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Google Businesses The Internet Media Television Your Rights Online

YouTube Set To Filter Content 76

Posted by kdawson from the can't-post-that dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Computerworld reports that Google is racing to head off a media industry backlash over its video Web site YouTube and will soon offer antipiracy technologies to help all copyright holders thwart unauthorized video sharing. But YouTube has also said that the process of identifying copyrighted material is not automated and will require the cooperation of media company partners."
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YouTube Set To Filter Content More

YouTube Set To Filter Content

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  • Make them watch it all (Score:3, Insightful)

    by zoftie ( 195518 ) on Sunday February 25, 2007 @08:11AM (#18142492) Homepage
    Which basically means that google will make recording companies work and watch through each one of the videos beginning to the end, to remove them. So at least I hope.

    • Re:Make them watch it all (Score:4, Interesting)

      by alphamugwump ( 918799 ) on Sunday February 25, 2007 @08:58AM (#18142676)
      I don't know about that; I'd think that'd be a pretty cushy job. Sort of like being paid to check porn to see if it should be censored. Of course, it might get a little futile flagging episode after episode of naruto, just to see them come back again.

      Actually, unless they can implement some kind of effective computerized filtering, they're never going to stop uploads; they'd have to hire an small army. Of course, I don't really see what the big deal is anyway; nobody who was serious about a show would watch it in low resolution on youtube; they'd either buy it or use P2P. If I was them, I'd try to cut my losses and recoup as much ad revenue as I could; that stuff is getting views, but ads are about as much as anyone would be willing to "pay" for it.

      I'm also surprised they haven't tried any viral marketing stunts; the medium would be perfect for stirring up interest in new shows. Hell, it already does, but they're too stuck in the past to take advantage of it. I mean, we all heard about the publicity for the leaked 24 episodes -- if they could do something like that on purpose, along with a coordinated marketing flood on the "traditional" media, they could clean up.

      • Re:Make them watch it all (Score:5, Insightful)

        by robot_lords_of_tokyo ( 911299 ) on Sunday February 25, 2007 @09:30AM (#18142814)

        I mean, we all heard about the publicity for the leaked 24 episodes -- if they could do something like that on purpose, along with a coordinated marketing flood on the "traditional" media, they could clean up.
        Who says it wasn't done on purpose...

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by ParticleGirl ( 197721 )
        You said "unless they can implement some kind of effective computerized filtering, they're never going to stop uploads; they'd have to hire an small army."

        Even if they can implement some kind of effective computerized filtering, how long will it stay effective? Even the article admits that "protecting copyrighted material is likely to involve an endless cat-and-mouse game to keep pace with hackers bent on breaking such security tools." So yeah, this quote takes a criminal-element view of hackers, but the
        • Why do they need to stop it? Just incorperate more product placement into the show itself, then the more you are pirated the more the product is shown, the more the show can justifible charge for product placement. Suprise, it's now all paid for, without a retarded DMCA/filter everything scheme. Everyone wins.
      • Oh, they'll successfully block naruto, but then it'll come back as narvto, narut0, and n@ruto. Then, they will have to block all those alternate spellings, and then they will have to start blocking na.ruto, and so on. It's an endless battle the media companies will. not. win.

        What the media companies NEED to do is embrace and look the other way COMPLETELY when it comes low-bitrate, low-resolution encodings of their content. I've watched content on Youtube, and while I'm not running out to buy HDTV because I
        • It's not completely impossible. You just need an army to enforce this kind of thing. The mistake people make is that you need to pay that army. I look at Wikipedia, which does a pretty good job of removing copyrighted work and fairly quickly. Just put a big link next to each video to report it as a copyright violation. If enough people report it, a paid worker (or perhaps even a trusted unpaid user, ala Wikipedia's admins) takes two minutes to review the video and assess its copyright, which should be plain
          • That is easy to sabotage. Just surf, select popular original videos like lassegg's work, flag it as a copyright violation. Go for all of the most popular videos, do the same.

