I posted recently about Mark Cuban’s take on GooTube (Google’s acquisition of YouTube) in which he suggests that the legal fees required to fight the copyright infringements caused by users uploading unlicensed video would ultimately be its demise. Cuban also made the point that YouTube doesn’t really have anything to keep it ahead of the competition other than the most eyeballs at the moment, which was the point I was agreeing with. And I still agree with that although there’s a chance the eyeballs alone will be enough. MySpace certainly hopes so anyway.

However, it seems that the recent partnership between CBS and YouTube might pave the way for a very prosperous and litigation-less future for YouTube. As part of the deal, YouTube created a CBS channel on their site to allow CBS to post as much video as they want. In return, CBS is allowed to monitor the YouTube site for any copyright infringements of their content and they are then allowed to either have the content removed or share in the revenue generated from the ads.

The results have already been impressive. In just a few months, over 35,000 users have subscribed to the CBS feed and almost 30 million people have viewed content on the CBS channel. And the programs that CBS is posting videos of are seeing a bump in their TV ratings.

So while I never doubted that Google would figure out how to make YouTube a revenue-generating machine, I am certainly surprised that they have so quickly figured a way to create a win-win situation for everyone involved.