So why did Google go ahead with the deal? What proportion of pirated material do other video sites have - and are we going to see a lot more suites against them soon? Does knowing that a high percentage of material in general is pirated create a liability or do you have to know about particular items, or can you ignore it until you get a take down notice?

This quote still boggles my mind:

"is changing a policy to increase traffic knowing beforehand that we'll profit from illegal downloads how we want to conduct our business? Is this Googley?"

How about is it legal? Is it right? Do we want the possibility of brand our name being associated with this? Is it something we want to be involved with in any way as a company except helping to have the site taken down?

I mean really, why not help work with the people (companies) being infringed on to get the site (YouTube) taken down and develop the video sharing site you already have as a replacement? I'd guess they could have done both for less and not been in this situation at all.

I'm mind-boggled by the decision personally...

[edited by: TheMadScientist at 5:44 am (utc) on Mar 21, 2010]

One thing annoys me about this whole debate is people say things like 80% copyright material, rather than pirated. The two are not synonymous. Almost all video is copyright unless it is, for some reason, public domain (there is very little video on which the copyright has expired!), so Youtube has always carried close to 100% copyright content - but 20% has been placed there with the consent of (usually by) the copyright holder.

I don't buy a car until I've kicked the tires and check the engine fluids... which means I know what's wrong with that jalopy before I buy it. Google knew. Question is why it wasn't cleaned up (money, ads) or that DMCA's seem to take 24 hours or more to process. Just some of the many questions.

What might have been a better route for G was to have investigated each of the vids (they have the world's greatest computing centers on the planet) and then stick a "certified okay" logo next to those that were okay and remove those that didn't pass the smell test.

I hope the billion they paid is covered by the billion asked, and meantime they have some income to cover the lawyer fees.

Mack said "Google's entire argument about not being able to control what users upload is flawed. When was the last time you came across adult content on Youtube?"

Now thats also a good point, also when users upload something on our sites, we check every video, of cause some can slip through that are copyrighted, but if I then get a note about it, we remove it same day, thats also how I think it should be done.

As Brett pointed out, smoking gun. These documents seal Google/Youtubes fate.

The question I have is Google going to shutter Youtube as it probably still isnt a profitable venture on it's own or will they employ the proper screening of material once they loose the case.

This will require a huge amount of manual overhead which given the fact that I no longer have a adsense rep probably due to cost cutting then why would they hire hundreds of content screeners for a program that looses them money?

Do no evil huh? Can you imagine what goes on behind the scenes with adwords,adsense,ga,search...

TheMadScientist hit the nail on the head. I think this opens up a huge trust problem for Google, especially if these document hit the mainstream media. Knowingly engaging in illegal activity?

The solutions are there but it would hit their bottom line and, more importantly, it would have made YT less of a traffic magnet. The reason hundreds of millions use the site is precisely because they can go there and watch episodes of Lost or listen to Lady Gaga.

If it was just thousands of clips of cats falling in bathtubs or skateboard stunts gone wrong, its traffic would be 5% of what it is.

I agree traffic would drop, but why have such huge traffic figures when Google are unable to make a profit from it.

Mack.

why is google fighting to keep a failing business model running?

I'm sure the theory behind disruptive technologies like YouTube, Hulu and all the rest is that they'll eventually start to erode advertising away from television and cannibalize that revenue stream.

When entire episodes of TV shows are being played via broadband instead of TV or OnDemand, the advertising will surely follow.

IMO it's just a waiting game to prove the numbers are shifting away from traditional TV.

Google's new project with Sony putting Android on TV will be part of that strategy.

I'm sure the theory behind disruptive technologies like YouTube, Hulu and all the rest is that they'll eventually start to erode advertising away from television and cannibalize that revenue stream.

Youtube and Hulu exist because the traditional media like TV, music videos and movies exist. Where would they get their content from otherwise?

I have to agree that waiting for DMCA requests before removing content simply isn't good enough,

ViaCom hired people to upload copyrighted materials so that they could claim YouTube is hosting such materials

They where authorized by the copyright holder, so Viacom had technichaly (sic) gave permission for the content to be there.

I hope you see the problem Youtube faces is tougher than most think.

Lets say they take down every Simpsons' episode before DMCA is filed. How do they know it wasn't put up by someone who has permission. The only way they could know is if the copyright holder tells them. There is no master list to check against.

