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Search Battle Heading to Video

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the drawing-the-line-in-the-sand dept.

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."

24 of 100 comments (clear)

  1. Heh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    "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.

    1. Re:Heh by Construct+X · · Score: 2, Funny

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

      --
      Download Opera 9 (in the BETA forum)
  2. As technology advances.. by t_allardyce · · Score: 3, Funny

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

    --
    This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
    1. Re:As technology advances.. by John+Seminal · · Score: 4, Interesting
      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?

      --

      Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."

  3. WARNING: parse error by llamaluvr · · Score: 3, Funny

    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?

    --
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  4. Changing Fast by Jozer99 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Changing Fast by boarder8925 · · Score: 2, Informative
      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.
      --
      Keep your eyes to the sky.
    2. Re:Changing Fast by Saeger · · Score: 2, Informative

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

      --
      Power to the Peaceful
  5. Good... by skwirlmaster · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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...

    --
    My inner self is ineffable, so don't eff with me.
  6. Censorship/decency standards by MoralHazard · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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!

    1. Re:Censorship/decency standards by Jeremi · · Score: 3, Insightful
      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.

      --


      I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
    2. Re:Censorship/decency standards by MoralHazard · · Score: 2, Informative

      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).

  7. There is a downside... by dreamchaser · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    1. Re:There is a downside... by Jeremi · · Score: 3, Insightful
      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.

      --


      I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
  8. Improved text search by xiaomonkey · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  9. Fair use for big corps by Saeger · · Score: 3, Insightful
    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.

    --
    Power to the Peaceful
    1. Re:Fair use for big corps by AmoHongos · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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.

  10. I'm just bummed google doesn't support NSV by t0qer · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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

  11. Geez by figjamjam · · Score: 3, Funny

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

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

  12. be honest ... by Janek+Kozicki · · Score: 2, Insightful

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

    --
    #
    #\ @ ? Colonize Mars
    #
  13. Ok, let's cut to the chase... by writermike · · Score: 2, Funny
    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]
    --
    If Nalgene water bottles are outlawed, only outlaws will have Nalgene water bottles.
  14. Re:Micropayments! by DietCoke · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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?

  15. RIAA-MPAA connection by tepples · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

  16. Klaatu...Verrata...[something] by pipingguy · · Score: 2, Insightful


    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]