YouTube copyright protection system coming soon
April 17, 2007
Apparently Google is very near to launching a filtering service that would prevent copyright content from being uploaded to YouTube, CEO Eric Schmidt said yesterday.
The new system, which he called Claim Your Content, will automatically identify copyright material so that it can be removed. Judging from that it would seem copyright owners will have to go to YouTube to register and stake their claim to the content before it is removed, if I’m correct in that assertion that may not be enough for copyright owners.
Schmidt said that they are ‘very close’ to turning the functionality on…
Autonomy help big media take aim at YouTube…
April 5, 2007
Autonomy, the firm who make excellent search and data mining products have announced a new extension to their video search and management tool Virage. Virage Automatic Copyright Infringement Detection, or ACID for short, enables copyright owners such as broadcasters, production houses and publishers to maintain control of their Intellectual Property by automating the detection of illegal distribution of copyrighted material on the Internet.
Autonomy say: Using Autonomy’s unique Meaning-Based Computing, which includes patented image and audio analysis technology, and powered by the Intelligent Data Operating Layer (IDOL), ACID offers a fast, accurate and scalable method of detecting breaches of copyright, wherever they are located and whatever format they are in. By automatically detecting any rich media that infringes an organization’s copyright, Virage ACID eliminates the need for content owners to spend hours trawling through video sharing websites, or manually scanning p2p file contents.
This is perfect for media owners, this will actually watch the video footage for you and report back on whether it breaches your copyright or not. I’d imagine it’s going to act as a software agent that you can send off to scour the web for video that may be in breach. Takes me back to the days of Autonomys’ search agents symbolised by the dog (long time ago).
A very timely release if you ask me, and it’s bound to get some take up with the current hype around video copyright. Autonomys’ technology is already in use by the video search engine Blinkx. Perhaps YouTube should get Autonomy onboard to help negate their own failure to provide copyright protection?
Googles response to Viacom
March 29, 2007
Google have replied to Viacoms lawsuit and their lawyers letter to the press with their own letter to the editor in the Washington Post. Glad to see they don’t labour the point and make valid comments regarding DMCA safe harbour.
Still doesn’t see them out of the woods I reckon, there will be many more lawsuits in the lifetime of YouTube and these things can have a habit of dragging on and dirtying reputations.
Microsoft wimps out on video copyright issues
March 23, 2007
Rather than taking it like a behemoth, Microsoft has run away from the issue of video copyright and shut it’s Soapbox site for a couple of months. Soapbox is the Microsoft competitor to YouTube etc and is a fairly nice app although not getting the visits required to be any sort of threat. They’ve seen Soapbox fill up with copyrighted clips since it launched and with no protection and (so I’ve heard) a long winded method of taking down clips they’re seeking to improve.
Microsoft have signed up to the NBC/News Corp. deal and as such need to be seen to be making efforts to prevent piracy. There was a real risk that they could have been dumped from the deal if (like YouTube) they were found to be carrying large amounts of the media companies content.
So in reality it’s a sensible move which will prepare them for the coming distribution deal, however I can’t help feeling that they have wimped out by taking it offline rather than just releasing updates and keeping it accessible!
Viacom sues Google for more than $1B!
March 13, 2007
After lengthy negotiations over copyrighted clips on YouTube, Viacom has hit Google and YouTube with a lawsuit accusing the popular video-sharing Web site of “massive intentional copyright infringement” and seeking more than $1B in damages.
The lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York states that nearly 160,000 copyrighted clips of Viacom’s programming have been available on YouTube and that these have been viewed more than 1.5 billion times.
This seems like another disgruntled media giant trying to force Googles hand into coming up with a proper way to share revenue. I can’t see the case resulting in Google paying out, however it could result in a takedown notice being issued for all the offending clips.
If Google don’t get some form of copyright protection out the door along with an attractive revenue sharing scheme this could get very messy for GooTube as other media owners joing the current lawsuit bandwagon! This is the first really clear example of the troubles YouTube could bring to Google, all cases so far have been minor and easily settled, this one could be a little more tricky.
Mark Cuban subpoenas YouTube
March 8, 2007
Mark Cuban has changed tack from pressuring Google on his blog to filing a subpoena in federal court in Texas now. Cuban, who famously said that the purchase of YouTube for $1.65bn was moronic, has now put his lawyers into the fray.
Cuban is a partner in Magnolia Pictures, a film distributor; Magnolia is demanding that YouTube/Google reveal details of users who uploaded clips of its movies. The subpoena demands the details be handed over by 20th March; Google has issued its standard silent response so far.
