AfterDawn: News

Google to "uphold copyright" with YouTube

Google Inc., one of the world's wealthiest companies and new $1.65 billion owners of video sharing phenomenon YouTube.com, has outlined its stance on copyright issues, with Google Europe's Vice President Nikesh Arora stating that the software innovator will "not tolerate copyright violations," once acquisition proceedings are fully complete.

The video-sharing website's rapid growth has been largely down to the thousands upon thousands of copyrighted videos uploaded by users and many believed that Google had aquired a bundle of legal trouble when it made the takeover in September.



It is policy to remove content by request of copyright owners - its recent takedown of 30,000 videos owned by Japanese media companies was a sign of intent. However some believe that the company should introduce a filtering technology to weed out copyrighted content - which is said to have been developed by Google, but not yet implemented.

Mr Arora said of the situation, "There is not a lot we can say about what we will do with YouTube because it is still in the process of due diligence and we haven't closed the acquisition.

"We intend to uphold copyright. We believe it is very important as part the creative process. It's evident from our policy as part of Google Video, Google News or Google Books, and any acquisition in the future is not going to change Google's view on copyright."

Source:
BBC

Written by: Ben Reid @ 26 Oct 2006 15:14

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• 15 comments

• antomic

  google was forced to say this, other wise the record company and others would assasinate the google employees in their sleep.

  26.10.2006 17:34 #1

• georgeluv

  yeh, god bless google for telling the gov to go shove it when they tried to steal their data to spy on its own citizens (where was your patriotism, yahoo? oh thats right you didnt give a fuck).
  
  and when google anounced it is going to make a giant database of all material whos copywrites expired all the media companies got all pissed off.
  
  google knows the cream of youtube is copywrited material, who the hell wants to watch redneck home movies or b rate music videos made by thesbian fags? nobody!
  
  you go google! i use yahoo cause i like to read the latest news but when your stock hits 1000 per share everyone will know it was cause you guys gave the people what they wanted, not what the government or the cororations wanted.

  26.10.2006 18:57 #2

• ZippyG

  What I'm wondering is...if google really does remove the element that made Youtube what it is, then isn't that the same as taking an engine out of a car? It's just not going to do much. Kinda like "napster 2.0", which was utterly gay.

  26.10.2006 19:03 #3

• nanu-nanu

  Google does not even horror copyright on its Google video....just search Robot Chicken

  26.10.2006 21:44 #4

• nanu-nanu

  next time I will spell check. But seriously, Google video has tons of illegaly posted copyrighted material

  26.10.2006 21:52 #5

• max777

  Oh so that's how you can "legally" make millions in advertising revenue serving up copyrighted video. Just announce your intentions of taking them down if the copyright owner ever requests it? Is that the defense Google will be using at the trial?

  27.10.2006 09:08 #6

• ZippyG

  I think the copyright has been getting way too much "power" or "pull" in the legal systems of many countries. I mean, think about it...it's nice that copyright is there to try and protect the rights of those who publish any type of media, but to successfully defend yourself on the basis of copyright infringement, you require A LOT of money. Lets say that some private, unsigned artist is suffering from copyright infringement - for him to exercise the legal system to his benefit, he will need a lot of money. For this reason only big, rich corporations can utilize the laws...and I'd say they had quite a bit to do with the creation of said laws. Aren't laws supposed to protect everyone equally and not just the interests of those who can afford to pay for enforcement? If a person is murdered, should it be that there is no case unless the victim's relatives can pony up hundreds of thousands of dollars to hire lawyers, etc? I don't think so...

  27.10.2006 12:39 #7

• militantm

  the only reason I was dropping by youtube was check out the quote unquote copyrighted material. what's it gonna be good for now, watching home video of some idiot jumping off his roof into and empty pool? once they remove all the cool stuff I'm gone. some of those japanese tv shows that were up were really cool. I'm not just talking about the asian media stuff on there either. you can never find any of that kinda cool stuff anywhere. I'm not paying some ebay pirate $50 for a video of a tv show. unfortunately their only option is going to be to charge to watch the cool stuff. I think google just got boned if they paid that much for something no one is going to have a reason to check out anymore. google had to of had the forsight to realize, as soon as youtube was connected with somebody with the big bucks that the copyright nazi's were gonna come knocking.

  27.10.2006 15:21 #8

• BluRay

  Fat Chance, they will get all the copyprotected video's off.
  What will there be left to watch? Almost everything is copyright on YouTube.

  27.10.2006 16:07 #9

• ZippyDSM

  if Google cant apse the gods of the media industry then you tube will be sued into hell.
  
  If Google changes Yu tube from what it was no one will go their and you tube dies....

  27.10.2006 16:11 #10

• CiDaemon

  I honestly think google thought about thi before buying YT for a ridiculous amount of money. They must have known that it would have been an utter waste to buy YT for its "public domain" videos... considering they make up about 20% of the videos on the site and 5% of their bandwidth. Google must know that the copyrighted material is the only reason youtube got so popular, and removing it would be like throwing their $xxxxxxxx down the drain.
  
  I assume that this is the "public statement" that they will fall back on when someone tries to sue for copyright infringement- "hey, it's not our fault, were trying to remove it, but it's just soo hard!

  28.10.2006 08:20 #11

• xhardc0re

  i've got a few videos on youtube myself. No way in HELL they are gonna rid it of all the copyrighted files. People will just start naming their files "car stuff" and put it in different categories. Or make all the groups private, invite-only & give the filenames/descriptions as generic stuff. I'd like to see them find a way around what my group was working on...unless Google has hundreds of hours to search user videos by watching them, no chance they'll take down the anime. And music videos, YT has got hundreds of them. Much better than MTV, may it rott. There's so much good stuff on there, if they did find a way to take it down, nobody i know would go there.
  I've seen enough jackass on MTV, i don't need it on youtube. Or camgirls. Or spammers. Or animal sex videos (yes, they have a few...)

  29.10.2006 01:37 #12

• ZippyDSM

  xhardc0re
  2 level filter 1 flags keywords in the comment system the other just simply removes all CP/IP named stuff.
  
  filtering technology is rather advanced I am sure they can do that or even more.
  
  However they might have a clause in thier agrement to merely remove a small amount to apse the mafiaa,any way you looka t it youtube will be totaly diffrent this time next year.
  

  29.10.2006 01:49 #13

• procode

  No money changed hands when Google took YouTube ..
  The new owners gave the old owners 'billions' of 'paper valued shares' ..
  
  If YouTube goes down, the shares are worthless ..
  
  It appears to be a much faster, and far more effective, method of piracy control to me .. ?? ;)

  29.10.2006 02:45 #14

• ZippyDSM

  procode
  and they cant sell that stock now at a slightly reduced price and make milloins stil off it?

  29.10.2006 02:47 #15