Source for article 1

Juan Carlos Perez
Fri Jul 27, 6:55 PM ET



San Francisco (IDGNS) - Google aims to deliver in September a long-awaited and much-promised technology to combat piracy in its YouTube video sharing site.

During a hearing Friday in the copyright-infringement lawsuit that Viacom filed against Google, a Google attorney told the judge Google was working "very intensely" on a video recognition technology, the AP reported.

The technology will be as sophisticated as fingerprint technology used by the FBI, and Google plans to roll it out in the fall, "hopefully in September," attorney Philip S. Beck of Barlit Beck Herman Palenchar & Scott told U.S. District Judge Louis L. Stanton, according to the AP. Fall runs from late September to late December.

Viacom sued Google in March in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleging copyright infringement from YouTube and seeking $1 billion in damages.

The video recognition technology will allow copyright owners to provide a digital fingerprint that within a minute or two will trigger a block from YouTube whenever someone tries to upload a copyright video without permission, the AP reported.

However, contacted by IDG News Service, a YouTube spokesman put some caveats around the attorney's stated timeline for implementing the technology.

"We hope to have the testing completed and technology available by some time in the fall, but this is one of the most technologically complicated tasks that we have ever undertaken, and as always with cutting-edge technologies, it's difficult to forecast specific launch dates," he said.

Google is collaborating with "some of the major media companies" in experiments with video-identification tools and is "excited" about the progress so far, the YouTube spokesman said.

Google officials have acknowledged that the company is working on a system to deal with copyright videos uploaded to YouTube without permission, a nagging problem that has earned Google many enemies among TV and movie companies.

In April of this year, during Google's first-quarter earnings conference call, CEO Eric Schmidt said the system in development wasn't being designed to filter out and block pirated videos.

Instead, he said Google's upcoming "Claim your Content" tool would help to "somewhat automate" the process through which content owners flag illegally copied videos so Google can take them down from the site, he said.

"It's not a filtering system. The technology doesn't block uploads," Schmidt said in April. "It makes it much more effective and quicker to get us to remove inappropriately uploaded content. It's very much compliant with the DMCA."

It's not clear whether Google changed the design of the tool at some point after Schmidt made those comments as the attorney's description on Friday seems to indicate that the system would indeed block offending videos automatically without content owners notifying Google. The YouTube spokesman didn't immediately respond to a request for clarification of this point.

Friday's hearing was a procedural one intended to set the schedule for the case, such as when the discovery period will begin and end and when the actual trial will begin, Viacom spokesman Jeremy Zweig told IDG News Service.

The comment from Google's attorney came at the start of the hearing, when the judge gave attorneys on both sides a few minutes to present a short outline of what the case is about, to set the stage and put things in context, Zweig said.

The scheduling wasn't completed, so another conference was set for Aug. 6, although that hearing could be canceled if the companies resolve the scheduling issues and notify the judge of their agreements, he said.

Google acquired YouTube in November of last year in a $1.65 billion deal.

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Source for article 2

By LARRY NEUMEISTER, Associated Press Writer
Fri Jul 27, 6:52 PM ET



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.

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.

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

Viacom, England's top soccer league — The Football Association Premier League Ltd. — and indie music publisher Bourne Co. have filed suits against YouTube that were combined for trial purposes before Stanton.

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.

Beck said the company was counting on the software to "hopefully eliminate such disputes in the future."

He said the company believes the new technology goes way beyond what the law requires to stop copyright infringement.

He told the judge the company began only two years ago when one of its two California founders sought a way to send videos of his children to relatives on the East Coast. Since 30 videos were exchanged in the first month, more than 10 million videos have been exchanged worldwide, including hundreds of thousands a day, he said.

Lawyers for plaintiffs in the two lawsuits said they welcomed any improvement that would end alleged infringement of their copyrights but believed YouTube should have acted sooner.

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.

YouTube said it cooperates with holders of copyrights and immediately complies with requests to have unauthorized material removed from the site.

Verrilli said the plaintiffs are alleging "plain, old fashioned infringement."

He added: "They acknowledge rampant activity and haven't done anything to stop it."

so what happens to all the perfectly leagal downloads that are not copyrighted or the creater actualy wants as many people sharing it as possible.

It doesn't matter. They can't accurately filter audio files. Promising to be able to do it with video goes under "I'll believe it when I see it."

Oh well, Viacock are going to be disappointed when the filter fails to live up to expectations. Normal users will leave in their thousands when people abuse the filter system to get non-copyrighted videos removed just because they want to or don't like the content. Making it easier for those with power to dictate to everyone what is and what isn't acceptable. Another win for the big guns!

Are there any good alternatives to You Tube? It seems it's almost about time to switch.