Lawsuits from several organizations about copyright infringing videos appearing on YouTube has Google's video service readying a screening solution to stop them from being uploaded.
YouTube Plans Video Fingerprinting
Viacom and the English Premiership have been among the most vocal critics of YouTube. Users who capture video from their programming post it to YouTube to share it with other fans.
Lawsuits from both of those companies have vexed YouTube and Google. They comply with takedown requests and feel the law in this regard supports their reactive approach to the problem.
Copyright holders don't want the material to be uploaded in the first place. A Fox News story said a step toward appeasing Viacom and others is in the works:
YouTube...is working "very intensely" on the technology and hopes to have it in place in September, lawyer Philip S. Beck told a federal judge in Manhattan who is presiding over copyright lawsuits.
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 in court Friday.
The unsolved issue, one that the US Supreme Court dodged in its MGM v Grokster decision, centers on fair use. There's no real hard rule on what small amounts of content can be shared, especially video.
Content creators tend to consider any copyrighted video theirs alone to use. That's a far cry from a lengthy tradition of fair use in print media.
About the Author:
David Utter is a business and technology writer for SecurityProNews and WebProNews.
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