Video Identification Tools Must Be One of Those ‘20% Time’ Projects, Huh?
by John Paczkowski
Posted on July 18, 2007 at 3:06 PM PT
We do a good job of educating users about copyright law.”
The National Legal and Policy Center has finished up its latest list of potentially copyright infringing movies on YouTube and Google Video, and it’s largely what you’d expect. Not the “New Releases” tab on Netflix, but not exactly the dusty DVD display rack at the local convenience store, either. Among the films on the list: “Sicko,” “The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift” and the Vietnamese dub of “The Wicker Man.”
When was it again that Google was supposed to finish those video identification tools? Ah yes, “the not-too-distant future.”
In a statement, the NLPC tarred and feathered Google for failing to prevent users from uploading pirated material. “For a company that wants to organize the world’s information and boasts about the most sophisticated search technology in the world, we just find it remarkable that they can’t seem to find and remove apparently copyrighted content hosted on their own servers,” said NLPC Chairman Ken Boehm. “… Google’s response that they are ‘taking the lead’ in offering ‘state of the art tools and processes’ to promptly remove infringing content is just plain nonsense. In just the past few days, we’ve found repeated uploads of ‘Sicko,’ ‘Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix’ and ‘Live Free, Die Hard’ on the video site. Google claims to have a sophisticated ‘hash’ system to block repeated uploads of the same infringing material, but if the repeated uploads of the movies we’ve found so far are any indication, video pirates are making a hash of Google’s ‘hash’ technology.”
Comments
Good insight… when is a copyright not an issue to take seriously? When you believe that you can wait under the blanket of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act and act as if you are not a media company.
Gotta believe that until GoogleTube starts proactively hunting down and removing at least the blatantly copyrighted videos, the liability costs are rising in a jury’s eyes.
FYI- There is also good discussion of this topic at The Future of Communities Blog, sponsored by the Community Management and Marketing Council. (Disclosure: We’re biased about this and even we cannot agree…)
http://www.futureofcommunities.....vs-google/ for those of you playing at home.
Posted by Mike Rowland at July 19th, 2007 at 1:56 pm