Copyrighted Content Gone From YouTube By Year-End
Sarah Perez on October 14th, 2006
A Yahoo News article reports that YouTube, now owned by Google, has anti-piracy technology under development that will allow copyright owners "to identify their content, locate it and then make a decision based on whether they want to remove it," according to YouTube spokeswoman Julie Supan.
The technology scans a digital file, either as an MP3 or a video, and compares the electronic "fingerprints" of the file to databases of copyright material. Beyond that, neither YouTube nor Google will say anything more about the technology except to say that it should start to rollout by year-end. No more copyrighted content on YouTube? Then what will be the point of visiting the site? I can only watch so much user-gen, you know.
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You wrote — “No more copyrighted content on YouTube? Then what will be the point of visiting the site? I can only watch so much user-gen, you know.”
If that was the case, there would be NOTHING on YouTube. No, that’s not a facetious statement. It is a statement of fact.
It’s all copyrighted automatically under US Copyright Law, which changed to do that in about 1986.
Whether it is commercial video or the poorest amateur video, it is copyrighted.
So, no, copyrighted video won’t be gone by year end. Copyrighted video will be there. By year-end, YouTube will be rolling out some technology to help them spot and remove commercial (a.k.a. “watermarked”) videos.
We knew it was only a matter of time, but it’s still too bad. I wonder if people will try to defeat the scanning software by converting their video files somehow. (What I know about this I could stick in my navel; just speculating.)
Anyway, be sure to check out the hilarious video I took of my cat flushing the toilet!