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YouTube's Content Identification Failure Raises Eyebrows
MSNBC is carrying a story looking at YouTube's failure to follow through with a promised 'content identification system' by the end of the year. The article goes on to discuss the possible impact this failure will have on the site's (so far) good relations with television, music, and movie studios. From the article: "If the delay lasts for more than a week or two into the new year, suggesting more than just a slight technical hitch, 'this is certainly going to be a serious issue', [Mike McGuire, a digital media analyst at Gartner] added. Leading music companies have already made clear they see completion of YouTube's anti-piracy technology as an important step in any closer co-operation. Failure to build adequate systems to protect copyright owners could also add to the risk of legal action against the site."
It's hard to believe that Google hasn't already discussed the delay and any consequences with the movie, television, and music studios. Google had such intensive conversations with them before purchasing YouTube, that it would be silly if they went quiet and just let things slide.
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I pity the developers who are making this product. They have been given a complex task and an arbitrarily chosen deadline, probably pulled out of the air by marketing/legal/upper management. Since September they have been on a death march to meet this date, sacrificing family time around the holiday season.
But you know what? It just ain't ready because it was a fools errand to begin with. My guess is they are working off of half-assed specs that weren't even ready before Thanksgiving. Maybe in a few more months they can have something good. But media partners getting pissy about it isn't going to help the code mature any faster.
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The thing is, the MPAA and etc don't care if there are false positives, they only care that they are no escapes. Youtube could probably deploy a solution that would make the MPAA happy, only to have its own users leave as valid content was always accidently being blocked.
Given that the media and entertainment industry has made such a miserable job of enforcing copyright since the emergence high speed internet, perhaps their efforts would be better spent figuring out ways to capitalise on the presence of sites such as youtube and myspace.
If businesses such as Red Hat can make a living from open-source software, surely there's a more refined way for said media businesses to realise capital from their assets without being so 'grabby'!
I'm betting they go with a computer/human pair system. If it matches close to 100% to a known video treat it as if it were the known video. If it matches greater than 50% have a human look at it. If it matches less keep it and wait for a user to flag it. Realistically most youtube videos are near carbon copies of other videos on youtube already. This would greatly decrease dups at least.
I totally disagree. I rarely pay any attention to the copyrighted stuff, because that's exactly what I'm trying to get away from. The only way that I'd agree with you relates to situations where someone has used a copyrighted work to produce something derivative - like a spoof of a music video, or some music in a home-made video trailer.
Youtubs is a threat - I don't think it's a threat because people use copyrighted material in this manner, it's a threat because it moves the entertainment decision-making process from the few that used to have nearly complete control, to the end user. It's another paradigm shift that will be fought tooth and nail by the old guard.