Search Battle Heading to Video

loid_void wrote to mention a Wired story covering the video search battle between the major portals. From the article: "As millions of broadband subscribers who missed a wardrobe-malfunction moment on TV can attest, the internet can be a convenient resource for finding much-talked-about events on video. Large net portals and a handful of smaller sites are looking to change that. In recent weeks, Yahoo, Google and MSN have each rolled out services designed to make it easier to upload or locate video online. The portals' rollouts come as a handful of startups and independent film sites are creating tools to make putting video online nearly as simple as publishing text."

Comments

Heh

[Anonymous Coward]

"the internet can be a convenient resource for finding much-talked-about events on video. Large net portals and a handful of smaller sites are looking to change that."

Seems a bit poorly worded to me.

Re:Heh

[Slashdot is dead]

"As millions of broadband subscribers who missed a wardrobe-malfunction moment on TV can attest, the internet can be a convenient resource for finding much-talked-about events on video."

I was confused by the first part of that sentence. It makes it sound like having broadband caused people to miss the wardrobe malfunction.

Re:Heh

[Construct X]

Hey, give us Americans a break, will ya?!

Re:Heh

[warmgun]

It would have made much more sense had the poster included the previous sentence. From the article:

"But until recently, internet users who don't patronize peer-to-peer sites had few options for tracking down video content outside of entering a query in a standard search box. Large net portals and a handful of smaller sites are looking to change that."

Re:Heh

[Anonymous Coward]

TiVo is in talks with Google and Yahoo.

It's coming: http://www.pvrblog.com/pvr/2005/04/tivo_chatting_u .html - probably, hopefully sooner rather than later.

Re:Heh

[GotenXiao]

What, no one uses Altavista Video search? It's been around for years.

Re:Heh

[NitsujTPU]

No, it's accurate.

Come on, DRM technology, copyright banter. They don't want it to be more convenient. They want it to be impossible, so they can sell it back to you :-)

As technology advances..

[t_allardyce]

I think we can all agree this has just one application: more porn.

Re:As technology advances..

[John Seminal]

I think we can all agree this has just one application: more porn.

I see the potential for the greatest abuse with a video search engine. Just like bad wesbites use meta-tags and other dirty tricks to get high hits, I can see the same thing with video. But where you can protect yourself against spyware websites by turning off active-x and the such, how do you protect yourself against video. You click on the mpeg and boom, malware.

We need a sandbox for this

Recently, Yahoo launched a beta version of a service called Media RSS that lets anyone with footage submit videos for distribution

How can Yahoo check the content of what is sumbitted? Is there some kind of review?

What happens if NBC decides the "wardrobe malfunction" is their copywrited material and demands it be taken down. Will these searchs make it easier to take down content?

Re:As technology advances..

[CSMastermind]

http://www.alltheweb.com/ works well for me. It's video scearch turns up what I'm looking for and I like it's picture scearch system better than google's

Re:As technology advances..

[LiquidCoooled]

They can check and handle things in exactly the same way as the normal regular search engine.

Wait until a complaint comes in and deal with it then.

They don't currently take down every generic subject noticed by corporations, so what makes you think they will start now?

The search engine companies aren't stupid, and are certainly currently capable of handling indexes with multi billion webpage entries, some of which are already video.

Overblown worry for nothing.

Video is no more dangerous than any other file format, sure there may be bugs with the codecs, but the same happened for things like BMP etc, that doesn't make them inherantly evil.

Micropayments!

[Anonymous Coward]

When will Millicent style micropayments be made possible? It can be done with a plug-in (google desktop)? Firefox/IE integration? Anyway .. it should be made easy with no forms to fill out .. (after all the amounts involved are tiny .. you can minimize the maximum annual amount and time between transacts etc).

Anyway I look forward to the day I can search for a song, movie, or tv show and then google has a Ad that says "click here to buy this song"

It'll probably need DRM for RIAA to play along .. so how's about an Open DRM standard .. yeah it can be haxx0red.. but hopefully deliberate hacking of the DRM will be minimal (i mean look at the piracy rate today aanyway .. any DRM can be hacked). Freaking trust people for once.

Re:Micropayments!

[DietCoke]

You say:

"Freaking trust people for once."

But you prefaced it with this:

"It'll probably need DRM for RIAA to play along .. so how's about an Open DRM standard .."

First off, the RIAA won't have the issue with this, the MPAA will.

Regardless... who gives a tin shit what the RIAA or MPAA want on this? They'll push for regulation regardless, so there's really no need to beat them to the punch on it.

The best part of the web is the unregulated part. After a while it gets too unruly (see Napster I), then there's a brawl, then things settle down and the consumers end up getting the shaft.

Why sacrifice the "wild west" part?

WARNING: parse error

[llamaluvr]

As millions of broadband subscribers who missed a wardrobe-malfunction moment on TV can attest, the internet can be a convenient resource for finding much-talked-about events on video.

Finding videos on the internet is easy.

Large net portals and a handful of smaller sites are looking to change that.

So they're going to make it harder?

In recent weeks, Yahoo, Google and MSN have each rolled out services designed to make it easier to upload or locate video online.

But they're going to do that by making it easier?

Eighth post?

Re:WARNING: parse error

[llamaluvr]

Whoa! I really did get eighth post! I feel like the kid guessing the right number of jelly beans in the jar, or the lucky 19th caller What do I win? Hot grits? A Beowulf cluster? A trip to Soviet Russia? NATALIE PORTMAN?!

Re:WARNING: parse error

[DoorFrame]

Sorry, the prize is goatse.

