YouTube's filters help copyright owners profit from pirated videos

(Credit: YouTube)

Instead of just pulling down pirated clips, copyright owners are choosing to use YouTube's copyright filters to generate advertising revenue, Google said Wednesday.

Late last year, Google introduced a copyright identification system called Video ID, which tracks unauthorized videos. It enables a copyright owner to either block the clip, leave it up, or enable YouTube to sell ads against the material.

Google said on its blog Wednesday that copyright owners were choosing to turn a buck from unauthorized clips 90 percent of the time.

"It's clear to our (more than 300) Video ID partners that our technology has created a framework that allows copyright holders to sanction the creativity of their biggest fans," Google said. "These partners now have a new way to successfully distribute and market their content online."

These statistics can obviously be used to counter arguments that YouTube costs copyright owners money. Viacom filed a $1 billion lawsuit against Google and YouTube for allegedly encouraging users to commit copyright infringement.

Google has always said that most of the smart media companies choose not to war with YouTube. They are clasping hands with the Web's No.1 video-sharing site and using it to promote shows and generate ad revenue.

But here's the juiciest part of this story. Profiting from pirated videos can shove copyright owners smack into a moral dilemma. A source at a large media company told me recently that executives there were debating that exact question. Several start-ups are working on technology that will track unauthorized videos wherever they exist on the Web and then insert an advertisement into the clips.

I just got off the phone with Fred von Lohmann at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who chuckled when he heard about the debate.

"The second (big media companies) say yes to profiting from those clips this way, it will make it hard for them to argue that ISPs should be forced to screen for unauthorized material. It's hard to make that argument when you're re being compensated."

The EFF's von Lohman also brought up another interesting scenario. If someone uses, say for example, a piece of Prince's music to criticize the musician--which would fall under fair use--von Lohmann wonders whether Prince would be paid for such a use?

"There would be a question about whether that would be appropriate," von Lohmann said.

[Pete Bardo]

If copyright owners agree to share in the ad revenue from a pirated video, is it still pirated? Haven't they then approved the sharing of the video at that point?

[Renegade Knight]

Yes, but they have also asserted control.

[Renegade Knight]

So I post a music video where I do a voice over and parody the original. It's a hit, the original copyright holder of the original material uses the filter to steal my hard work in making the parody which as it happens is copyrighted by me. Sounds like a lot of potential for abuse.

[Renegade Knight]

"Several start-ups are working on technology that will track unauthorized videos wherever they exist on the Web and then insert an advertisement into the clips. "

This would violate the copyright of every website that has made legitimate fair use of materials. Much of fair use is with "unauthorized" materials. The point being that with fair use some things you just don't have to ask permission to do.

[OokiiMamoru]

As long as the ad is not intrusive on the folk art, and lets face it, taking someone else's work, changing it, is a form of folk art, then I say go for. The original intent of the copyright holder was to make money.

[badasscat]

The problem is now you are making money from somebody *else's* copyrighted work (even if a piece of art uses copyrighted work under fair use terms, it is still copyrighted itself by the new creator). And that would *not* be considered fair use by any court.

The record labels have to be really careful here. This could backfire in a pretty serious way unless they're very, very narrow in their usage of the clips the "claim".

One bit of stupidity that they're already doing is disabling embedding on most of these clips. Apparently they don't see a need to actually promote any of their artists.

[skeptic47]

I believe both Google and this article overstate the enthusiasm of copyright owners to use this revenue-sharing model. The NYT wrote about this some time ago, and a blogger documented that the claims were overstated -- http://nancyprager.wordpress.com/2008/08/17/a-supplement-to-the-new-york-times-article-on-youtube-and-its-videoid-initiative/ . Also, if we're going to see reports like this, how can we not be told what the financial terms are so we can see whether it would be in the best interest of copyright owners to participate. It's pretty out there to say this undermines Viacom's case if we're talking pennies.