Play. Watch. Buy?

Google's big question - how to make money out of YouTube - has just coughed up a new answer: 'buy this on Amazon or iTunes' buttons alongside the video.

Just as YouTube users can share, favorite, comment on, and respond to videos quickly and easily, now users can click-to-buy products -- like songs, books, and movies -- related to the content they're watching on the site. We're getting started by embedding iTunes and Amazon.com links on videos from companies like EMI Music, and providing Amazon.com product links to the newly released video game Spore(TM) on videos from Electronic Arts.

Do your buttocks also involuntarily clench whenever you see someone acknowledge a trademark in the middle of prose?

I might be slightly confused but I'm not quite sure where the links to Spore are going to sit, or if they're just going be random - 'hey, you're looking at something on a screen. You know what else involves looking at something on a screen? Spore (TRADEMARK!!!)'
Initially, this is an America-only roll-out (it's always an America-only roll-out) and there's a hope that it might persuade some of the more take-down hungry copyright cats to lighten up a litte:

And those partners who use our content identification and management system can also enable these links on user-generated content, by using Content ID to claim videos and choose to leave them up on the site.

The new question, of course, is how far will people bother to buy a track when they can watch the video anytime for free?