Re:WARNING: parse error

[llamaluvr]

Ew...I wish I hadn't picked Door #3....

Changing Fast

[Jozer99]

I am in a band, and I am also in charge of our website. When I wanted to publish a music video just two months ago, there was NOWHERE that would host it for me. I ended up having to apply for a membership to an independant film online community, and encode my video down to a teeny postage stamp sized thing. If I were doing it today, there are half a dozen site that would host it for free, in high quality DIVX glory.

Re:Changing Fast

[Mr. Underbridge]

I am in a band, and I am also in charge of our website. When I wanted to publish a music video just two months ago, there was NOWHERE that would host it for me. I ended up having to apply for a membership to an independant film online community, and encode my video down to a teeny postage stamp sized thing. If I were doing it today, there are half a dozen site that would host it for free, in high quality DIVX glory.

Huh? WTF happened in the last two months? Is this 1998 again?

Re:Changing Fast

[boarder8925]

Here's a free host from the people who brought us the Internet Archive:

OurMedia.

We provide free storage and free bandwidth for your videos, audio files, photos, text or software. Forever. No catches.

Re:Changing Fast

[Jozer99]

The last two months, thats right. Since then OurMedia has been announced, along with a bunch of other services. So I guess it is 1998 again. Break out your Tamagatchis and your Backstreet Boys albums, to play on your brand new PENTIUM IIIs!!!

Re:Changing Fast

[Saeger]

According to OurMedia's FAQ they don't support BitTorrent (yet).

Good...

[skwirlmaster]

Besides being heavily abused by self abusers, this will have a few legitimate functions.

All those streaming events that happened a while back.. You know the ones you wanted to watch, but for some reason couldn't will be that much easier to find.

Also, sites that archive important Social events on video will get more hits. I know I have given up after trolling through a few dozen pages of google results. Hopefully you can find a few sources so you won't have to settle for one level of quality, like for JFK's assasination or whatever you need for whatever you need it for.

Really though, porn. Lots of p0rn. Sex is still in the top five searches...

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

What's that foul bacon-like smell, Ike?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just the lawyers getting all sweaty over the thought of forthcoming business boom, Mike.

Censorship/decency standards

[MoralHazard]

This may seem off-topic at first, but bear with me...

I have to admit, I've got a lot of sympathy for people who don't want to see particular things on TV--nudity, violence, whatever. I mean, I don't have a problem with it, and I don't think most content is socially harmful, but my preference not to be subjected to shit-sex videos is the same as some Mormon's preference not to see Janet Jackson's nipples.

That's the problem, though--broadcast TV is defined as a "public" medium, partly because everybody can and does receive it in the clear, and partly because (in the US and Canada, at least) spectrum rights are public property, and as such must serve the public interests, meaning that the content on those waves shouldn't be terribly offensive to many people.

But I really, REALLY dislike the idea of government-appointed (or even elected) censors dictating what can go on the air, or imposing after-the-fact fines when broadcasters step out of line.

So I say, fuck broadcasting. Go radical--eliminate the concept of broadcast TV, as we know it. Practical transition problems aside, this could solve a lot of problems. Give those frequencies up to metropolitan-area data transmissions, and get those people online. With the combination of:

1) fast, cheap, ubiquitous Internet access,

2) content providers offering TV-similar video online (streaming TV shows instead of broadcasting them),

3) effective and comprehensive video search capabilities that work at least as well as mid-1990s text search engines.

On the Internet, it's a lot easier to see what you want and avoid what you dislike. The Mormons get their wholesome family crud, and I get my skin flicks and pot jokes. Everybody's happy!

Re:Censorship/decency standards

[Jeremi]

On the Internet, it's a lot easier to see what you want and avoid what you dislike. The Mormons get their wholesome family crud, and I get my skin flicks and pot jokes. Everybody's happy!

I like your solution, and I think it will happen eventually, but it's much more politically charged than you realize. If you think that everyone will be happy when it's possible for anyone to get "shit sex videos" on demand (even if they themselves never see them), you've got another think coming -- there are many, many people who think that there are some things that should not be available to anyone. Kiddie porn would be one obvious example.

Re:Censorship/decency standards

[John Seminal]

That's the problem, though--broadcast TV is defined as a "public" medium, partly because everybody can and does receive it in the clear, and partly because (in the US and Canada, at least) spectrum rights are public property, and as such must serve the public interests, meaning that the content on those waves shouldn't be terribly offensive to many people.

But I really, REALLY dislike the idea of government-appointed (or even elected) censors dictating what can go on the air, or imposing after-the-fact fines when broadcasters step out of line.

I want government censors for shows that use the public airways. This does not mean censors for DVD's, pay-per-view, or cable. I think those services that ALL people own should not be offensive. The penalties should be so high, that if a show breaks the rules, the fine is much more than advertising revenue. That means fines in the million dollar and plus range. Not the punny hundred thousand dollar fines.

I think government should also ban some of the advertising that makes it on TV. It is impossible to watch a sports game without being bombarded with advertising for beer.

So I say, fuck broadcasting. Go radical--eliminate the concept of broadcast TV, as we know it.

I say stregnthen broadcast TV. Bring back the golden age of TV, with good shows, not shows that only exists for advertising. Did anyone notice that shows from the 60's and 70's were a lot more entertaining than TV today? You had Bonanza, Lost in Space, Star Trek, Gunsmoke and other quality programming. What do all these shows have in common? You won't find products placed in the show for advertising. You will find writers that wrote scripts to entertain. Now you watch TV, and there are some good shows, but I grow tired of all the advertising.

