So, just so I get this right:

(a) Google is faced with a rather expensive copyright lawsuit from three rather large companies and it announces that it is going to spend rather a large amount of money to try and appease them by developing special visual recognition software in order to reduce piracy on YouTube by removing images that break copyright laws.

(b) Google refuses in any way to remove violent images and recordings of children being bullied that are being posted on YouTube, even to the point of unconsciousness, because it claims that it is not up to them to be a moral censor and, besides, it would prove almost impossible to detect and remove these images.

Is this the same company?

If so - I have a solution to this that might solve everybody's problems. How about if all beatings up are actually promoted by an agent of some sort so that they can then become copyrighted material. Obviously the victim too would be party to the copyright agreement and all would be entitled to payment for every time the image or recordings were screened. And because they were copyrighted, Google would then use its new software to protect the rights of those people too.

See? There's always a positive solution when you look hard enough...

I bet small visual changes in videos, e.g. a small watermark, or a change in the brightness/contrast/tint could fool a system like this...

Alan, the problem with your idea would presumably be that the system will need a "fingerprint" to start off with.

No matter what clever, fuzzy algorithms are used to compare uploaded videos against the copyrighted materials: the source material must presumably be available for fingerprinting in the first place.

Even Google won't come up with a way of somehow detecting footage that shows "kids being beaten up". It's an extremely difficult problem for a computer...

Google's so cash-rich with "investors" desperate to give them more that this is surely the easiest option. The English premier league is not a US company (yet) so it has little chance of making itself heard.

As for the long term solution: obviously make the uploaders legally responsible by a change in the T&C. The FBI will only be too wiling to help with the fingerprinting!

I cant see this working unless google has every film on its data base ever made and even some not yet released dont think the film comps would agree to that.

As too the league I still say if the film was taken from the stands then it is not INFRINGEMENT OF COPYRIGHT, Only if it is taken of the TV .The person who takes the film owns the copyright and the football league can stick it.

Hi Mike,

I can't either, but to your point about camcorder video vs "professional" video. Anyone out there who goes to footie matches (I don't personally) might want to read the terms and conditions on the ticket. It's quite possible they've thought of this one and have included some kind of limitation on the use of home video.

Cheers,

Kev

I can only guess that the people that sold YouTube to the mu.....I mean buyer,Google, are smiling to themselves and thinking "thank god we got rid of it when we did" . As they say "there is money in muck" but I dont think that there is $1.6 Billion worth of muck on the YouTube website. Yes siree I would not want to be a buyer of youtube.

Colours of napsters slow laughable demise here.

Bets on if this goes through a few months to a year of tit for tatt battles between folks wanting to get past the security and those updating the security, followed by Youtube dying a death and everyone moving onto new services?

Just like none of us were loyal to Napster, nobodies gonna be loyal to youtube.

@Max - I think fingerprints are the problem for our boys in blue in these cases.

> Colours of napsters slow laughable demise here.

I doubt it. Napster offered a quality product - more or less the same quality as that offered by the people who killed napster [in fact napster's product was arguably better given the distribution method] and they didn't offer any (c) free content that people wanted.

But, in the age when world+brother is buying a bigger house just to fit his shiny 50"+ HD ready, front room filling LCD and Plasma display in, to watch blue ray and HD DVD gb sized discs on, youtube simply can't compete.

In that world Youtube's product is pants. It's complete rubbish. sub 10 minute long 320x240 badly compressed junk. It looks crap whatever you view it on, even the PSP's tiny screen can display better quality video than youtube currently provides.

Bottom line : Any (c) material on youtube is going to look extremely poor, compared both with alternative "free" sources like p2p or from the (c) holder themselves.

The people suing for money are either completely stupid, have a product that is completely pants [and thus not degraded by the youtube filter] or have a product that has very little financial worth except via an action against a google-sized company and thus the advertising share isn't an option.

But youtube will outlive those people, quite easily. Far more will see that crap video == more sales of stuff that's worth putting on a 50" display and a share of the advertising revenue and do a license deal instead.

Youtube also has their own content. That user-created stuff.