New Programs Fight GooTube Copyright Battle
PreacherTom writes "The specter hanging over GooTube for the past several months has been the issue of copyright infringement: will lawsuits eventually kill the $1.5 billion deal? In response, a vanguard of software developers is aiming to turn the tide on filtering copyrighted material — and their handiwork is expected to hit the market in the coming months. One example would be Audible Magic, a 'fingerprinting program' for video released a few days ago that promises to use peculiarities of recording and editing to tag and identify forbidden material." From the article: "Other outfits promise releases in the next few months as well, as they expect the video authentication market to be many times larger than the market for software that safeguards music copyrights. Just how much money is there in such filtering software? The market is at its inception, so estimates are hard to come by. But revenue from user-generated content sites should reach $850 million by 2010, up from $80.6 million this year, according to In-Stat. Software makers are eager to tap into such growth rates."
What about the use of copyright works as part of a composition or parody? There are many legal uses of copyrighted works that are not directly controlled by the copyright holder.
My point is that there is a will, so somebody will find a way...
If it's a pain in the ass, no one will care.
YouTube's success owes to their ease of use and lax copyright handling. If uploaders need to jump through too many hoops to post content circumventing new restrictions, they simply won't bother.
Ugh, please don't coin this term to refer to Google buying YouTube. It sounds like some Elmer's glue product, or a porn site.
Note to article submitters, EXPLAIN YOUR TERMS...
There are many legal uses for copyrighted works.. including parody and criticism..
then there's the inevitability of false positives which ALWAYS happen with search algorithms.. or are you going to trust these particular coders to make absolutely bug free code which accounts for every single inevitability
With this said.. let's apply your principle to law enforcement.
We'll have robotic systems disable your car if you speed or violate any traffic law, with your only option being to send a letter snail mail to the state to request reactivation (I think that about approximates reporting a false positive to a webmaster).
what? your wife is in labor with contractions 3 mins apart? TOO BAD!
what? that guy behind you is shooting at you?.. well I guess you die then.. can't be driving unsafely now!
what? you happen to be more interested in keeping that guy from rear-ending you so you ran the stop sign? I'm sorry but you should have considered the possibility a dead car is less convenient than whiplash!
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Nice try, but they got rid of those little "loopholes" with the passing of the DMCA. There's no exception for the traditional rights to Fair Use.
Once they manage to put some form of DRM -- no matter how trivial -- on all major media distribution schemes, they will have effectively eliminated Fair Use, except for the anointed few that the Copyright Office deems worthy of receiving exceptions. And at least in my world, anything that you have to receive regular permission from an authority in order to do -- permission which can be denied at any time -- is hardly a right.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I fully expect that in a few years, devices like those TBCs will be unlawful to purchase if you're not a video professional; like scanners that can receive the 800MHz cell band. Video hardware that strips DRM, even "accidentally," will become contraband, like hacked Satellite TV descrambler cards.
I have heard that in the Soviet Union, every photocopier was serially numbered and registered. I could easily see a future in this country where that is the case for any device capable of removing the DRM from content. How else are you going to keep people from just buying 'professional' gear? They'll serialize them, register them to a list of approved owners, maybe toss a hefty tax and right-to-inspect on them, too.
Call me paranoid, but it's not hard to extrapolate an endgame like that from the Macrovision laws, and proposed Analog Hole legislation. Coupled with the tendency of our government to try and turn the screws when a law is demonstrated to be ineffective, versus taking a step back and reconsidering why it doesn't work (which might be an admission of failure); I think we could be filling out BATF forms in order to buy a time-base corrector before we know it.
Time to buy your "pre-ban" equipment now...
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."