            Now, you just overloaded the paid auditors and broke the system, rendering it useless.
            • Any video checked once and cleared by an auditor would have the reporting disabled. Trusted director accounts [youtube.com] would be exempt from the copyright reporting entirely. Auditors would devote their time to videos viewed frequently and reported the most, so the most egregious violations get taken care of first. Once people realize that popularizing a copyrighted video only increases its chances of getting banned, there would be very little incentive to post them.

      • I don't know about that; I'd think that'd be a pretty cushy job. Sort of like being paid to check porn to see if it should be censored. Of course, it might get a little futile flagging episode after episode of naruto, just to see them come back again.
        Great. Now we have to deal with YouTube homicides, if people start uploading 4kids-dubbed anime. It'd take less then twenty episodes for the poor fool to lose his nerve and walk through the office collecting necks...

  • So content will start being dropped (Score:3, Insightful)

    by nurb432 ( 527695 ) on Sunday February 25, 2007 @08:17AM (#18142508) Homepage Journal
    And more people will know that the industries are evil, will stop buying their product. Then they will claim it was 'piracy', when its their own damned fault for producing crap, and acting like total morons.

    • Consistency. please (Score:5, Insightful)

      by poptones ( 653660 ) on Sunday February 25, 2007 @08:43AM (#18142618) Journal
      So... they just produce "crap," but then people post it and many people watch and enjoy it. Or... it's not piracy if it's crap?

      Ultimately they may be shooting themselves in the foot, but the fact is there are LOTS of shows and movies posted on youtube in their entirety. They're idiots if they start taking down short "best of" clips, but I don't think Youtube was ever envisioned as a place where you could go add the complete Boondock Saints to your playlist.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by peragrin ( 659227 )
        copyright law allows for fair use. That includes taking sections of TV shows and using them in your own work. you can't use it all, and you must credit them, but it is still possible.

            Heck most major TV news shows do just that.
        • It might be fair use if you post a short clip on your own web site, but YouTube is not your own Web site. Also, most of the clips on YouTube are just wholesale reposts of someone else's work, not works containing your own work plus a few bits of other people's works. They do re-use other network's material, but usually it's only in segments of a few seconds.

        • Aha! (Score:3, Insightful)

          by poptones ( 653660 )
          But that's just it: fair use allows certain repurposing of the work in other (your own) works. But when all you are doing is stripping out 30 seconds and posting it to a sharing site, you are not adding any new context or value. Copyright holders may turn a blind eye toward such use, but they don't have to.

          Producers may not mind yet another repost of Abigail Breslin running around the kitchen screaming or chasing after a VW van, but those people who keep reposting her "funny dance" are essentially giving aw

    • Re:So content will start being dropped (Score:4, Interesting)

      by garcia ( 6573 ) on Sunday February 25, 2007 @08:50AM (#18142650)
      And more people will know that the industries are evil, will stop buying their product. Then they will claim it was 'piracy', when its their own damned fault for producing crap, and acting like total morons.

      And the media companies, which control media distribution :shock:, will continue to bombard the public with their scare tactics (which so far, for the general public, have been successful).

      As I said before [slashdot.org], YouTube will just become the Napster of video. Most people weren't all pissed off about the industry when they shut that down, they just moved to LimeWire, BitTorrent, allofmp3, and iTS.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by IamTheRealMike ( 537420 )
      The Daily Show is not crap

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by garcia ( 6573 )
        The Daily Show is not crap

        In your opinion. Just because a good bit of the main demographic here on Slashdot likes to watch Stewart, doesn't mean that everyone does (I find him incredibly boring at times). In addition, I don't see how one single show can turn the entire media's crapmeter around.

        Please, Jon Stewart isn't the savior of cable networks' actions.
    • I can't seem to decide whether it was due to the "industries are evil" comment, the "acting like total morons" comment, or the "producing crap comment". Maybe it's all three. Maybe it's desperate hope that filtering copyrighted content from public broadcasts (yes I am aware of the DMCA provisions for these things) will make people think "Bastards! I'll never be entertainment industry slave again!" /flamebait

      Seriously though, I see nothing wrong with youtube siding with record industry. Why not? Are they not

  • Good (Score:3, Insightful)

    by nbritton ( 823086 ) on Sunday February 25, 2007 @08:56AM (#18142666)
    Who goes to Youtube to watch their crap anyways? It's called YOU tube for a reason, if we wanted that crap on there we would have called it payperview.com.

