Warner settles copyright spat with YouTube

YouTube and Warner have settled their long-running copyright battle

Record label Warner Music has settled its long-running legal tussle with video sharing service YouTube.

The label said on Tuesday that it had reached a settlement with YouTube and parent company Google that would allow for the return of Warner Music videos to YouTube as early as the end of this year.

Terms of the settlement were not disclosed, although Warner will reportedly receive a share of advertising revenues earned from its video pages.

The deal ends a long-running feud between YouTube and Warner Music over copyright and compensation issues. The battle also brought third parties into the fray, such as when a mass-takedown request from Warner led the Electronic Frontier Foundation to blast YouTube's removal policies.

In settling with Warner Music, Google and YouTube find themselves with a dwindling list of ongoing legal battles. When Google first agreed to acquire YouTube at a cost of $1.65bn in 2006, copyright deals were considered to be a major point of the deal.

YouTube has long struggled with copyright issues as record labels and studios took the company to task over its model of allowing users to upload videos. The company has looked to a number of different policies and tools to help make sure that pirated video content is not shared on the site.