The problem with the internet is it does not respect established boundries. Where does your broadcast end? What if your broadcast is very offensive to my neighborhood, and we wish to have a blackout.

Re:Censorship/decency standards

[grazzy]

Grandpa?

Re:Censorship/decency standards

[MoralHazard]

Not to be a dick, but did you notice the difference between my proposal and yours? I'll spell it our for you:

LET'S MINIMIZE THE NEED FOR CENSORSHIP.

Isn't that a good thing? The quality of shows is entirely subjective--the LAST thing I want is somebody appointed by George Fucking Bush determining what kind of TV is "good" or "bad" in quality. Just imagine a world where the only thing on is "Seventh Heaven".

And you're sadly mistaken if you don't think that older TV existed solely for advertising. In fact, it was more advertising-driven than current TV, because the old rules forbid broadcasters from having a financial interest in the content-creation companies. This meant that the sole determinant in what money a broadcaster made was ratings (->advertising revenue), as opposed to making additional money from syndication or DVD sales or what-have-you. That's the only reason why shows like "Arrested Development", which are critically-acclaimed but moderately rated, can stay on-the-air.

Or are you doing a funny, and I'm missing the boat? I don't think so, mostly on account of this comment of yours:

The problem with the internet is it does not respect established boundries. Where does your broadcast end? What if your broadcast is very offensive to my neighborhood, and we wish to have a blackout.

That's the point: we established a legal/regulatory regime early in the history of television that gave the government a role in regulating the content of the limited amount of TV spectrum. With the Internet, there's an unlimited "spectrum" (for all practical purposes, anyway) and no real government mandate to regulate the content. Notice how most of the serious efforts by US and state governments to regulate net content have failed: COPA being the prime example. In cases where content-related laws do get passed, they tend to be of the type "as an ISP, give your customers the tools needed to censor themselves, if they so desire."

With TV, we assume that any person should be able to turn on their set and not have their standards of decency offended. With the Internet, we don't have such an attitude. If all the content was moved the Internet, we wouldn't have to worry about the implications of the government making decisions about what's decent and what's not.

Re:Censorship/decency standards

[Anonymous Coward]

What if your broadcast is very offensive to my neighborhood, and we wish to have a blackout.

Then nobody in your neighbourhood has to download it. Or if you prefer you can all download it for purposes of muttering about how offensive it is. Whichever makes you happiest.

Re:Censorship/decency standards

[MoralHazard]

You're right, there have been a few successful efforts to regulate privately-viewed content on the Internet. Most of the big, Federal-level stuff hasn't gone over too well, either as legislation or in the courts when challenged. COPA is the big example I'm thinking of. The Internet just isn't as easy for bluenoses to come down on as TV and other media.

There is that Utah law that requires ISPs to give customers tools that can be used to self-censor, either in the form of parental-control software or router-level blocking of defined offensive sites. This has some problems (like the government maintaining the list of offensive sites!), but it's not really a big concern because it's the customer's choice whether they want to censor or not. This doesn't change the status quo, except to put the burden of paying for the blocking software on the ISP instead of the customer.

There's also that Pennsylvania law that has a list of sites that ISPs must block, but I'm not sure what the current status is... but the scope seems limited, both in terms of the sites blocked (there haven't been any allegations that stuff was blocked based on obscene content or political concerns) and the limited impact (it's only PA, and it's easy to evade). But someone may correct me on those impressions.

*****

One little note: Kiddie porn isn't even an issue, here--bans on child pornography have NOTHING to do with obscenity or decency standards. It's illegal to possess or make child porn, in public or in private, it on or off the Internet. The law places those materials (I think rightly so!) outside the realm of free speech and privacy protections beccause we assume that children were exploited/harmed in making them, and so the making or possession of child porn is a harmful act. It's similar to the "shouting 'fire!' in a crowded theatre" line of thinking (which I also agree with).

Re:Censorship/decency standards

[John Seminal]

And you're sadly mistaken if you don't think that older TV existed solely for advertising. In fact, it was more advertising-driven than current TV, because the old rules forbid broadcasters from having a financial interest in the content-creation companies. This meant that the sole determinant in what money a broadcaster made was ratings (->advertising revenue), as opposed to making additional money from syndication or DVD sales or what-have-you. That's the only reason why shows like "Arrested Development", which are critically-acclaimed but moderately rated, can stay on-the-air.

That is an interesting point, you assert that shows can stay on TV because networks don't care about advertising because they can make money with DVD sales. I would see the relationship working the opposite way. For example, there are millions of Star Trek fans, of all the series, who would probably buy every boxed DVD set of enterprise, no matter how good or bad it is. Some even claim the series is much better than when it started. If DVD sales drove a show to continue broadcasting, wouldn't Enterprise have a few more seasons? It is rare for a TV show to continue with low viewership, most get cancled after more than one bad year.

Older shows had much less advertising. There was one little "Brought to you by..." and then the entire show. Then when commercials started, it was a smaller break. Then the show time started shrinking, and commercials grew longer. Then they got really annoying, they blased the sound volume during a commercial. TV's came out that leveled out the sound. Then advertising decided not to even wait for the commercial, but to use product placement in the show. So I say advertising is a HUGE problem.

Isn't that a good thing? The quality of shows is entirely subjective--the LAST thing I want is somebody appointed by George Fucking Bush determining what kind of TV is "good" or "bad" in quality. Just imagine a world where the only thing on is "Seventh Heaven".