Cuban has made it clear the filing about making a point to Google. He told Reuters: “We don’t expect to get valid user information. If we do, we will contact them and ask them what induced them to upload content they don’t own.”
Probably the last thing Google needs right now is a subpoena from someone who’s not doing it to force their hand on an advertising deal. Where as Fox obviously subpoenaed them to force the issue of a partnership deal, Cuban seems to just be doing it to make life difficult for them.
BBC jumps into bed with YouTube
March 3, 2007
A success story for YouTube this week following on from all the takedown requests and lack of commitment from some major US media companies.
The BBC has signed a deal with YouTube to bring specially commissioned content and news clips to the video site. The director general of the BBC, Mark Thompson, said the deal is a ground-breaking partnership between the BBC and YouTube and “fantastic news for our audiences”. He added in a statement: “It’s essential that the BBC embraces new ways of reaching wider audiences with non-exclusive partnerships such as these.”
The main BBC channel on YouTube will include news clips along with short-form promotional content linked to popular programmes such as Doctor Who. Video diaries by stars of the shows – including tours of the sets – will also appear. The BBC Worldwide entertainment channel will show clips from shows such as Top Gear and Spooks, along with factual programmes and a “limited amount of advertising”. BBC World will offer around 30 news clips per day to users outside of the UK and will also be funded through advertising.
YouTube has also announced 1000′s of deals with small content owners.
Viacom, Fox and NBC however are still staying away. Viacom claims that traffic to it’s websites has risen sharply since they had the content and clips pulled down from YouTube (they obviously don’t understand the point of cross promotion!). A deal with CBS has also failed to appear, it’s all gone very quiet from both camps on this subject.
Ultimately, I’m sure they all really want to get a deal done, it seems YouTube need to come up with a better offering for these media behemoths in order to hook them into their service.
The BBC’s foray into YouTube is said to be advertising funded, perhaps that funding is not enough for the large US media companies? Or maybe they are just waiting for some proper copyright protection to come into force?
YouTube handing over user details
February 14, 2007
This report claims that a 20th Century Fox Television spokesperson has said that Google (and Live Digital) complied with subpoenas issued by the U.S. District Court in Northern California and disclosed to Fox the identities of two individuals who illegally uploaded entire episodes of “24″ prior to its broadcast and DVD release. Fox also said that YouTube user who goes by the handle “ECOTtotal” uploaded 12 episodes of the popular animated show “The Simpsons.”
Fox says that it intends to pursue the two users under copyright laws, it remains to be seen whether they could bring a case against them.
Actions such as this could really harm YouTube. Rather than shopping users to copyright holders it would be much less harmful for their brand if they had put in place a copyright protection system that would have negated the need to do this. It remains to be seen whether users will tolerate this kind of policing, if nothing else it could stop them submitting sensitive details about themselves (that could be used to identify them), potentially it could make some move on elsewhere.
Google in copyright setback
February 14, 2007
Google has been ruled against in a copyright case in Belgium which has the potential to influence courts in other European countries. Probably not in the United States where laws are more permissible than ours.
The court ordered the Google to stop from showing excerpts of articles from French- and German-language Belgian newspapers on Google News and Google’s Web search site for Belgium, reaffirming the earlier ruling by the same court against the company. Google faces a daily fine if it fails to heed the order, although the court reduced this from $1.3 million to $32,500 (still a fair whack, but easily affordable by Google). Google have said they will appeal the ruling.
This is all connected to the way Google caches the copy from results and displays extracts. Google are not the only people doing this (we did this many years ago with a portal which used intelligent agents to scrape the web) so if the ruling remains upheld in Europe I’d expect other sites to get taken to court (unless of course this is more anti-Google than anti-free press…).
It is of course the newspapers who will lose the most from this ruling. I’m certain Google will just stop indexing their sites and then how are they going to attract visitors considering around 60%+ of most websites visitors tend to originate from the search engine…
MySpace to implement copyright filtering
February 12, 2007
Yes, they’ve announced it before YouTube (come on GooTube, time to do something to please the copyright holders!), Myspace will be implementing audio filtering technology from Audible Magic to safeguard copyright on videos that are uploaded to the site.
The technology filters the audio tracks in videos searching for anything it can identify as a known copyright. How effective this will be is yet to be seen, but it’s a step in the right direction and will please traditional media companies and copyright owners.
So, pressure’s on for Google, they need to implement the long promised copyright filtering technology quickly or they may find deals being struck with MySpace instead of them!