Only Viacom knows what is infringing on it's copyrights and what isn't. Therefor the filing of a DMCA is the only way Youtube has of knowing if something is infringing on Viacom's copyright. Especially if Viacom is uploading videos to Youtube in viral marketing efforts.

Not only is waiting for a DMCA filing good enough, it is prudent.

Point of information: Hulu is completely legal (managed by media companies) and should not be lumped in with YouTube.

yes, hulu is the only company out there doing it legit. It also goes to show that you don't have to be illegal to make it work.

They will also be moving to a subscription model soon.

I'm sure the theory behind disruptive technologies like YouTube

yes, and youtube is disruptive the same as torrent sites. As stated before once all the copywrite videos are removed from youtube, there isn't really anything great left.

once all the copywrite (sic) videos are removed from youtube, there isn't really anything great left

And that is why you see no value in it, and you will never understand the social benefit in something like YouTube for someone like me who watches about 12 original videos a day minimum. I find the suggestion that the only "great" content on Youtube violates someone's copyright to be an insanely ignorant statement.

From how to cook tie a turkey for cooking, to how to do a fire effect on text in photoshop there is a lot of useful stuff on there. Then you have great news programs like The Young Turks and tons of other great regular programs. Standup comedians are really starting to find followings as well.

I have seen some really amazing student project videos that film students put up. They spend a year making them and the only people who used to see them were school officials, now they are there for us all. Some are seriously amazing.

Following on from what Demaestro said, there is a lot of good original stuff on Youtube. I spend a lot of time on Youtube and almost all of the content I view is original.

There are a lot of examples where a search on Youtube will provide better results that a conventional search engine. Lets say you are thinking on buying a car. Do you want to read what someone thinks about it, or do you want to see it being driven?

Mack.

Question is why it wasn't cleaned up (money, ads) or that DMCA's seem to take 24 hours or more to process. Just some of the many questions.

Cleaning it up would destroy YouTube. They had a clean video site before YouTube and it didn't come close to the same traffic. Google just assumed their business plan of removing videos only when people complained would hold up forever.

And that is why you see no value in it, and you will never understand the social benefit in something like YouTube for someone like me who watches about 12 original videos a day minimum. I find the suggestion that the only "great" content on Youtube violates someone's copyright to be an insanely ignorant statement.

If you look for original content you'll find it. If you look for copyrighted content you'll find that as well. What are the majority of YouTube users looking for?

Google just assumed their business plan of removing videos only when people complained would hold up forever.

How else are they, or anyone else to know when a video is an offending video?

Stout, you keep repeating this over and over, and yet you offer no alternative ever.

What is the alternative? Honestly, I really want to know what they are supposed to do? How is any site to know if a video is offending unless the copyright holder tells them?

The fact that they knew their service was full of copyrighted material and they allowed it to stay there until a DMCA notice came means they were accomplices aiding and abetting in the act of the infringement.

It's no different than harboring a known criminal in your home where you have specific knowledge that person did the crime, you're still aiding and abetting the criminal.

This is a fallacy, until a copyright holder tells Youtube that the video is breaking their copyright how else are they to know?

What you want them to do is assume that a video is offending without confirmation of such.

It is like driving by your neighbors property and seeing some teenagers inside a fenced area and asssuming they have no permission to be there and you go and chase them out... but how do you know they aren't supposed to be there? How do you know they didn't get permission from the property owner?

Viacom uploaded video to Youtube, they were well within the TOS to do so, if Youtube took it down then they would have done so for no reason. It is just another user uploading videos that they have a right to upload.

How exactly is Youtube to know which videos Viacom allowed to be posted unless Viacom themselves identifies them?

[edited by: Demaestro at 10:00 pm (utc) on Mar 21, 2010]

I think for a start they should review every upload before it gets published. If they can't do it then they don't deserve to be running the site.

This should have been happening from the start, then scale the operation as it grew. The volume we see now would not be reached because people who have content uploads rejected would get the message.

I know this couldn't remove all infringing material, but it would get the obvious examples. Being seen to do something pro-active is better than waiting on a DMCA.

Mack.

I think for a start they should review every upload before it gets published

And compare it against what? A library of every known piece of copyrighted video out there?

I do understand where you are going but what happens when Viacom uploads which they have done?

That is a big onus to put on a content host.