You missed my point. I was talking about broadcast tv using public airwaves. Not about cable. I was one of the people who was very offended at the Owens Monday Night Football skit. It was a sports show, not a reason for a white woman to indicate she wanted a player to miss the game so they could have sex. Football is an all american game. Should it now be that kids can't watch it anymore?

I hope we get ala-cart service from the cable companies. I would like to subscribe to stations, picking which ones I want. Then you could pick which stations you wanted. We would both be happy, you could have MTV and I could have VH1. Big deal. But the basic broadcast TV should not offend the masses.

Re:Censorship/decency standards

[MoralHazard]

you assert that shows can stay on TV because networks don't care about advertising because they can make money with DVD sales. I would see the relationship working the opposite way. For example, there are millions of Star Trek fans, of all the series, who would probably buy every boxed DVD set of enterprise, no matter how good or bad it is. Some even claim the series is much better than when it started. If DVD sales drove a show to continue broadcasting, wouldn't Enterprise have a few more seasons?

First of all, I DID NOT say that networks "don't care about ratings." That's just stupid--they still make a hell of a lot of their revenues from advertising, so they sure as fuck care about ratings.

First, in the Enterpise case, the broadcaster and the show producer are two different companies, so there's not even an opportunity for this effect to take place! Are you missing the point on purpose, here?

But I'll humor this, because it's a good point to make. Let's pretend that Enterprise IS produced by the broadcaster, do that all the financial interests are in one company. There's still a mix of factors involved in whether a TV show stays in production. Star Trek might have a rabid fan base that will buy every DVD, toy spaceship, commemmorative plate, and dildo that Paramount whores out, and it may still be not enough to justify the show's production costs. (Sorry to the Star Trek fans--that was a cheap shot.) TV is expensive, and all the potential revenue from advertising plus other crap may not be as much as the broadcaster thinks it can make from putting another show in its place.

Older shows had much less advertising... So I say advertising is a HUGE problem.

So why don't you do like the rest of us who feel that way, and buy a TiVo? Or watch HBO instead? Or hit "mute" at commercials and pick up a book, like I do?

Seriously, though--probably, adverts have gotten audience's tolerances and expectations have changed. It's not the end of the world, is it? But even so, this attitude from you supports my initial argument: if we put content online, it would be easier to support multiple revenue models. View the shows with commercials for free, or pay a fee/subscription and get no (or fewer) commercials. Wouldn't that be nice, to get the choice?

Football is an all american game. Should it now be that kids can't watch it anymore?

Ummm... I think pro football is a little too violent for kids, but that's why I enjoy watching it. Your point here is purely subjective: the stuff that offends some is perfectly fine, in fact good content, to others. There are things YOU enjoy watching on TV, like those gunfights in "Bonanaza!" or a really good tackle in Monday Night Football, that other Americans would ban from TV because they're too violent.

Having a government-enforced decency standard is one possible solution to this problem, but it one that's technology-driven. Back when the TV regulation regime was laid out, we didn't have the Internet or digital media. There was only so much spectrum for a limited number of TV channels, and we didn't have good, convenient encryption for privacy, so everybody had to share the same content on a few public channels.

Nowadays, we have better solutions because technology has changed: we still have Monday night football, but it's a digital multicast on the Internet. Advertising is customized: If you have kids in your home, you get family-friendly commercials (no sexy stuff); if you're a white supremacist, you don't have to see the Owens skit (since interracial romance seems to offend you). If you're willing to pay for it, you don't have to see any commercials at all!

And we take those old-fashioned, bandwidth-wasting TV frequencies and repurpose them: more data flowing through the same airspace, being more efficient. This could dramatically lower the cost of offering wireless, last-mile broadband Internet services, because there would be a shitload more

Re:Censorship/decency standards

[Taladar]

A much bigger problem would be people (like politicians e.g.) who don't want people to be able to NOT watch something (like their election ads or propaganda e.g.).

Re:Censorship/decency standards

[Anonymous Coward]

"The law places those materials (I think rightly so!) outside the realm of free speech and privacy protections beccause we assume that children were exploited/harmed in making them, and so the making or possession of child porn is a harmful act."

Just to play devil's advocate, by this line of reasoning, shouldn't videos of murder, etc. be banned, because people were harmed in making them? E.g. the videos of hostages in Iraq being executed. I think that it's generally held that it's legal to view such videos (for instance, the FBI dropped demands against ogrish.com w/r/t the Daniel Pearl video when they were pressured by the ACLU) and, either way, few would suggest that viewing them makes one complicit in those murders.

I realize that the Iraq executions are politically sensitive, so they fall more under the realm of free speech, but then there are also sites like Rotten and Ogrish that have pictures of dead people for its own sake, and they haven't been legally threatened as far as I know, at least threatened successfully. I wonder if there are any federal court rulings that would provide a precedent for banning murder videos/photos *or* for legalizing CP (only possession of course, nobody wants to allow production except for sick freaks who definitely don't form a powerful lobby).

Re:Censorship/decency standards

[MoralHazard]

Just to play devil's advocate, by this line of reasoning, shouldn't videos of murder, etc. be banned, because people were harmed in making them?

You have a good point, here. The issue of why possession of kidde porn, versus actually making it, is illegal is a little more complicated. I think that the distinction isn't entirely motivated by legal theories, or by concrete and consistent philosophy.

Child pornography pushes a lot more buttons than murder... it seems strange, but sex crimes are far more viscerally disturbing to most people, probably because of the sexual element. Rape is the same way. Even though rape and child abuse can't be capital crimes in the US (you can only be executed for murder, and even then it's qualified by various other factors), there's a definite feeling that they're worse acts than murder.

