In an event that I think, may have gotten overlooked by the media at large, Warner has kenneled their lawyers on copyright violations at YouTube — when it comes to doing mashups, at least, it seems.

Yes, you can rest at last. That video of your grandma shaking her booty to “My Humps” won’t end up at the end of a lawsuit next year (I hope).

A couple of days ago, YouTube made the announcement:

What’s even better is that Warner is the first record label to embrace and support your creativity by authorizing use of their music content for free, in partnership with your favorite artists! This new architecture will be available by the end of the year. We will have more details to share then.

So, it seems like not only is YouTube allowed to rebroadcast music videos, but will also have the lattitude to use their music (and perhaps the videos) “creatively”, and “for free”.

I’m interpreting “free”, as in “it won’t cost anything”, and “we’re not going to sue your pants off if you don’t pay us a royalty of some kind”.

With the mentioning of an “architecture”, one wonders what sort of technology will be involved; will it be to facilitate mashups? Will they provide actual raw tracks and video clips for users to play with, insert, and otherwise edit?

Or can we look forward to technology that restricts users, or monitors users, as they try and engage this artistry creatively?

Seems like YouTube still has a lot of work to do before they settle the score, even with a corporation that they’ve struck a deal with. In particular, as Mr. Arrington astutely points out, and others have correctly noted: before YouTube even considers getting put out to that cushy profitable pasture in the sky (getting bought out to the tune of about 1.5 billion — its current evaluation), it needs to sort ALL of their copyright issues first.