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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.'"
Doubleclick ads were going to be there, regardless of who owned it. Google wanted the user data that Doubleclick had collected over the years, and they didn't want Microsoft to be able to buy it. Therefore they overpaid by billions of dollars.
The outcome was binary - either Microsoft was going to own Doubleclick, or Google was. Given the choice, I would much rather see Google do it. After all - the worst case scenario is that Doubleclick ads persist as they are... with a decent chance that Google is going to do something productive with Doubleclick's business model.
Erm, maybe after they've bought it (DoubleClick) they're going to fire (execute) all of their employees and burn their office to the ground?
And then, replace all of their adverts with Click On The Monkey ads where you really do win something if you Click On The Monkey.
I remember, back in the day, when banner adverts first started to proliferate and I actually tried to win something by clicking on the monkey...
I believe I won some malware.
J1M.
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.