Google sees video antipiracy tools as priority

Google, racing to head off a media industry backlash over its video Web site YouTube, will soon offer antipiracy technologies to help all copyright holders thwart unauthorized video sharing, its chief executive said Wednesday.

"We are definitely committed to (offering copyright protection technologies)," Google Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt said in an interview. "It is one of the company's highest priorities."

"We just reviewed that (issue) about an hour ago," Schmidt said when asked what Google was doing to make antipiracy technologies widely available to video owners. "It is going to roll out very soon...It is not far away."

YouTube, which Google acquired late last year, plans to introduce technology to help media companies identify pirated videos uploaded by users. But, to date, the tools are only being offered as part of broader licensing talks, media industry insiders complain.

Schmidt declined to give a specific timeframe of weeks or months to cover all potential users, saying that any move would take time to cover all Google's services, including YouTube, and to be made available to all copyright holders wishing to use the antipiracy technology.

"It is not some product you can just build and leave alone," Schmidt said. Protecting copyrighted material is likely to involve an endless cat-and-mouse game to keep pace with hackers bent on breaking such security tools.

MySpace, the popular Internet social-network owned by News Corp., said last week it would offer its own version of copyright-protection services for free. MySpace is YouTube's biggest rival.

YouTube's "proposition that they will only protect copyrighted content if there's a business deal in place is unacceptable," a spokesman for Viacom, owner of MTV Networks and Comedy Central, complained recently.

Schmidt said Google plans to make video anti-piracy tools generally available to copyright owners. "We have to do that," he said, but cautioned that, "It takes a while to roll this stuff out" on a wide basis.

Earlier this month, Viacom demanded YouTube remove more than 100,000 Viacom video clips from the site after the two sides failed to reach a distribution agreement.

In a statement last week, YouTube said the process of identifying copyrighted material is not an automated process and required the cooperation of media company partners. For instance, a clip of a TV show owned by one company might contain music produced by another, making the process of identifying ownership difficult.

"These matters are very complicated and we are working with our partners to identify and solve these problems," YouTube said in an e-mailed statement issued last week.

Story Copyright © 2008 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.

[samdolen]

Already Being Tracked

I am not sure about YouTube but Hollywood is already embracing piracy as a goldmine to drive conversion. I know Divinity Assets's Scope tool is being used in Studios to find out where files are being consumed so they can drive marketing campaigns, events, discovering new markets, etc. But when it comes to YouTube, I guess I agree, there is no real value there. Last time I checked, YouTube consumption stats are not equated into Scope numbers.

[Thomas_74]

youtube does not help media managers....

I am agree with Sam, Youtube is good for normal users, but does not really help the media companies, also the largest media trade bazaar is not youtube but peer2peer networks. Scope looks awesome, surely a must have tool in the arsenal of media managers...

[FellowConspirator]

Good Luck

The problem is that *ALL* of the video content
is copyrighted -- whether it came from Hollywood
or not. So the issue isn't about detecting
copyrighted works, but rather identifying a work
whose distribution is not authorized by the
copyright holder OR a fair-use of the work
(which need not be authorized).

Based only on the video content itself, how is a
machine to evaluate the license terms connected
to that work, how they related to parties
providing and requesting copies, and whether
they content, as presented, under the
circumstances in which it was copied or
requested, constitutes a fair-use? It can't,
particularly with regard to fair use since any
use is fair-use until adjudicated otherwise.

The problem is simply that the state of the work
and the rights of individuals with regard to it
are not a function of the work itself. Worse
still, some of those rights are only
determinable a posteriori of the use of the
work.

Google ought not waste its time, no matter how
much Hollywood whines. If a copyright holder
find something unauthorized, Google ought to put
the rights holder and content provider in
contact, and maybe pull the content while in
dispute...

[thedreaming]

an ebay way?

eBay has content partners that have the ability to pull auctions that violate copyright. Microsoft does it all the time. They pull auctions left and right on ebay. I'm sure google will impliment something similar for youtube so a company like viacom can just go up to a clip they know violates their copyright and remove it themselves.