AfterDawn: News

YouTube, Disney and Time Warner to test video fingerprinting

Google Inc.'s YouTube video sharing site is to test a new video identification technology with Time Warner Inc. and The Walt Disney Co. The technology was developed by Google to help content owners identify uploaded videos that were posted without permission. "The technology was built with the Disney's and Time Warner's in mind," Chris Maxcy, YouTube partner development director, said.

The "video fingerprinting" tools can identify unique attributes in the video clips. The feature will be available for testing in about a month according to a YouTube representative. Google has been using similar technology (audio fingerprinting) with record labels for some time now.



Once the tools identify improperly posted videos, content creators can choose to have them removed. Once the technology is proven to work adequately, it could be used as am automatic shield against the uploading of many popular copyrighted videos.

YouTube's lack of content protecting features has it in the bad books of many major content providers. Viacom Inc. is the best example, as it is currently suing YouTube for more than $1 billion.

Source:
Reuters

Written by: James Delahunty @ 12 Jun 2007 17:16

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• 9 comments

• Moomoo2

  I'm curious to see if this will really work. I'd like to see it in action / figure out how to get around it.

  12.6.2007 17:31 #1

• Fiji5555

  Well if they are looking to kill their website then good for them......i find it laughable the lengths they are willing to go to "protect" their precious videos........they just don't get it and never will.....their loss then.

  12.6.2007 17:53 #2

• OzMick

  That is nice and all, but how does their fingerprinting withstand lossy compression formats. If this fingerprinting is supposed to not be noticible to the human eye, and lossy codecs work on the basis of removing information inperceivable to the human eye, aren't they mutually exclusive? IE, once you've ripped the movie and compressed it, the fingerprint will be removed or severely damaged beyond identification?

  12.6.2007 18:02 #3

• jinggoy

  I wonder if Google can buy viacom.

  12.6.2007 18:08 #4

• salinger

  We all know hackers rule the net. If they wanna get an embedded video, they will, and even interpol cant stop them. And after that they tell everyone how to do it and youtube goes back to point A with 1 billion less on its account.

  13.6.2007 13:53 #5

• Wild9

  I'm thinking along the lines of data mining. Video's will take longer to upload due to the overheads associated with looking for unique patterns that exist in each file, and comparing them against a reference file. That's just my idea.
  
  You Tube used to be fun. Now every single day, video's are being wiped off my favourites list and for the most ridiculous reasons. These large, rich corporations don't even realise that this is free advertising for them and that the video quality of You Tube is relatively poor. The kickback should include an address book of say, 10000 other users who are all willing to upload the same video, as well as put video blogs on YT and MySpace about cencorship..naming and shaming the corporations that are doing it. It's got more to do with censorship and control than it has copyright and that is why the likes of the BBC are involved, in my opinion.
  
  Whilst I still have one, that is.
  
  A thousand video's and countless blogs would simply be out of YT's control, it would also point the finger at the people who seem to think that just because they have lots of money they can control the Internet. They are trying to control this highway and they are all in this together.

  15.6.2007 08:27 #6

• mododaz

  Originally posted by Fiji5555:Well if they are looking to kill their website then good for them......i find it laughable the lengths they are willing to go to "protect" their precious videos........they just don't get it and never will.....their loss then. im sure they rearly care abought keeping a few eps of the simpsons thus paying viacom 1000000000000000000000000000000000£$€¥ billoin yes they will never learn

  15.6.2007 09:14 #7

• AparoidX

  If the quality is really bad, how are they going to know? Uploaders might even just flip the video upside-down and instruct the viewer to rotate their screen settings accordingly...
  
  Not sure that would work, but YouTube's never going to get all of the copywritten content off of their site.

  16.6.2007 11:48 #8

• Unfocused

  Try as they might, they never seem to get the message.

  31.7.2007 01:07 #9