LOS ANGELES (AP) ? YouTube says it has acquired RightsFlow, a New York-based company that will help it identify the owners of music that people upload in their videos.
The deal should help YouTube, which is a unit of Google Inc., manage the complex relationship it has with content owners, who are rarely consulted when their work is put up on the Internet for free.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
RightsFlow has a database of more than 30 million songs that it says lets it account for royalties and ensure they are paid.
YouTube’s Content ID system already identifies songs when users upload them, but RightsFlow’s database will help find the businesses and people who hold rights to the work, including songwriters, publishers, performers and recording companies.