  • Like any open forum... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by tomstdenis ( 446163 ) <{moc.liamg} {ta} {sinedtsmot}> on Sunday February 25, 2007 @08:57AM (#18142672) Homepage
    YouTube is mostly filled with shite and personal opinions the likes of which nobody gives a rats ass about (kinda like lf and myspace). Why not just moderate clips before they go public? Oh shit, cuz then you couldn't have everyone and their brother uploading clips [legit or otherwise].

    Frankly, I compare YouTube to a mix of "America's Funniest Videos" and myspace. A mass conglomeration of shite I just can't fathom caring about. Combine that with the need for Flash and I have all the reason I need to avoid the site [and the like].

    Tom
    • YouTube is mostly filled with shite and personal opinions the likes of which nobody gives a rats ass about (kinda like lf and myspace).

      And Slashdot. *cough*
    • It's not all bad...

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yfc8uGAWr90 [youtube.com]

    • workarounds (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      If you pick and choose and search, there is some good stuff there. I tend to hit the documentaries. And if you use a desktop or online file converter, you can download their flash and make it an .avi or whatever works better for your viewing purposes. I think that is a major must-have, watching flash in a tiny screen is bogus, except for very short clips. Even then it is still flash, which is most always stoopid. Like wesites that for the intro page are all flash? Forget it, and I hope if they are commercia

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by psu_whammy ( 940612 )
      But then there's the "what happened last night" aspect of it. If something crazy happened on TV last night, you can guarantee it'll be on YouTube the following morning. It's this kind of archival aspect that YouTube took on that makes it so popular: because much like Google, you could find anything on YouTube. Not anymore.

  • And So YouTube Regains Its Amateur Status (Score:3, Interesting)

    by RobotRunAmok ( 595286 ) on Sunday February 25, 2007 @08:58AM (#18142674)
    Which is correct and as it should be. If someone wants to have their work represented and distributed professionally and through traditional means, they make a deal with a publisher or label or studio to do so. That artist then goes back to making art, and the distributor does the distributing, for a cut. (How big is the cut? How onerous are the terms? They're specified in the contract you just signed. Print too small? You're too naive? Get a lawyer.)

    Or you can distribute your stuff yourself, via outlets like YouTube, and let the wonderful viral-ness of the 'net's waves push your masterpiece from desktop to desktop around the world. The promotion is free, and you can get compensated via donations (*ahem*) and by selling tickets to your performances (good luck with that, you novelists...)

    Which distribution method is better? Don't know, but at least with Google being forced to obey the law, the artist will have a legitimate choice.

    The dirty secret, the Truth Which Dare Not Speak Its Name, in all this, is that the chuckleheads lip-synching to "Barbie Girl" and doing art-school Claymation re-enactments of the Trojan War got off on having their work up there on the virtual shelf next to Madonna's and Jon Stewart's and Spielberg's. Now that they are once again being sent back to the children's table, the whining (ostensibly about "artist's rights" and "fair use") will be deafening.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by itsdapead ( 734413 )

      The dirty secret, the Truth Which Dare Not Speak Its Name, in all this, is that the chuckleheads lip-synching to "Barbie Girl"...

      ...which would probably be enough to prompt a takedown notice from the MAFIAA (and probably the manufacturers of Barbie too)

      The problem is not the (quite reasonable) desire to stop flagrent mass distribution of entire copyrighted works. I have little sympathy for the demise of original Napster et. al. - which doesn't mean that I do have sympathy for the record labels, who shou

  • ... ;) as TFA mentions, this process of cheching for copyrighted material ist not automated.

    i wonder, is there e technical/software based/automated possibility to check contents at all, except for watermarks, etc, embedded in the video? i can't think of any (that's possibly the cause for my being not a millionaire)

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by eneville ( 745111 )

      ... ;) as TFA mentions, this process of cheching for copyrighted material ist not automated.

      i wonder, is there e technical/software based/automated possibility to check contents at all, except for watermarks, etc, embedded in the video? i can't think of any (that's possibly the cause for my being not a millionaire)

      it can be automated. looking for particular actors faces should be possible. in the uk we have face recognition systems for cctv. it would not be impossible to go through uploaded videos looking for actors faces.