Part of the theory behind child porn legislation is that the market for such materials induces the acts of child abuse--if nobody wanted that stuff, nobody would make it (make much of it, anyway). Some types of drug legislation work on similar theories. Possession and trafficking is the driving force behind the market, creating the demand, and so the people who have it are considered indirectly complicit in the abuse necessary to create the images.

It's much harder to apply this "market making" theory to videos of murder. I suppose that, in theory, there could be a market for murder videos and people might kill innocent victims to make videos for that market. In reality, no such market seems to exist. That would indicate that there aren't enough people willing to pay for such things, or enough people willing to commit the acts necessary to supply them. I have heard of some commercially-available collections of videos of dead or dying people (the "Faces of Death" video series), but these aren't made for the purpose of selling them--they're deaths that happened to be captured on video, and then found and put to commercial use.

Laws aren't always entirely consistent, as abstract theory goes. Often, laws reflect unspoken assumptions about human nature. To tell you the truth, I don't have a problem with the disparity in treatment between child porn and murder videos, mostly because of the practical aspect of it.

Now, IF there emerged a market for videos of people being killed, and that market was being supplied with intentional acts of murder, I'd say we would have good cause to make some new laws.

If you want an interesting, related topic, look into the urban myths and realities of "snuff" films, and some of the various law-enforcement activities over the years that have attempted to uncover a snuff industry and come up empty.

Re:Censorship/decency standards

[Anonymous Coward]

Rumors are TiVo is in talks with Google and Yahoo, so it might not be long before you can combine the best of both internet search engines and the world's best, most intelligent DVR software, TiVo.

TiVo's already a lot like Google, to anyone who is familiar with TiVo's Wish List and Season Pass features, so a teamup with Google would make a lot of sense.

Re:Censorship/decency standards

[John Seminal]

First, in the Enterpise case, the broadcaster and the show producer are two different companies

Good point! I conceed.

So why don't you do like the rest of us who feel that way, and buy a TiVo?

I don't want to pay a monthy fee for what my VCR did just fine.

Ummm... I think pro football is a little too violent for kids, but that's why I enjoy watching it.

Now you are humoring me. It is not violent. It is a team sport. If bringing someone down is violent, then society has become filled with pussies. Sorry, but if you cry after being tackeled, that is whack. It is no more violent than in baseball when a pitcher hits a batter.

What we need is more team effort. More sports. The sex, the booze, this is stuff that currupts people, it is worse than money.

Re:Censorship/decency standards

[Anonymous Coward]

You can pay lifetime for the TiVo and avoid the monthly fees, or you can get one of the TiVo/DVD-R combo boxes that comes with TiVo Basic, and avoid the monthly fees.

Sheesh, you pay monthly fees for so many other things, you'd think they were asking for your first born child or something.

Besides, TiVo is NOT a f_cking VCR....!!!!

Get that through your head. If you don't want a TiVo, fine, but stop spreading this ignorant nonsense. Calling TiVo a VCR is like calling a modern personal computer a glorified punch card machine....it is an idiotic comparison to anyone who has a TiVo and has used it for a while.

Re:Censorship/decency standards

[ramblin billy]

You say...

"What we need is more team effort. More sports. The sex, the booze, this is stuff that currupts people, it is worse than money."

But why in the world would anyone believe that when you also say...

"It is not violent. It is a team sport. If bringing someone down is violent, then society has become filled with pussies. Sorry, but if you cry after being tackeled, that is whack. It is no more violent than in baseball when a pitcher hits a batter."

Talk about 'whack'! That is the kind of attitude that could be harmful to kids. Someone who cries is a "pussy"? Football is a team sport. Football is a violent sport. Tackling is a violent activity. You are a moron. Tell you what - I'll stand 90 feet away from you and you can throw a baseball at me. Then you stand 90 feet away from me and I'll run up and tackle you. Then, after you wake up, we'll compare violence. Then, unlike the 2 or 3 times in a season you might get beaned in baseball, I'll knock you on your ass again, and again, and again. Then it's halftime. And by the way - the reason you see so much sex and booze on TV is because it makes MONEY.

billy - had your bell rung lately?

Re:Censorship/decency standards

[nunchux]

I hope for the best, but I worry the powers-that-be aren't going to let the internet continue to exist as we know it when real time, broadcast-quality video becomes a reality. The moral outcry groups will certainly demand filters and censorship. The government will cave in to them and set laws (they always do, no politician wants to be seen as promoting indecency.) The entertainment conglomerates will buy up or shut down most of the content providers. And the RIAA and MPAA will weigh in-- copyright violations will likely be rampant, from myspace kids using RIAA music and clips of the Matrix in their video journals to people posting movies and episodes of TV shows. Hopefully I'm wrong. If not, we'll have a few good years during the transition, at least... But moving beyond pictures and text could easily turn out to be the end of the internet as we know it.

Re:Censorship/decency standards

[Cecil B ReDemented]

I hate to be the bearer of bad,yet logical news,but I doubt this is going to become completly free of censorship. Theres no way to avoid the stupidity of the masses.SOMEONE will inevitably complain,for some inane reason, then someone else will use that as a reason to censor it. And im sure PLEANTY of people are going to say that im wrong,that it cant happen, or that it just wont,but ya'll (insert redneck joke here) watch,it'll happen.

There is a downside...

[dreamchaser]

What if Mr. Goat-Se or something even worse gets a hold of a video camera!!!

Re:There is a downside...

[Jeremi]

What if Mr. Goat-Se or something even worse gets a hold of a video camera!!!