All videos with ads are reviewed before published with ads. Even that is a huge volume of videos, to continue that on with every video wouldn't be possible and people posting news would be 1 week behind because it would take at least that long for the approval process, maybe longer.

One of the great things about Youtube is when something goes wrong in Haiti or Iran then the world can see it within minutes, with a week + long approval process that would be gone.

Its a suggestion not a solution. Its for youtube to find a solution. I also said..

I know this couldn't remove all infringing material, but it would get the obvious examples.

By refusing to publish content that is obviously copyright infringing material they are taking a step in the right direction.

Mack.

And compare it against what?

Let me see if I can think of something...
(From the first linked article in this thread)

For a while, the two companies were in negotiations over a content licensing deal that would also have covered all past infringement. Google offered a $590 million deal to Viacom that included an offer to use fingerprinting technology to block unauthorized uploads of Viacom material. When the deal fell apart, Google refused to use the fingerprinting technology for Viacom "in the absence of a license agreement."

Copyright holder files infringement complaint.
Infringing video is taken down.
New videos are compared to 'fingerprint' prior to publishing.
Infringing video 'fingerprint' is added to current video review que which is cycled through.
Other infringing videos are removed.

They have the means and methods to do it but choose not to...

Thieves, thieves, and more thieves. They're disgusting. The judge ought to hand it over to the DOJ and ask them to prosecute as a willful criminal conspiracy to violate US copyright law. There’s definitely enough evidence to convene a grand jury. These two companies are counting on settling out of court at the total expense of the little man. They're airing their dirty laundry as if criminal law is non-existent and "we the people" are dopes they are not responsible to. I’m sick and tired of these cowboys with their flowery talk of freedom of speech when they have absolutely no respect for the law whatsoever or anybody for that matter. Quite a few are hiding behind the law and need to be introduced to the prison system. They are nothing to be admired as I have been saying for years.

Now my gut feeling is telling me Google already has the technology to do much more than they show they can do (like image/video/voice/handwriting/behavioral recognition) so that they have enough time to take advantage of their dominant position.

If the public knew it was possible for them to check something to comply with the law they would have no excuse but to do it.

Copyright holder files infringement complaint.
Infringing video is taken down.
New videos are compared to 'fingerprint' prior to publishing.
Infringing video 'fingerprint' is added to current video review que which is cycled through.
Other infringing videos are removed.


They have the means and methods to do it but choose not to...

Actually they do this, but as always there are circumvention methods that aren't that hard if one knows what they are doing. How long until video editors have a "Save and obscure fingerprint" option?

How long

It does not realy matter. If you know that there is something not legal and you pay for it to profit. And please, the Public perception that they did do not pay for it for the Greater Good(gorg) is no longer Valid. You and We already know that.

How else are they, or anyone else to know when a video is an offending video?

Let's say I build a site. I put an episode of a popular TV show on it. The show contacts me and says "Hey there, please take this video down." I take it down. Sometime later I put the video back up and they contact me again. "Hey there, you put the video back up again. We're suing you." Dammit, right? I knew what I was doing was illegal but kept doing it, and now I have to pay the price for it.

Let's say I build a new site. This time, I let users submit videos and I claim that I won't watch them. The popular TV show eventually gets uploaded to my site and they contact me.

"Hey there, our show is on your site."
"Oh, really? Yeah I didn't know, I'll take it off."
"Okay, thanks!"

A week later it's uploaded again.

"Hey there, our show is once again on your site."
"Oh, really? Yeah I didn't know, I'll take it off."
"Okay, thanks!"

This continues forever. Except the real response would not be "Okay, thanks!" it would be "I don't care who uploaded it, it's your site, you're using the content submitted to profit from it, it's now your responsibility."

Tell me why claiming ignorance lets me do whatever I want on the internet. Tell me why tons of file-sharing sites all claiming ignorance to their content is perfectly legal. Someone has to be punished and it's going to be the one profiting from the content. You're absolutely right on one point, there is no perfect method to establish if a video is copyrighted or not. YouTube would have to be shutdown.

You have a video you want on the internet? Make a site and put it on there. If it's legal, great! People will come to watch it and, what's really great about this scenario, you'll profit from the video and not another company. If it's not legal...well in this case someone will be held responsible.

Actually they do this ...