      • it can be automated. looking for particular actors faces should be possible. in the uk we have face recognition systems for cctv. it would not be impossible to go through uploaded videos looking for actors faces.

        but could changing the aspect ratio not fool that system? for face recognition in the streets, ok... noone changes his face to 16:9 for a change ;)
        and even if that would work - not every clip of, say, george clooney is copyrighted, filmed public appearences for example. either this video is "censored" by fault, or you still need a lot of manual work...

        • it can be automated. looking for particular actors faces should be possible. in the uk we have face recognition systems for cctv. it would not be impossible to go through uploaded videos looking for actors faces.

          but could changing the aspect ratio not fool that system? for face recognition in the streets, ok... noone changes his face to 16:9 for a change ;)
          and even if that would work - not every clip of, say, george clooney is copyrighted, filmed public appearences for example. either this video is "censored" by fault, or you still need a lot of manual work...

          yes it will need work, but it also cuts out a lot of work that has to be done browsing all the uploads. id rather look at a short list of suspected copyrights

      • it can be automated. looking for particular actors faces should be possible. in the uk we have face recognition systems for cctv. it would not be impossible to go through uploaded videos looking for actors faces.

        But using small sections of TV shows, movies, etc. in original works is allowed as long as you properly credit the sources. Just because a certain person appears in a video doesn't mean it constitutes copyright violation.

        At best the face recognition system could only flag videos that it recogni

        • it can be automated. looking for particular actors faces should be possible. in the uk we have face recognition systems for cctv. it would not be impossible to go through uploaded videos looking for actors faces.

          But using small sections of TV shows, movies, etc. in original works is allowed as long as you properly credit the sources. Just because a certain person appears in a video doesn't mean it constitutes copyright violation.

          At best the face recognition system could only flag videos that it recognized faces in, to allow someone to review them later. Otherwise they'd be taking down many legitimate videos along with the illegitimate ones.

          ok but one can at least get a short list of potential violations.

  • "But YouTube has also said that the process of identifying copyrighted material is not automated and will require the cooperation of media company partners."

    I agree, give the media companies a real stake in the game by enlisting them to do what they want YOUTUBE to do.

    The only downside is that the media companies will have to hire personnel and train them, leading to higher
    'fees' from litigation... Grrrrrr
  • Really? Like when Napster was going down in flames, yet you could still find the latest tunes by Spitney Bears and 2U?

  • YouTube, not TheirTube (Score:5, Insightful)

    by LoudMusic ( 199347 ) on Sunday February 25, 2007 @09:13AM (#18142740)
    I'm ok with this. After all it's called "YouTube", not "TheirTube". People should be posting original works only. That was the point of YouTube in the first place.
    • And it becomes NO TUBE for me.When the large criminal media companies get their hooks into You Tube,I'll drop it like a radioactive hot potato.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by cliffski ( 65094 )
        So there's no possibility that anyone who makes TV shows or movies that get uploaded to YouTube against their copyright could possibly not be as EVIL as the mafia and/or hitler / satan?

        I don't understand this slashdot obsession that anyone who makes original content and wants to enforce copyright is somehow worse than osama bin laden? Nobody cared about people enforcing copyright 20 years ago. Just suddenly when everyone finds it easy to break the law, everyone gets upset about it being enforced.
        weird.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by 0123456 ( 636235 )
          "Nobody cared about people enforcing copyright 20 years ago."

