YouTube was supposed to deliver the great news on saturday. The news was to deliver a system to prevent piracy of copyrighted music. But the phone never rang and they disappeared into oblivion ready to celebrate the new year. Another broken promise.

The agreement between Warner and YouTune is to create and install an “advanced content identification and royalty reporting system”. Warner agreed to let YouTube distribute its library of music videos, artist interviews, and other content and allow people to incorporate the music from its catalogue into works they create and post on the website. YouTube vowed to have a piracy-prevention system in place by year’s end as a caveat of the “first-of-its-kind” alliance to sell Warner music and share the revenues.
Â
Â
Missing the self-imposed deadline would be a big stumble for YouTube, but it could recover its footing by getting the system in place within a week or two, according to industry analyst Michael McGuire of Gartner Research.
Â
“It is hugely important, especially from the rights holders’ perspective, that the best efforts are being made to corral the stuff flowing through YouTube,” said McGuire.
Â
“Rights holders are making specific bets on paths of distribution and are expecting serious effort to make uncontrolled distribution difficult for most folks to do.”
 Â
Google and YouTube are not at a point where they can compensate for potential piracy problems by cashing in on the video-viewing audience, according to McGuire.