San Francisco (Reuters) — Apple Inc. said on Wednesday that it will put Google Inc’s YouTube Internet video catalog on television through its Apple TV set-top box.
But the deal also could bring Apple into the middle of a rancorous copyright battle over television shown on the Web.
MTV Networks owner Viacom Inc., which is suing YouTube for copyright violation, said it would welcome the chance to license material to Apple.
“We’re always vigilant about protecting our copyrights. But we would welcome the opportunity to license our content to Apple as we do with all distributors,” a Viacom spokesman said.
Viacom sued YouTube in March for $1 billion charging it with “massive intentional copyright infringement” after finding hundreds of thousands of Viacom-owned videos uploaded to the service without its permission.
Apple TV will stream videos wirelessly from the Internet on YouTube, starting in mid-June, the company said. Thousands of the most current and popular YouTube videos will be available then, it said, and the full catalog will be available in the fall.
Apple TV works with iTunes to play users’ content — video, movies, television shows and the like — wirelessly on a wide-screen television.
Apple also on Wednesday launched iTunes Plus, a music download service that has no copy-protection software limiting consumers’ use of the songs. It features artists with EMI Group, including Coldplay, The Rolling Stones and Joss stone.
Jobs has called on the music industry to allow online retailers like iTunes to sell digital songs without restrictions to give the digital music sector a boost and give consumers what they want.
EMI said in April that it would allow retailers to sell its music without protection, with its first partner being Apple. Earlier this month, EMI said it would also work with online retailer Amazon.com Inc.
Along with the YouTube announcement, Apple said that YouTube members can also log in to their YouTube accounts on Apple TV to view and save videos.
Apple also said it was selling a new Apple TV with a 160 gigabyte hard drive. The drive has four times the storage of its previous TVs for up to 200 hours of video, 36,000 songs, 25,000 photos or a combination of each.
With a wireless, high-speed Internet connection, Apple TV can automatically sync content from one Mac or Windows PC or stream content from as many as five additional computers to a television without wires.
An Apple TV costs $299. The larger model will cost $399, and will be available on Thursday.
Shares of Apple rose $4.42, or 3.9 percent, to close at $118.77, after brokerage firm WR Hambrecht & Co. upgraded its price target on Apple to $125.
Leave a Reply