YouTube viewers will soon be able to watch some classic TV showswith commercialsunder an agreement inked with Digital Music Group. Although specifics of the deal have not been announced, here's the gist: DMGI will allow YouTube to show complete episodes of classic TV shows in its catalog. In return, YouTube will share some of the ad revenue with DMGI and more importantly, provide the company with content filtering software to identify user-submitted videos that infringe on DMGI's copyrights.

DMGI's portfolio includes a number of TV classics from the 50s and 60s, including I Spy, The Cisco Kid, Daniel Boone, My Favorite Martian, and The Adventures of Robin Hood. YouTube will also show some of the content from DMGI's Kids Channel, including the eerie animation stylings of Clutch Cargo along with The Gumby Show and Molly and Roni's Dance Party.

In a first for YouTube, the videos themselves will contain embedded advertisements. This marks a significant change for YouTube, which has so far kept its minimal advertising from interfering with video playback, much to the delight of users. The embedded ads are likely necessary for YouTube to guarantee the level of ad revenues necessary to make the deal happen.

The other key is content filtering. YouTube and Google have been working on a content filtering system that would make it easy for rights holders to easily identify infringing videos. During its most recent earnings call, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said that his company is hard at work on audio and video fingerprinting software; the deal with DMGI indicates that the software is at a state where the company feels comfortable with allowing its business partners to use it. There have been accusations that Google is only offering the filtering tool to companies that have signed distribution and licensing agreements, forcing the likes of Viacom to rely on mass takedown notices.

MySpace is also beginning a massive video filtering effort at the behest of copyright holders. MySpace will be using fingerprinting technology licensed from Audible Magic which uses audio track fingerprints to identify infringing videos. Copyright holders will be responsible for uploading the fingerprints used to find problematic content. MySpace already assists the record labels in filtering unauthorized music files.

Unlike YouTube, which relies heavily on copyrighted content to attract users, the availability of music videos is peripheral to MySpace's success. That hasn't stopped the record labels from putting MySpace in the same category as YouTube and other video-sharing sites.

If Hollywood and the Internet are ever going to live in harmony, content filtering will be key. Filtering not only enables rights holders to identify and notify websites of infringing content, it also makes deals like the one between YouTube and DMGI possible. It may also hasten a new era for YouTube, one of more direct competition with broadcast and cable networks as YouTube expands its catalog from video clips to entire shows.