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Google's New Scheme To Avoid Unlicensed Music
An anonymous reader writes "Complaints about copyright infringement on YouTube keep Google busy. If you have any doubts, just look at the Viacom copyright suit. But the problems aren't just about uploaded videos, but sometimes the music accompanying the videos. A patent application shows that Google has worked on a system to automatically identify infringing music by comparing a digital signature of a soundtrack to signatures of existing music. Users who upload videos could opt to completely remove the video, swap the soundtrack for something approved, or to mute the video. Of course, there doesn't seem to be a provision if you're using existing music with permission."
This is what Audible Magic does. Exactly.
http://audiblemagic.com/index.asp
So google is doing it again?
still no sig
Have they not been doing this already for certain artists that have opped into it? I know that Youtube has thrown me an error when attempting to upload a video with licensed music in it before and gave me the option of uploading with a disabled audio track. In fact, this system seems to have been rolled out in 2007.
AFAIK there is no fair use exception for copyrighted music.
Not even in a video about how someone's music is similar to someone else's? A video like this would, in my view, fall squarely under the spirit of 17 USC 107, which specifically mentions "purposes such as criticism [or] comment" . I can see a defense for this under at least factors 1, 3, and 4, and the court in Luther Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music ruled the same way about a spoof of Roy Orbison's "Oh, Pretty Woman".
"even though they now possess the knowledge and can do it themselves," ..so you know how to play all of the songs that you download?
Many people like you confuse the hard work that put into making the album (which is not easy) and the split second it takes to copy the resulting work (which any moron on the Internet can do)
This is known as a perceptual hash. We have a perceptual audio hash in pHash, my open source software project that will tell you how similar two media files are to each other. It also features an indexing system to find the best matches from a sample audio clip, a la Shazam. These algorithms are not new by any means, although this patent goes a bit further than simply matching audio samples.
There also needs to be a fair use option.
There is. If YouTube's Audible Magic server detects a match, it lists the video in Content ID Matches, where the uploader can file a dispute. One of the dispute options is "This use does not require the copyright owner's permission", such as fair use.
AFAIK there is no fair use exception for copyrighted music.
Sure there is. The statute makes it clear that fair use applies to all copyrighted works. There are no exceptions. You're probably thinking of the de minimis doctrine, i.e. that copyright does not protect taking very small amounts of material from other works. Bridgeport, the most notorious sampling case, dealt with that; it didn't even mention fair use, IIRC. See, OTOH, the Pretty Woman case for an example of the Supreme Court supporting fair use in a music case.
"Fair use" is a legal concept that was hammered out through litigation, not a commonsensical notion of "what is fair."
Well... the concept is basically that if a use is fair, it shouldn't be considered infringing. There are tests to determine if a particular use, based on all the relevant circumstances, is fair, but there are no bright-line rules, and the case-by-case nature of the beast makes precedent shaky. While it's not as bad as some things (e.g. the utility doctrine, which is always a crapshoot), it does largely hinge on whether the judge feels in his gut if it's fair or not.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
That's why you'll seldom hear an entire record played on talk radio. The syndicators don't want to pay license fees.
That is actually not true. There is a separate payment structure for short clips used in a blog or talk radio format as opposed to a full-song radio playback of the same songs. There are still rights payments for even short clips, but it is a heck of a lot cheaper (by a factor of 10 or more depending on revenue and profits of the licensing organization).
The problem with this entire scheme is that there seems to be no way to say "I've paid the required fees not let me use the dang song". This kills even legal use of music. Not to mention that there is also no talk about "I'm the author dammit" option.
From my experience, adjusting the pitch of the audio by +4% (without altering its duration) is enough to fool Google's algorithm without being noticeable/distracting, unless you're playing the original song and the altered song side-by-side.
Musicians play live, musicians make their living with their performances.
Except for those who don't.