YouTube Video-Fingerprinting Due in September

Tech.Luver writes "The Register is reporting on Google's statement to a presiding judge that video-fingerprinting of YouTube material will be ready in September. The development is required to head off a three-headed suit against the company, currently being debated in a New York City courthouse. The system will, according to Google, 'be as sophisticated as fingerprinting technology used by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.' From the article: 'As Google told El Reg in an earlier conversation, the company already has two systems in place for policing infringing content - but neither are ideal. One system allows copyright holders to notify Google when they spot their videos on the company's sites. When notified, the company removes the offending videos, in compliance with the American Digital Millennium Copyright Act. A second system uses "hash" technology to automatically block repeated uploads of infringing material.'"

separation of the web

[4solarisinfo]

As soon as Google stops indexing/posting material people want (legal or not) people will stop using Google. I believe they know what a fine line they're walking between 'do no evil' and survival here, I wonder which will pervail?

Re:Hard AI ftw

[MyLongNickName]

I think you miss the point.
1) Is there a way around the system? Yes.
2) Does that matter? No.
3) Why is that? This solution shows that Google is making reasonable efforts to comply with the legal issues.

The majority of folks aren't going to take the effort to circumvent these controls. Rates will drop significantly. Google can honestly say they are making every effort to comply with copyright protection. Lawsuits will go away.

Re:Hard AI ftw

[Nasarius]

There are already several decent systems [wikipedia.org] for fingerprinting audio; it's not particularly surprising that Google researchers would be able to do something similar for video.

As "sophisticated" as FBI fingerprinting?

[dpbsmith]

We don't want "sophistication," we want reliability.

And since they are making the comparison... just how reliable [truthinjustice.org] are fingerprints, really?

True, a character in Mark Twain's 1893 novel Pudd'n'head Wilson tells a court

"Every human being carries with him from his cradle to his grave certain physical marks which do not change their character, and by which he can always be identified -- and that without shade of doubt or question. These marks are his signature, his physiological autograph, so to speak, and this autograph canImage available not be counterfeited, nor can he disguise it or hide it away, nor can it become illegible by the wear and mutations of time. This signature is not his face -- age can change that beyond recognition; it is not his hair, for that can fall out; it is not his height, for duplicates of that exist; it is not his form, for duplicates of that exist also, whereas this signature is each man's very own -- there is no duplicate of it among the swarming populations of the globe! This autograph consists of the delicate lines or corrugations with which Nature marks the insides of the hands and the soles of the feet."

and ever since Mark Twain said so everyone has believed it, but that doesn't necessarily make it true.

Dumb. Really dumb.

[Anonymous Coward]

The supposedly clever media moguls are missing a wealth-building opportunity. Lots of these "infringing videos" are short clips from longer presentations. If they had any smarts at all, they'd ask Google to set up a link on those pages where people could buy the programs/music on disk, or direct download them for a fee. Instead, the moguls want to get rid of what amounts to "free advertising" because they fear the new paradigm.

Re:separation of the web

[4solarisinfo]

For the unoffocial record - are you the copyright holder of these clips, or could they legitimate requests?

Re:Hard AI ftw

[Hatta]

Mostly it's an assumption. Since only humans so far have been able to recognize video, then it must take something like a human to do it. Viewing clip A and clip B and abstracting the parts that make them the same is not the kind of problem computers are good at, and if you've done it you've probably solved the really hard problem in AI, how abstraction works. Of course this rests on the assumption that strong AI is fundamentally different from weak AI, and the difference is not just one of degrees. Personally I think that's a specious distinction much like that between microevolution and macroevolution.

Re:separation of the web

[4solarisinfo]

Soo... the system works, and "do no evil" gets a point.

Re:Why isn't Google fighting this out in court?

[eclectro]

Well, it's the cost of fighting a copyright battle, and also the dark possibility that the judge would side with the copyright holders which they almost invariably always do these days.

Take that and the fact that Google is actually a big fat cash cow with a bulls-eye on the side of it and it becomes obvious that the best strategy is one of accomadation. Rather than a long drown out battle that would also hurt googles stock price because of the uncertainity it creates.

So anyway you cut it, this looks like the best route for them to take. Maybe google could throw some lobbyists on congress to address the copyright abuse that copyright holders are getting away with.

Re:Hard AI ftw

[utopianfiat]

It's not going to get shut down because of copyright infringement. :/ That's like saying we should bomb Hong Kong because they sell copyrighted works there- just because something has an illegitimate use doesn't make it illegitimate on face ffs.
Note, this can also be applied to "kitchen knives can kill so we should ban kitchen knives." and "people can die in cars so we should ban motor vehicles"
and uh... "People who have killed a lot of people have played video games, so we should ban video games." The states needs to get over the damn prohibitionist culture that's removing any sense of personal responsibility from our great nation.

Wide open for abuse

[AmiMoJo]

How is this going to work? Will Google process all copyrighted videos themselves and produce the necessary data to block them? If so, what is the backlog going to be when big media submits 90 years of video?

If Google are not going to check it, what is to stop me downloading a Quicktime trailer of a movie, generating the data and submitting it to Google for blocking? It will quickly become impossible for even sanctioned videos to appear. Cultists/Scientologists will be screwed too.

As usual, media companies are being idiots. They paniced about the VCR, they paniced about P2P, they are panicing about DVRs and YouTube. In the end, new technology tends to do them good in the long run and besides which, you can't fight it.