Not at all at the time...
(From the first article linked in this thread. Emphasis Mine)

Sure, this placed a huge burden on rightsholders, especially since Google required a separate letter for every infringing URL and would not prevent the re-uploading of the same material by other users, but it was the only way the company could know if authorization for a specific clip had been granted.

They only took the video down from a single reported offending URL at a time, meaning if there were multiple copies of the same video and the person (or business) claiming the infringement did not report every offending URL on YouTube only the one video was removed, and no one was prevented from re-uploading it which IMO is absolute hogwash...

'You only reported this URL, so even though we have the technology and means to determine it's on 20 others right now (we might have even seen it there if it's popular) we aren't going to remove the rest, unless you report those too.' IMO one report should cover all URLs the same video is present on, but hey, people would have to pay to watch stuff if YouTube goes down, so that's not fair...

How else are they, or anyone else to know when a video is an offending video?

They seemed to have a guess:
(Again, from the first linked article in this thread. Emphasis Mine.)

... 'if you remove the potential copyright infringements... site traffic and virality will drop to maybe 20 percent of what it is.' Karim proposed they 'just remove the obviously copyright infringing stuff.' But Chen again insisted that even if they removed only such obviously infringing clips, site traffic would drop at least 80 percent...

And:

The team told senior Google execs that YouTube was "a ‘rogue enabler’ of content theft," that its "content is all free, and much of it is highly sought after pirated clips," and that "YouTube’s business model is completely sustained by pirated content."

Maybe you couldn't tell, but it seems like some business execs and site founders had a much better guess.

I'm not even making this stuff up.
Those are Direct Quotes from the Article Referencing the Court Documents...

It's not like I'm arguing a vague, unclear position, and you can try to say they couldn't or didn't know all you like, but they themselves don't agree with you, because they admit it... They're the ones I'm quoting who were saying what it is the site traffic is built on...

Those are quotes from Google and YouTube executives and founders (or reports to them), so the 'how could they know?', argument doesn't have any substance since they obviously did know... How doesn't really matter: They Obviously Knew!

'They couldn't know', is a very poor argument after reading the e-mails. How ever they knew, it's obvious they had access to more information or insight than you might, because it's obvious they knew.

I don't know how people with a any ethics can argue for them when YouTube's founders themselves said 80% of the sites traffic is based on obviously infringing content and Google asked if it was the type of business they wanted to be involved with and knew in advance what they were buying...

As far as the 'but I can't see it within minutes' argument goes, what about iReports from CNN, and how do they keep those uploads free from infringing material if it's too big a job for YouTube to do?

No one is saying to remove the legitimate videos someone has personally posted or posted with permission, but Google knew what they were (and are) doing as well as you know what they are doing and the justifications don't fly with me.

Read the e-mails...

They all knew what the deal was and rather than buying the content legitimately from the source, building their own video sharing site with stricter standards, helping the copyright holders get the offending site shut down, staying with their 'Don't Be Evil' motto, and showing the rest of us how it could and should be done, Google bought the pirated traffic, er, uh, content instead.

<added>
I can understand a site where there's a bit of infringing content and there's a bunch of videos so the owner doesn't actually know it's there... I can understand taking measures to try and remove other infringing content and missing some because another user did something to disguise the content from the reported infringing content. I can see a delay in finding duplicates of the reported infringing content...

I can understand quite a few of the arguments people are trying to make for them in many situations, but: I cannot understand knowing, admitting, stating, hearing a site's traffic is built on 80% pirated content and deciding to buy it, and even more so, deciding to buy it and leave it the way it when knowing in advance what was being purchased...
</added>

[edited by: TheMadScientist at 4:56 am (utc) on Mar 22, 2010]

IMHO, there should have been a way to verify the legality of any uploaded video -- implemented before the purchase of YouTube was determined to be a beneficial addition and then finalized as an aquistion.

Wouldn't a pay-per-upload function have been partially able to solve some of these/future potential legal problems? (In addition to licensing deals that could have happened.)

A small fee and then an employee is able to review the video before it goes live. Essentially, a "break-even" fee that allows for future and untainted revenue from the on-page and in-video advertisements.

Am I wrong in thinking that the only way to determine/verify if a video is pirated or not, is to actually have someone watch it? Video search results should have be treated very differently from regular search results and not in an automated format from the very beginning. Right?

Youtube and Hulu exist because the traditional media like TV, music videos and movies exist. Where would they get their content from otherwise?

From the same place that they get all their non-infringing content.