped prodding YouTube to remove unauthorized clips of their movies, television shows and music videos and have started selling advertising in connection with the videos. CBS may be the most surprising new business partner, since its sister company, Viacom, is still pursuing a billion-dollar copyright lawsuit against YouTube’s owner, Google.

So far, the money from advertising is small — ads seem only on a small fraction of YouTube’s millions of videos — but the change suggests a possible thaw in the chilly stand-off within the online video giant and media companies. Getting in the good graces of media entities is seen as critical to the future of YouTube, which has struggled to

show appreciable revenue for video ads.

“We don’t want to condone folks taking our intellectual property and using it without our permission,” said Curt Marvis, the president of digital media at Lions Gate Entertainment. “But we plus don’t like the notion of keeping fans of our products from being able to engage with our substance. For the most part, society who are uploading videos are fans of our movies. They’re not trying to be evil pirates and they’re not trying to get revenue from it.”

Indeed, the YouTube users who post the substance illegally will not share in the advertising revenue generated by their posts. Instead, it is split amidst the media companies and YouTube.

The infringing user receives an e-mail data with an ominous red banner saying “a YouTube partner made a copyright claim on one of your videos.” The e-mail report explains that the media company has…

Original post by dhiram