          20 years ago we had dual-deck cassette recorders, recorded movies off the TV with our VCRs and then gave them to our friends, and few games had 'copy protection'. It's only recently that companies have started trying to 'enforce copyright' when technology makes copying trivial.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dj245 ( 732906 )
      Lately instead of reading video game reviews on ad-laden websites, I've just gone to youtube and watched a video to see exactly what the gameplay is like. This is incredibly helpful for wii games. Is the motion feedback really buggy? Is it a good workout? Nevertheless, this is a gray area, while the content is user-created, its a public presentation of some copyrighted content. I'm sure most video game companies would have no problem with this, but theres the possibility of a lawsuit, so better take it
    • If you take out all of the copyrighted clips, and then take out all of the original clips that lifted their music from copyrighted sources, you are left with nothing but America's Funniest Home Videos and 911 Conspiracy Theory. My guess is this system won't go after clips with lifted music.
  • So, if I wanted to do my own Creative Commons-licensed video series (or whatever I could post to Youtube), I would face a lot less competition.

    I say, go ahead.
  • with all due respect to YOUtube - aside watching silly experiments with diet coke and mentos and videos of talking cats (highly recommended..) what is it good for?
    I agree it should be monitored so nothing besides personal home-made videos are featured there. I do believe YOUtube will eventually turn out into a bubble - once all the people are done watching that unfunny dude dancing that evolution-of-dance thing, that bubble will explode.

    • agree it should be monitored so nothing besides personal home-made videos are featured there.

      So if a company wants its content on Youtube, it shouldn't be allowed to? Isn't this a double standard/contradiction of some kind?

  • Having recently discovered youtube... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by 3seas ( 184403 ) on Sunday February 25, 2007 @09:56AM (#18142946) Homepage Journal
    I have to agree that copyright holders need to have the rights over their content, whether or not it is on youtube.

    Copyright holders can certainly help find content that should not be on youtube. But finding piracy of their works should not be a burden on them.

    The responsibility really lies with the uploaders to obtain proper releases for works they are not fully in charge of.

    On the flip side, copyright holders have to realize the marketing potential of such media as youtube. From what I have seen, the video is either downgraded in its capture and/or the connection speed, so its not like you are getting purchase quality, though audio is not so bad.

    I've seen numerious videos where credit is given and even where to get purchase quality.
    But as a marketing tool, the work is findable in the search engine with taging.

    I'd hate to see alot of the content vanish. but there is alot of duplication too.
    Perhaps what is needed is some assurance from youtube that the quality will always be under what you can purchase, unless there is some formal release is on hand.

    in the mean time, and I probably shouldn't do this as slashdotting a resource won't help me use it, but there is a firefox plugin for capturing such video to your local hard drive, but it goes thru another url to do so and sometimes its overloaded. Get your favorite videos that may vanish, while you can.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Phil246 ( 803464 )
      finding it with tagging only works so long as users accurately tag the content.
      The moment they stop doing that, it becomes a whoooole lot harder to find things.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by 3seas ( 184403 )
        well of course.

        And if there is anything to be said about users of the internet, it's that if you give them a way to organize and share it with others, allowing others to contribute, there will be those who disrupt the organization if they can.... rationalizing it because they can and for no other reason then to prove to themselves they can. A feeling of power, perhaps...

        The same reasons there are those who create viruses, worms, malware, spam, libel, etc...

        But provide goals and moderation to help stay on th
    • Failing to assert your rights lessens the copyright holder's position.

      It is up to the copyright holder to assert his/her rights. That is exactly
      what BMI, RIAA, and all those other assignees should be doing. Not YouTube.

  • This would be pretty easy to do. Just watch sites like alluc and peekvid for new content, then go to the relevant provider and take it down. In fact I don't know why they don't already do this...
    • Exactly. If masses of users can find it, then Google can find it too. I mean, isn't that supposed to be the core mission of Google, to let people find what they are looking for? If Google can't find the Jon Stewart clips on the net, why would I use them as a search engine? And if the copyrighted content is stashed away in secret places that only those "in the know" can find, then it's really not much of a threat to the media companies.
  • It will be easier to find non-commercial content, but on the other hand its the copyrighted stuff that most people are there for anyway so who is going to see the other crap? So how long till youtube dissappears into relative obscurity? Mark Cuban was right.

