Why Do You YouTube?

YouTube preps video fingerprinting

NEW YORK - Google Inc.'s YouTube hopes recognition technology will be in place in September to stop the posting of copyrighted videos on the popular Web site, a lawyer Friday told a judge presiding over copyright lawsuits.
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The lawyer, Philip S. Beck, told U.S. District Judge Louis L. Stanton in Manhattan that YouTube was working "very intensely and cooperating" with major content providers on a video recognition technology as sophisticated as fingerprint technology the FBI uses.
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Beck said the video recognition technology will allow those holding copyrights on videos to provide a digital fingerprint so that if anyone tries to share a copyrighted video, the system will shut it down within a minute or so.
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Donald B. Verrilli, Jr., a lawyer for Viacom International Inc., said it will take the next year to identify the extent of infringement that continues to happen on "a very massive scale."

"Perhaps the filtering mechanism will help. If so, we'll be very grateful for that," he said.

Viacom sought $1 billion in damages for what it said was the unauthorized viewing of its programming from MTV, Comedy Central and other networks, such as "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart." In their lawsuit, the soccer league and indie music publisher sought unspecified damages and any profits YouTube made as a result of the sharing of copyrighted videos.

YouTube said in response to the lawsuits that it goes beyond what is required under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which gives Web hosts protection from copyright lawsuits so long as they comply with requests to remove unauthorized material.

Yeah I don't know about you. The reason I go to the YouTubes is to corporate media crap that somebody has posted.


He said the company planned to have the technology in place in the fall, "hopefully in September."