A good search engine will reliably steer people towards what they are looking for ... so if they are looking for Mr. Goat-Se, they'll get him, and if they aren't looking for him, they won't.

If people who aren't looking for Mr. Goat-Se end up seeing him "on accident", that's a sign that the search engine sucks.

Re:There is a downside...

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a video, or at least a .gif animation, of him... well, you know.

Re:There is a downside...

[bawdymonkey]

What if Mr. Goat-Se or something even worse gets a hold of a video camera!!!

Am I the only one disturbed that this got modded Interesting? *shudders uncontrollably*

Re:There is a downside...

[Anonymous Coward]

Then it will be like the rest of the 'net. There's still goatse stuff out there (the main site is down IIRC) but there's nothing forcing you to look at it.

Improved text search

[xiaomonkey]

While being able to search for video and images is great and all, I wonder if much more significant effort should be put into improving plain old text (technically, html/pdf/ps/doc/etc) document retrival?

It seems that on the major search engines (google/yahoo/msn), there hasn't been any radical improvement in this area since google first came onto the scene.

And, right now, it's not like these search engines are sufficiently close to perfection yet that there's little room for improvement. For a good number of types of queries, the signal to noisy ratio can be bit too low.

Re:Improved text search

[aaqubed]

If you really think that Google isn't working on improving their searching algorithms, you obviously have no idea of how large a company they reallly are.

They have a LOT of different research areas, so just because they will research into video search does not mean that they will stop trying to improve their own, regular, text-search at all.

Re:Improved text search

[Nik13]

We *definitely* need better text search. I've tried the indexing service, all the desktop search apps, and a few more specialized solutions, and so far none of them were useable for more than a plain text search.

For anyone who codes or does web stuff (lots of ebooks and code), we need to be able to search punctuation and symbols (I'd even ask for a Regular Expression search if possible, or at least wildcards).

Right now if you try to search for something as simple as "a {" (w/o dbl quotes) you'd get lots of matches for just the letter a, or lots of words with a in them - but nothing like you'd have hoped for (or there might be, but like somewhere on page 500 or so). As you make more complex queries, the stuff that's returned seems to gets more and more irrelevant.

GDS should support 3rd party IFilters, it would add a lot of formats without anyone having to code anything complex. As for them supporting punctuation/symbols, I doubt we'll see it as google.com isn't very good at it either... The "index everything" plugin is nice to index all extensions we want as text, but the GDS just isn't good at searching for this type of index contents.

So far, our text solutions are only really useful for searching "just text" stuff. For me that means a bunch of office documents, which are all nicely sorted and categorized (no need to search at all). Search email? Nope, it won't do much for my webmail (my old/main account is still with yahoo). IM? No thanks, don't use that. So it's really useless for me.

To find code, the only thing that has worked so far is a grep-style search, which is VERY slow, and won't search pdf ebooks... With the current search tools, it's faster NOT to search. I thought these apps would do something useful to try to solve our searching issues, but they're rather useless (unless you got tons of text to index).

I hate to mention this,

[jolande]

But will this be used for anything other then porn? (not that I'm complaning)

Re:I hate to mention this,

[ocularDeathRay]

if it really becomes easy to upload your own videos.. then yes it will be used for something other than porn... soon, you will be able to see videos of people watching porn also!

Re:I hate to mention this,

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe for videos showing someone die accidentaly. I prefer porn, though.

Fair use for big corps

[Saeger]

Uploading and searching for short video clips certainly qualifies as fair use[1], but for most of the other video that people are searching for, I don't see how a "legitimate" company like Google can get away with indexing it when many others have been shutdown for doing the same thing. Sites like LokiTorrent (dead), ShareReactor (dead), ShareConnector (dead), and even Napster (dead), simply made it easy to search pointers to data, but they were forced offline anyway.

Google would have a hell of time being a copyright cop; better to leave this function to the constantly shifting "grey" p2p world.

[1] unless the recent idea of a "permission culture" has overtaken your worldview.

Re:Fair use for big corps

[AmoHongos]

Even now, you can use google as a search engine for torrents with the -filetype: .torrent switch.

I can't think of any difference between that and Lokitorrent. Both, as you said, simply make it easier to search for pointers to data. Both Lokitorrent and Google can make the argument that they can't control what they index.

But Google gets away with it, and will get away with the video search, because they're a big company, and big companies tend to get free passes on this sort of thing. It's easy for the RIAA to shut down a college student, but not so easy to shut down a big corporation.

Re:Fair use for big corps

[amembleton]

Even now, you can use google as a search engine for torrents with the -filetype: .torrent switch.

That doesn't seem to work for me. Google needs to be able to read the fileformat that you instruct it to look inside, so with something like .rtf filters have been created specifically for it. But you are correct, it is possible to use google to find torrents by just serching for followed by "torrent".

Re:Fair use for big corps

[hairykrishna]

What is this is the plan? No copyright cop.

Someone is going to make an assload of money from internet film downloads eventually. What if google just decided that it should be them? They've got an obscene amount of cheap bandwidth and storage

Give everyone a couple of gig upload space, load the download pages with ad words and knuckle down for the court battle. They've got a lot of money at the moment- if they throw it all into a copyright law war chest things could get interesting.

Re:Fair use for big corps

[Anonymous Coward]

It works, you just have to do "filetype:torrent".

Re:Wow

[Construct X]

Having fun with photoshop?