  • This isn't about copyright rights... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by johnlcallaway ( 165670 ) on Sunday February 25, 2007 @11:32AM (#18143606)
    It's free for me to watch it over the public airwaves, and copy it with my VCR, DVD, or on my computer. So maybe this isn't really about copyright. Maybe it's about ad revenue. Something the media companies don't get when it's shown on YouTube, or shared no matter what the medium or source.

    Yet YouTube gets ad revenue whenever a page is shown....hmmmm...me thinks a smart media company would have a solution here. Create your own page for your own show, and upload the videos in slightly better format than the crappy YouTube format, but still not as good as a direct copy. Work out a deal with YouTube for a percentage of the ad revenue, or put a 10 sec. ad in front of it like NBC does for the shows you can watch on their site and get revenue from that advertiser.

    It's like getting caught in a rip tide. You can fight it, but the rip tide won't go away. Or, you can learn to work with it a little bit, ease the fight, and eventually get out of it.

    • Re:This isn't about copyright rights... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by multisync ( 218450 ) on Sunday February 25, 2007 @12:32PM (#18144070) Journal

      It's free for me to watch it over the public airwaves


      Not sure which definition of "free" you're working off this morning, but you are expected to watch the advertisements of the sponsors who paid for those "free" programmes in exchange for watching them. The industry has been very clear on this point: if you don't watch the ads, you are stealing. [google.com]

      If you are required to do anything in exchange for watching the programme, it isn't "free."

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by LGagnon ( 762015 )
        Actually, you are expected to watch ads; you are not required to do so. Nobody can stop you from changing the channel or taking a bathroom break (at least not yet).

        • Actually, you are expected to watch ads; you are not required to do so


          Isn't that what I said:

          you are expected to watch the advertisements of the sponsors who paid for those "free" programmes in exchange for watching them.


          You are also expected to pay for the items you take from the store. That doesn't mean it is not possible to walk out the door with them without paying.

      • Mr. Kellner is free to state his opinion and I am free to ignore it. (Sorry .. couldn't resist)

        I seem to recall the NFL trying to stop a church this year from showing the super bowl because they were 1) charging admission (reasonable in my mind) and 2) (this is the important part) using a TV larger than 55 inches. (As I recall, the church was trying to provide a family friendly, non-alcoholic way to watch Budweiser commercials.) Supposedly, if you read the fine print, this is against the license you are
  • "hxnwix reports that slashdot is not racing to head off a reader backlash over its news Web site slashdot and will soon not offer antidupe technologies to help all editors thwart egregious article duping. But slashdot has also said that the process of identifying duped material is not cheap and will require the donations of ONE MILLION DOLLARS to implement."
  • Must be running already, but only in English. Now all I see on the top-X lists on YouTube are clips from non-English shows.

    Still not much non-copyrighted content, it's just from other countries now.

    No more reason to care about YouTube, hahahahahahahhahahaha.

  • They *can*automate the identifcation of copyright (Score:3, Interesting)

    by edunbar93 ( 141167 ) on Sunday February 25, 2007 @01:30PM (#18144446)
    the process of identifying copyrighted material is not automated

    Well, it *could* be, if they implemented RFC 3514 [faqs.org].

  • WTF (Score:2)

    by Duncan3 ( 10537 )
    For 1.6 Billion you can't just hire someone in India/China for 25cents/hour to screen the massive ~5 videos a minute that get posted at 99.99% accuracy instead of a buggy program?

    They would save a fortune only having to host a couple dozen videos a day that only get a few hits rather then the popular stuff.

  • Does youtube have any type of video upload approval process, or are videos just uploaded and noone looks at them to see if the content is acceptable? I've gone ot other sites that do that. They have people that look at all pictures that are uploaded to see if the content is ok to upload. I think that is really the only way to stop people from uploading things that they are not supposed to or that you don't want them to post.

  • "We are definitely committed to [offering copyright protection technologies]. It is one of the company's highest priorities," said Google CEO Eric Schmidt in an interview.

    Note how the author calls this technology by the emotive term copyright protection throughout the whole article (because protection is good, right?), instead of the neutral term copyright restriction, even distorting quotes such as this one from Google's CEO. Also there's nothing wrong with including snippets of content from another sour

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