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Schmidt Says YouTube 'Very Close' to Filtering System
cnetfeed writes "Google CEO says an automated system will soon be available to track pirated content and prevent it from being uploaded to video sharing site. The system was supposed to be rolled out as early as last October, and the long delay in brining the technology online has resulted in ill will from companies like NBC and Viacom. 'Network executives accused Google of stalling so YouTube could reap the big traffic that professionally-created shows generate. Viacom filed a $1 billion lawsuit against Google last month and accused Google of massive intentional copyright infringement. "Ah Viacom," [CEO Eric Schmidt] Schmidt said. "You're either doing business with them or being sued by them...we chose the former, but ended up the latter." Schmidt took the opportunity to poke fun at Microsoft's assertion that Google's pending acquisition of DoubleClick may be a threat to fair competition. Other companies, including Yahoo and AT&T have also asked regulators to review the transaction closely.'"
Once upon a time, you were the One True Search Engine. You wormed your way into our hearts with your blessed neutrality. You created cool toys, and you arbitrarily stood up for our rights when it suited your bottom line. You epitomized the .com boom.
You were like the Switzerland of the internet.
Whereas Doubleclick stood for all that was wrong with making money, you stood as the shining beacon of how to do it with class.
And now? Forget it. Screw this whole "Don't be evil" thing, where the hell is the next paycheck coming from?
I wonder if AltaVista is still a decent search engine...
John
This is great! Google has automated a way to look at videos and determine if they match a video that's already in existence and under copyright! That means they've solved a hard AI problem. I hope some day they open source their solution.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
Maybe Google can turn Doubleclick into a better company--who knows? I am not drawing any conclusions yet, I want to see what they do with it.
Google is working with Clear Channel?
I feel sick..
-- lol pwned
I ALWAYS brine online. It keeps the whole mess out of my kitchen!
and $1.6b down the "tube" when the visitors abandon the site because they cannot get their favourite show
there is no brand loyalty on the Internet when it comes to video sharing sites, he who has the content wins
and with all the popular shows gone because of this ID system why bother using YouTube when there are hundreds of video sharing sites (many not based in the US) that dont employ these tactics ? want freedom ? simply dont use US based services
"...and the long delay in brining the technology online has resulted in ill will from companies like NBC and Viacom
brining
-noun
1. water saturated or strongly impregnated with salt.
2. a salt and water solution for pickling.
3. the sea or ocean.
4. the water of the sea.
5. Chemistry. any saline solution.
-verb (used with object)
6. to treat with or steep in brine.
Mmmmmm pickled technology.....
-Tolerate my intolerance
swfdec finally makes a free flash codec that can handle YouTube and the next day they announce all the good content is going away!
Beep beep.
I may be completley wrong, but here's how I understand this so far..
If we can discount anything that looks at the actual audio or video content of the upload, and I believe we can since there just isn't an AI out there which can conclusively pick (for example) Captain Picard out of a video clip, then this must somehow use the textual metadata hooked to it. It'll have to sift through the tags and descriptions put there by the uploader, or possibly contextual data from sites that later embed the clip.
That would open some new cans of worms, though. First, it'd be easy to defeat, as we learned back when the old Napster suddenly didn't have anything by "Metallica," but there were tons of new songs from "Metallika," "Mettalicca," and "Metalligreed." Second, what if I record, say, a "C.S.I." parody? By rights I should be allowed to post it as such, will my file get flagged as lawsuit-bait and zapped because I used a copyrighted term in the description? What if I post an original film about firefighters that happens to use the word "heroes" in the title, which has nothing to do with the copyrighted TV series "Heroes?"
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
If one can identify whether two streams are similar or not then people won't have to watch the same porn twice!!! Once again google gets close to geeks' hearts.
For most of the videos, the following could easily be done...
p rint
Copyright holder notices a video that they hold the copyright to. They tell Google. Google checks the claims made, etc. etc. and presumably finds it valid. They make a hash of the video. They check their site for any other videos that match that hash, and remove those as well. They check any future upload and see if it matches the hash - if it does, it doesn't post it.
That leaves people getting around that by re-encoding, etc.
So in comes fingerprinting:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=video+finger
It's not exactly rocket science. Re-encode it? Zap a few frames? Fingerprinting tech laughs in the face of that sort of thing. The only two effective means of fooling fingerprinting tech are:
1. mangle the video so it can't possibly be recognized. Unfortunately, this means nobody can watch it without a special de-mangling player.
2. find out how the fingerprinting tech works, and make sure that only in those spots where it checks the original video, there's a difference. Of course any fingerprinting tech worth it's $$,$$$ will allow a seed value to change things around, and google rotates this once a week or however often needed once they realize people are getting around things in that way - and punish those users appropriately.
Not saying I agree with them doing it - though I find it hilarious in a sad way that if a copyright holder says "X is mine, please take it offline", that Google will do so - but not on Y which is the exact same video, or Z which is the exact same video getting uploaded a day later - but those are the ways they -can- do it.
I don't think anybody is suggesting that Google build an AI system that magically determines whether the copyright of a video lays with a third party and by means of technological ESP determines that said copyright holder did not consent to the upload - and I certainly don't think that Google is claming that they are either.
but the sole controller of the greatest invention mankind ever had since sliced bread
There, corrected it for you. If we are going to make extreme generalizations, at least let's do it right,
This would seem to work against their claims of safe harbor under the DMCA, since a plaintiff could argue that with this system, Google should generally be aware of a particular instance of copyrighted material. Ignorance actually is an excuse in this case, and Google would have been much better off handling DMCA takedown requests rather than trying to resolve the problem themselves.
ahh, the classic republican "but its private property" defense.
once a company reaches a certain size or market share they acquire powers rivalling government, and should be held to the same constitutional standards, otherwise there is no point to the constitution at all, because all the government has to do is privatize everything they can and then claim private property whenever people's civil liberties are violated.
this view does have support, it's been ruled illegal for businesses to place cameras in places like bathrooms, even in their own property. I say it's time to stop being hyppocritically selective about which amendments in the bill of rights are supposed to be protected from corporate greed (laziness counts as greed.. theyre trying to save money at the expense of the first amendment).
additionally, it's currently illegal to discriminate when providing a service. in this case theyre a video sharing site, and have no right to discriminate against video because it "might" lead to lawsuits in the same way gas stations have no right to discriminate against black people (who have a statistically higher criminal prosecution rate) because they "might" be armed robbers. they have to have positive proof before they takedown videos. the dmca notice and takedown system provides that, and it's viacom's responsibility to find and serve notice on the offending videos.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
I'm impressed that I'll be able to use that Disney clip loaded to Google Video that is embedded in my blog on a completely different site for my college research paper on Disney's history of copyright violations.
Dibs on the domain!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.