Before Yahoo and Google

[Anonymous Coward]

I know the Slashdot crowd is mostly thinking about using these services for pr0n, but before Yahoo and Google got video working, Ask Jolene had searchable had pr0n videos. However, the only flaw of the engine is that its spider is rather small.

One word....

[efuseekay]

PORN!

I'm just bummed google doesn't support NSV

[t0qer]

Nullsoft Streaming Video.

They support MPG and MOV, but not NSV. I can sort of understand the logic behind this, you can watch mpeg anywhere, but the mov part I don't understand. You pretty much have to download the quicktime player to watch mov's.

If they're going to support one major companies streaming format, why not real, wmv and nsv?

I just think supporting any video format, that for the masses (folks that don't know better) requires a download of a player that constantly tries to take over ever file association on your system is wrong. I always tell quicktime "No, please don't try and take over my midi, I have a wavetable card, no, don't take over my other sound and movie formats, please stop bugging me to download additional components" but like a bad child it just keeps bugging me.

NSV was purely a windows thing for a while, but now mplayer and VLC support it. You can watch vp3 encoded videos on any system with those clients on any system. Also on2 has made the vp3 codec open source, and there are versions of it for anything.

Just my critique on one of the new video services. Yeah is sort of rantish, so what?

--toq

Re:I'm just bummed google doesn't support NSV

[LFS.Morpheus]

Quicktime is bad? I've never had any problems with Quicktime at all. I have it associated with MOVs and that's about it. sure, with the free player, you get the "Pro" upgrade banner when you launch it, and no fullscreen. The fullscreen thing I think is stupid on the part of Apple if they want their player to be used by the masses.

Compare to Real Player, Quicktime is heaven. The hordes of options to disable on install is ridiculous.

Now I don't know why they don't do Real and WMV. Probably they will. But to be honest I've never even heard of NSV.

Re:I'm just bummed google doesn't support NSV

[Taladar]

Maybe because mpg and mov are not streaming formats?

btw I never even heard of NSV before I read your post but I hate wmv, asf and real for their poor quality and high error ratio

Re:I'm just bummed google doesn't support NSV

[evilviper]

NSV was purely a windows thing for a while, but now mplayer and VLC support it. You can watch vp3 encoded videos on any system with those clients on any system

-1: MisInformative

Yes, MPlayer now supports playing NSV streams, but NOT files. NSV support chokes on downloadable NSV files, and it has no support for seeking in NSV files anyhow.

You pretty much have to download the quicktime player to watch mov's.

As opposed to Real, WMV, Divx, what? To watch a video made in a format, you have to download a player for that format.

Search for "Quicktime Alternative" to find Media Player Classic with all Quicktime DLLs include, and never see the Quicktime player again...

MPlayer (on Unix or Windows) can handle Quicktime files quite well with the binary DLLs installed, and the older codecs (eg SVQ1) have been reverse engineered now. Even the open source VP3 codec has only been partially implimented in libavcodec, so Quicktime is a slightly better option right now.

HELP

[John Seminal]

Is there any way to limit the search so only videos greater than some time or size will be returned? There are too many 10 second clips of crappy quality.

Geez

[figjamjam]

.... when was "Search Battle" ever in the cinemas ???

Anyone got an imdb link for it? :) :) :)

be honest ...

[Janek Kozicki]

.. there is no search battle. PR tell that there is one, because google is not paying to PR.

Re:be honest ...

[Anonymous Coward]

i see you read yesterday's story about the giant PR industry sham

Without porn...

[Lomithrandel]

there is no progress. Every major innovation in media has been either ignored or greenlighted solely whether or not the porn industry has decided to use it. Sex is money... and the porn industry knows sex if you follow me.

Aggregation

[Lord_Dweomer]

I've been studying the upcoming internet video revolution very intensely. Spearheading the effort for distribution of large video files are the various torrent trackers out there. However, for smaller video clips, especially the viral ones, there seem to be a few large sites that categorize and aggregate the content. iFilms does this quite nicely, and I wouldn't be shocked if Google purchased them.

However, the more people who are trying to break into this market, the more it is going to split up collections of video. Because when you have competitors, the name of the game will soon be "exclusive content". How can we get around this? And how can we determine content visually when we can't even get the semantic web working correctly?

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad big companies like Google and MS are sinking tons of money into this, but I just don't think they'll do it right. Does anybody have any links for some video aggregation sites that DO do it correctly?

Re:Aggregation

[Saeger]

However, the more people who are trying to break into this market, the more it is going to split up collections of video. Because when you have competitors, the name of the game will soon be "exclusive content".

Right - just like iTunes. Apple makes it very convenient to legally access a modestly large archive of music, but if you want access to ENTIRE SUPERSET out there, then you've got to use the slightly-less-conveinent-P2P which doesn't have to bother pushing against the legal friction of securing rights.

Remember those commercials from the late 90s with the tagline of accessing information "Anything, anytime, anywhere"? That's not likely to ever be legal.

Re:Aggregation

[Brice21]

http://www.ourmedia.org/ is interesting and
http://www.participatoryculture.org/ seems promissing.

Oh, come on!

[Mac Degger]

"...are creating tools to make putting video online nearly as simple as publishing text."

Come on! It already /is/ as easy as 'publishing txt'! Get some ftp space, and you are done. Maybe even put up a simple page with a hyperlink, if you want to get fancy. The only problem is bandwidth (or more accurately, down-/upload limits).

So, big whoop that all these sites are getting 'in on teh action', but it's not like we're talking about anything new here, unless we're talking contextual search of video, direct from the source (ie programmatically searching an .mpg as opposed to lots of manually added keywords [maybe timestamped]).

Ok, let's cut to the chase...

[writermike]

Welcome to Google Vid. Please enter your search terms:

Boobs breasts tits boobies boobies boobies boobies boobies boobies boobies boobies boobies

[OK] [I'm Feeling Randy]

Re:Ok, let's cut to the chase...

[Construct X]

That about sums it up!

Re:Ok, let's cut to the chase...

[Anonymous Coward]

[I'm Feeling Randy]

Stop touching me.

Randy

The new age of search companies.

[punkrockgeekboy]

What's a lot more interesting is the amount of new search startups. A great deal of these are really just search aggregators, but there are some really innovative new companies coming out of the woodworks. A search engine I've been using recently is http://www.gofish.com/ This is the direction that the small search engines are going, I feel. More paid search results, mixed with digital media purchasing. GoFish.com actually just launched a useful new service which allows you to search for digital media (music and video) then buy an mp3 and download the content, or stream it from their webserver. I'm finding it to be a rather entertaining method to waste my day.

Re:The new age of search companies.

[Anonymous Coward]

And a great illustration of why Google has no competition on the horizon. I video searched for several really obvious and popular keywords with gofish and was lucky if I got about 1 result. I would be very suprised if that site is still around in 6 months as it simply has nothing to offer.

AltaVista

[Anonymous Coward]

AltaVista has had an audio and video search for a long time.

The problem with going to internet distribution

[AthenianGadfly]

The issue I see with going to internet-based distribution for TV is how to make a profit off of it? When you watch TV, you have to have the right equipment and a little forethought to skip the commercials. If the video is playing in your media player, however, it's trivial to skip anything you want. I think content providers will be much more open to streaming video over the internet when they can be sure of making a profit off of it.

LOL... icon?

[tepples]

. The law places those materials (I think rightly so!) outside the realm of free speech and privacy protections beccause we assume that children were exploited/harmed in making them

Thing is that some moral conservatives would want to put lolicon anime in the same category as live-action child pornography.

RIAA-MPAA connection

[tepples]

First off, the RIAA won't have the issue with this, the MPAA will.

When you pirate a movie, you pirate all the songs and all the recordings contained therein. The four major record labels (Sony BMG, EMI, Warner, and Universal) license their music and recording repertories to the six major movie studios (Sony, Disney, Warner, Fox, Paramount, and Columbia), and the labels don't want their copyrights wantonly infringed any more than the movie studios do.

article needs rewording...

[cryptocom]

If the internet is "a convenient resource for finding much-talked-about events on video", then "Large net portals and a handful of smaller sites are looking to"...EXTEND/ADVANCE/IMPROVE "that." By using the word "change", the article suggests that the internet is not already a convenient resource for finding video, of which the opposite is stated in the opening part of the sentence. Ok, I feel better now...

Klaatu...Verrata...[something]

[pipingguy]

I was recently trying to explain the humour in the following dialogue exchange from Army of Darkness to a friend, but he didn't get it. Maybe pasting together the two clips would work better.

Ash: Klaatu verrata nectu.
Wise man: Again.
Ash: Klaatu verrata nectu.
Wise man: Again.
Ash: I got it, I got it. I know your damn words, right?

[...time passes until the critical moment, Ash tries to remember...]

Ash: Klaatu verrata n... Necktie... Nickel... It's an "N" word, it's definitely an "N" word!
Ash: Klaatu verrata [under his breath] nekt agh agh ahh.

[The evil dead attack because of Ash's ignorance/arrogance/bluff]

a desireable side-effect of all this...

[dvd_tude]

... is an open search engine for *broadcast* content. Not a guide to stuff that's been ripped and recorded, but a truly free, open and platform-neutral electronic program guide.

Yes, I mean a replacement for these bloodsucking leeches.

Why? Because ... it's time for Gemstar's cozy little patent-protected franchise to end. There's nothing sacred about aggregating TV schedules. They're like phone directories in that as simple compilations they can't be copyrighted.

Think about it...

[SphericalCrusher]

They are going to try to work on a standard that is going to allow a straight upload of movies and videos just as easy as text? Think about it... the piracy risk is going to be too high. I know I probably haven't looked too in depth about this topic, but from just the article that I've read, I can say that this idea is not heading in the right direction. Especially when the MPAA and RIAA have knowledge about it.

In fact, the submitter (or Slashdot) screwed up

[atomic noodle]

The original Wired article doesn't say that. It looks like the submitter or Slashdot editor cut out a paragraph and turned their summary into the opposite of its original meaning.

This is how the original article says it-

As millions of broadband subscribers who missed a wardrobe-malfunction moment on TV can attest, the internet can be a convenient resource for finding much-talked-about events on video.

Whether it's Janet Jackson's Super Bowl breast exposure or The Daily Show host Jon Stewart's explosive appearance on a political talk show, video clips of high-profile moments have sent millions of net users scrambling to search engines for footage.

But until recently, internet users who don't patronize peer-to-peer sites had few options for tracking down video content outside of entering a query in a standard search box.

Large net portals and a handful of smaller sites are looking to change that. In recent weeks, Yahoo, Google and MSN.......

Sincere congratulations on your eight post, by the way.

interesting video dating site

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.youtube.com/

Re:interesting video dating site

[Anonymous Coward]

YouTube http://www.youtube.com/ (nice name!) seems like it's an interesting approach to the same problem. For photos, I have a number of options to share them with family & friends. With videos, it seems like YouTube is filling that void.

Unless,..

[StarCharter]

Unless, of course, Mr. Goat-Se has paid for premium placement in said search engine.