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YouTube anti-piracy tool due sometime in the fall

By Steve Ragan Jul 30, 2007, 15:05 GMT

Google’s YouTube is set to have video fingerprinting software tested and enabled sometime in the fall according to statements made in court on Friday. The statements were made during the initial hearing of the Viacom trial against YouTube owner Google. Viacom sued Google in March over copyright infringement seeking $1 billion in damages. According to Associated Press wire reports, Google said they were working “very intensely” on a video recognition technology, which is said to add another layer of protection for copyright holders such as Viacom. Viacom, known as the father to such shows as South Park, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and Reno 911, each from Comedy Central, as well as MTV, MTV2, Nickelodeon, CMTV, and several other stations and programming, ordered the removal of any video on YouTube that contained footage, images, and likenesses of any of their shows. It was a popular pastime in several offices to surf to YouTube and watch the Daily Show each day after it aired the night before. Clips were often posted almost instantly. Then earlier this year Viacom issued a removal order under the DMCA that caused the removal of several hundred thousand videos from the popular website. The backlash was that the removal order caused is still being seen today. Viacom, and by proxy YouTube, faced a storm of negative press when some of the removed clips had nothing to do with copyrighted material. Likewise, those that could have been flagged as infringing on copyright, according to The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), used the content under fair use and were not subject to removal. All the while, Viacom sued Google for $1 billion because they fail to prevent the uploading of the copy written works to their website. Google maintains that they are doing nothing wrong, and are complying with the DMCA by removing the offending material as soon as they are asked. In April of this year, Google CEO Eric Schmidt gave a brief hint at the new technology mentioned Friday in court when he talked about Google's upcoming “Claim your Content” tool. The tool would help to “somewhat automate” the process through which content owners flag illegally copied videos so Google can take them down, he said. “It's not a filtering system. The technology doesn't block uploads,” Schmidt said in the April investors meeting. “It makes it much more effective and quicker to get us to remove inappropriately uploaded content. It's very much compliant with the DMCA.” On Friday, lawyers for Google said the company planned to have the technology in place in the fall, “hopefully in September.” Philip S. Beck lead council for Google said the new technology, “will allow those holding copyrights on videos to provide a digital fingerprint, so that if anyone tries to share a copyrighted video, the system will shut it down within a minute or so.” Viacom, as well as the others suing YouTube, welcome any changes made that will help prevent infringement on their copyright. While that was said, they also said in court that they would take the next year to identify the extent of infringement that continues on a “massive scale.” The outcome of the trial, and the tools developed by Google will shape the way the law works regarding the DMCA, which some opponents say is outdated, and was broken form the start. While the tool from Google is expected as early as September, there is no exact launch date. The Viacom trial will continue later in the year.

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Straight Talk MarkJul 30th, 2007 - 17:12:03

I wonder if Google would be willing to licensing this digital filtering software to companies to remove copyrighted video clips from their servers that users uploaded.

This would would be a big help, not to mention the disk space on these servers.

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brodyJul 30th, 2007 - 17:52:33

Anyone thinking of starting up a new video site to compete with youtube, now is a good time. Millions of people are going to be searching for a new video site soon because of this.

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ShaunJul 30th, 2007 - 18:07:47

I still don't understand why companies like Viacom get mad at this. Their shows are getting more exposure, making them more popular, more viewers, and likewise more advertising dollars. I can watch it on TV, I can DVR it and watch it any time I want, but I can't watch it online? It just doesn't make sense.

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kuttypediaJul 30th, 2007 - 18:16:54

'The technology doesn't block uploads,” Schmidt said in the April investors meeting - If that statement is true, it is possible for third party websites to offer a service whereby, they download, say an episode of South Park as soon as it is uploaded onto YouTube and then re-offer it for the general public to download from a separate site. Since in theory, numerous such websites could spring up, it would be very very difficult for content providers like Viacom to keep tabs on all those who offer such a service.

They could try and influence the courts to declare such a service illegal, but it would probably end up like the P2P and DRM mess. In allowing such a loophole in their forthcoming tool, Google is also giving an opportunity for other video websites to compete strongly for eyeballs with YouTube.

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brahmanJul 30th, 2007 - 22:06:47

Who cares? Not visitors to the website. Only greedy copyright holders. The Internet is for sharing and communication, not archaic business constraints.

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Charles BishopJul 31st, 2007 - 14:22:54

It's a really stupid idea and will back-fire on You Tube. I guess they better be prepared to lose more than half their subscribers.

-Bishop

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YouTube anti-piracy tool due sometime in the fall

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