Slashdot Mirror
YouTube Video-Fingerprinting Due in September
Tech.Luver writes "The Register is reporting on Google's statement to a presiding judge that video-fingerprinting of YouTube material will be ready in September. The development is required to head off a three-headed suit against the company, currently being debated in a New York City courthouse. The system will, according to Google, 'be as sophisticated as fingerprinting technology used by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.' From the article: 'As Google told El Reg in an earlier conversation, the company already has two systems in place for policing infringing content - but neither are ideal. One system allows copyright holders to notify Google when they spot their videos on the company's sites. When notified, the company removes the offending videos, in compliance with the American Digital Millennium Copyright Act. A second system uses "hash" technology to automatically block repeated uploads of infringing material.'"
Earlier I had joked about Google's claim to be nearing a system that lets them check for copyrighted works. I said that they're basically claiming to have solved a hard AI problem.
Others pointed out that, no, it's not a hard AI problem to just compare some kind of checksum of the video against a set of banned checksums. That's true. But what about once people know they're using this system? They can just trivially re-encode. Perhaps add a scene break here or there, and totally mess up the fingerprint. To prevent that, it seems, you would need to solve a hard-AI problem: that is, be able to determine if an arbitrarily-encoded video appears to a human to match some copyrighted work. It would have to be robust against minor scene shortenings and lengthenings, scene breakups, color gradients laid over the video, etc.
Anyone know how difficult this program is to circumvent? (Just hypothetically -- not advocating criminal activity here.)
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
As soon as Google stops indexing/posting material people want (legal or not) people will stop using Google. I believe they know what a fine line they're walking between 'do no evil' and survival here, I wonder which will pervail?
That would be the ultimate mechanical turk - sitting around watching youtube videos all day and getting paid... in addition to what you are already being paid as you put off work to watch youtube videos all day.
Can I just filter the video to change the general shape and size of the content and scribble all over it until humans can't recognize it? Seems to work for websites that require a signup... I had one the other day that took 4 people and 5 attempts to actually sign up.
A couple of 30-somethings embark on the ultimate roadtrip
One part is the same -- someone spots "their" video, they take it down immediately to avoid getting sued under the DCMA. Expect the takedown notices to continue, which will still kill parody videos, fair-use compliant videos, and videos that are legal, but someone sends bogus takedown notices, such as the ones that Viacom "accidently" included in their original request.
The second part sounds more promising, but someone may be able to get around hashing the videos, such as inserting random one-frame images, as in the Fight Club movie, or adding in overlay text, or possibly adding in effects. If they try to hash a few selected time slices, someone will figure it out eventually. As with all digital protection, this just pushes off the inevitable. At least it will make Google look good in court, since they're attempting to comply with Viacom and the other copyright holder's requests for not posting their material.
In the end, it won't count for much. It would make more sense to add in additional protections for false or malicious takedown notices, such as adding in a $50K fine for false claims. This would at least make the big companies scrutinize the videos that they're issuing a takedown notice for.
"First things first, but not necessarily in that order."
- Doctor Who
We don't want "sophistication," we want reliability.
And since they are making the comparison... just how reliable are fingerprints, really?
True, a character in Mark Twain's 1893 novel Pudd'n'head Wilson tells a court
"Every human being carries with him from his cradle to his grave certain physical marks which do not change their character, and by which he can always be identified -- and that without shade of doubt or question. These marks are his signature, his physiological autograph, so to speak, and this autograph canImage available not be counterfeited, nor can he disguise it or hide it away, nor can it become illegible by the wear and mutations of time. This signature is not his face -- age can change that beyond recognition; it is not his hair, for that can fall out; it is not his height, for duplicates of that exist; it is not his form, for duplicates of that exist also, whereas this signature is each man's very own -- there is no duplicate of it among the swarming populations of the globe! This autograph consists of the delicate lines or corrugations with which Nature marks the insides of the hands and the soles of the feet."
and ever since Mark Twain said so everyone has believed it, but that doesn't necessarily make it true.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
The supposedly clever media moguls are missing a wealth-building opportunity. Lots of these "infringing videos" are short clips from longer presentations. If they had any smarts at all, they'd ask Google to set up a link on those pages where people could buy the programs/music on disk, or direct download them for a fee. Instead, the moguls want to get rid of what amounts to "free advertising" because they fear the new paradigm.
YouTube Video Strip-Searching is due in January '08
--- What?
Well, it's the cost of fighting a copyright battle, and also the dark possibility that the judge would side with the copyright holders which they almost invariably always do these days.
Take that and the fact that Google is actually a big fat cash cow with a bulls-eye on the side of it and it becomes obvious that the best strategy is one of accomadation. Rather than a long drown out battle that would also hurt googles stock price because of the uncertainity it creates.
So anyway you cut it, this looks like the best route for them to take. Maybe google could throw some lobbyists on congress to address the copyright abuse that copyright holders are getting away with.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Same as with music. If people are going to buy it, they will. Just charge a fair price. Use youtube as advertisement for commercial interests (daily show, colbert report, robot chicken, anyone?)
But youtube is a little different in that many of the things people go there for are unique or one-time things that the only way you'll ever get a chance to see them again is if you recorded it yourself, or somebody else does and you are lucky enough to find it online.
The biggest issue I have is stuff that you'll NEVER BE ABLE TO ACTUALLY BUY OR SEE AGAIN being taken down. My favorite example is prince performing at half time for the superbowl. Now, not only are the videos gone from youtube, but also all of the comments (which IMHO are equally as valuable to the community) about the videos.
Taking things like this down erodes our culture and destroys valuable records of what has gone on in our lives.
How is this going to work? Will Google process all copyrighted videos themselves and produce the necessary data to block them? If so, what is the backlog going to be when big media submits 90 years of video?
If Google are not going to check it, what is to stop me downloading a Quicktime trailer of a movie, generating the data and submitting it to Google for blocking? It will quickly become impossible for even sanctioned videos to appear. Cultists/Scientologists will be screwed too.
As usual, media companies are being idiots. They paniced about the VCR, they paniced about P2P, they are panicing about DVRs and YouTube. In the end, new technology tends to do them good in the long run and besides which, you can't fight it.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Philips has a video fingerprinting system. From the site:
The system is robust against severe degradations like low bit rate video compression, scaling, rotation, cropping, noise addition, median filter and noise removal. [...]
A 5 second video fingerprint on any segment of video content is sufficient to uniquely identify that segment.
You obviously need more than a simple re-encode to get around that and I'm sure Googles system won't be fooled by simple tricks either.