New years came and went, along with it the deadline Google had set for implementing various anti piracy measures for one of its newest acquisitions, YouTube. Partly self imposed and partly along with a deal they had struck with Warner Music Group, Google has been promising a revamp of YouTube that will drastically cut down on its use as a bootlegging mechanism. The delay, some say, could be seen as a warning:
"It is hugely important, especially from the rights holders' perspective, that the best efforts are being made to corral the stuff flowing through YouTube," said Michael McGuire of Gartner Research. "Rights holders are making specific bets on paths of distribution and are expecting serious effort to make uncontrolled distribution difficult for most folks to do."
Then again, with companies already entering into contracts with Google, a potentially short delay may have no impact at all on their decision to team up.