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YouTube Set To Filter Content
An anonymous reader writes "Computerworld reports that Google is racing to head off a media industry backlash over its video Web site YouTube and will soon offer antipiracy technologies to help all copyright holders thwart unauthorized video sharing. But YouTube has also said that the process of identifying copyrighted material is not automated and will require the cooperation of media company partners."
And more people will know that the industries are evil, will stop buying their product. Then they will claim it was 'piracy', when its their own damned fault for producing crap, and acting like total morons.
:shock:, will continue to bombard the public with their scare tactics (which so far, for the general public, have been successful).
And the media companies, which control media distribution
As I said before, YouTube will just become the Napster of video. Most people weren't all pissed off about the industry when they shut that down, they just moved to LimeWire, BitTorrent, allofmp3, and iTS.
Which is correct and as it should be. If someone wants to have their work represented and distributed professionally and through traditional means, they make a deal with a publisher or label or studio to do so. That artist then goes back to making art, and the distributor does the distributing, for a cut. (How big is the cut? How onerous are the terms? They're specified in the contract you just signed. Print too small? You're too naive? Get a lawyer.)
Or you can distribute your stuff yourself, via outlets like YouTube, and let the wonderful viral-ness of the 'net's waves push your masterpiece from desktop to desktop around the world. The promotion is free, and you can get compensated via donations (*ahem*) and by selling tickets to your performances (good luck with that, you novelists...)
Which distribution method is better? Don't know, but at least with Google being forced to obey the law, the artist will have a legitimate choice.
The dirty secret, the Truth Which Dare Not Speak Its Name, in all this, is that the chuckleheads lip-synching to "Barbie Girl" and doing art-school Claymation re-enactments of the Trojan War got off on having their work up there on the virtual shelf next to Madonna's and Jon Stewart's and Spielberg's. Now that they are once again being sent back to the children's table, the whining (ostensibly about "artist's rights" and "fair use") will be deafening.
I don't know about that; I'd think that'd be a pretty cushy job. Sort of like being paid to check porn to see if it should be censored. Of course, it might get a little futile flagging episode after episode of naruto, just to see them come back again.
Actually, unless they can implement some kind of effective computerized filtering, they're never going to stop uploads; they'd have to hire an small army. Of course, I don't really see what the big deal is anyway; nobody who was serious about a show would watch it in low resolution on youtube; they'd either buy it or use P2P. If I was them, I'd try to cut my losses and recoup as much ad revenue as I could; that stuff is getting views, but ads are about as much as anyone would be willing to "pay" for it.
I'm also surprised they haven't tried any viral marketing stunts; the medium would be perfect for stirring up interest in new shows. Hell, it already does, but they're too stuck in the past to take advantage of it. I mean, we all heard about the publicity for the leaked 24 episodes -- if they could do something like that on purpose, along with a coordinated marketing flood on the "traditional" media, they could clean up.
...i wonder, is there e technical/software based/automated possibility to check contents at all, except for watermarks, etc, embedded in the video? i can't think of any (that's possibly the cause for my being not a millionaire) it can be automated. looking for particular actors faces should be possible. in the uk we have face recognition systems for cctv. it would not be impossible to go through uploaded videos looking for actors faces.
Why UNIX?
Slashdot has less emo and vanity. Sure it's got ego, but that I can stand. Emo's piss me off because they don't know suffering, and vanity pisses me off because it's fleeting. Ego at least is humourous.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
with all due respect to YOUtube - aside watching silly experiments with diet coke and mentos and videos of talking cats (highly recommended..) what is it good for?
I agree it should be monitored so nothing besides personal home-made videos are featured there. I do believe YOUtube will eventually turn out into a bubble - once all the people are done watching that unfunny dude dancing that evolution-of-dance thing, that bubble will explode.
Locksmith
I have to agree that copyright holders need to have the rights over their content, whether or not it is on youtube.
Copyright holders can certainly help find content that should not be on youtube. But finding piracy of their works should not be a burden on them.
The responsibility really lies with the uploaders to obtain proper releases for works they are not fully in charge of.
On the flip side, copyright holders have to realize the marketing potential of such media as youtube. From what I have seen, the video is either downgraded in its capture and/or the connection speed, so its not like you are getting purchase quality, though audio is not so bad.
I've seen numerious videos where credit is given and even where to get purchase quality.
But as a marketing tool, the work is findable in the search engine with taging.
I'd hate to see alot of the content vanish. but there is alot of duplication too.
Perhaps what is needed is some assurance from youtube that the quality will always be under what you can purchase, unless there is some formal release is on hand.
in the mean time, and I probably shouldn't do this as slashdotting a resource won't help me use it, but there is a firefox plugin for capturing such video to your local hard drive, but it goes thru another url to do so and sometimes its overloaded. Get your favorite videos that may vanish, while you can.
You said "unless they can implement some kind of effective computerized filtering, they're never going to stop uploads; they'd have to hire an small army."
...or they let everyone upload, and the [few] concerned parties have to look out for their own interests. Maybe they'll have to resort to watching all of the uploaded content, if they can manage to find the manpower.
Even if they can implement some kind of effective computerized filtering, how long will it stay effective? Even the article admits that "protecting copyrighted material is likely to involve an endless cat-and-mouse game to keep pace with hackers bent on breaking such security tools." So yeah, this quote takes a criminal-element view of hackers, but the fact remains that any technology will have to constantly evolve to remain effective, and that non-automated filtering (making them sift through every single video to identify copyrighted content, bless their souls) will probably be the only way.
In my opinion, either they don't let everyone upload (the extreme top-down control method; bad for business if you're YouTube; bad for the free-as-in-speech AND the free-as-in-beer sets) and copyrighted content is not as widely accessible (less recognition, less money for the little guys; more money for the big guys; the RIAA is the real winner)
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It's free for me to watch it over the public airwaves, and copy it with my VCR, DVD, or on my computer. So maybe this isn't really about copyright. Maybe it's about ad revenue. Something the media companies don't get when it's shown on YouTube, or shared no matter what the medium or source.
Yet YouTube gets ad revenue whenever a page is shown....hmmmm...me thinks a smart media company would have a solution here. Create your own page for your own show, and upload the videos in slightly better format than the crappy YouTube format, but still not as good as a direct copy. Work out a deal with YouTube for a percentage of the ad revenue, or put a 10 sec. ad in front of it like NBC does for the shows you can watch on their site and get revenue from that advertiser.
It's like getting caught in a rip tide. You can fight it, but the rip tide won't go away. Or, you can learn to work with it a little bit, ease the fight, and eventually get out of it.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
But then there's the "what happened last night" aspect of it. If something crazy happened on TV last night, you can guarantee it'll be on YouTube the following morning. It's this kind of archival aspect that YouTube took on that makes it so popular: because much like Google, you could find anything on YouTube. Not anymore.
the process of identifying copyrighted material is not automated
Well, it *could* be, if they implemented RFC 3514.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert