Under
pressure from movie studios, record labels
and their friends on Capitol Hill to filter out copyrighted
material, YouTube’s parent company Google has
developed a tool that
will likely
restrict the flow of legal content over the Internet.
YouTube introduced
the beta version of its ‘video identification’
system a few days ago, the purpose of
which is to control the amount of infringing material that appears on
the site.
This raises the bar for each and every entity that serves as a
conduit for
copyrighted works online, and was most liekly prompted by the $1
billion lawsuit from Viacom.
How It Works
A copyright holder uploads its
works
into a reference database, which then generates identification files by
which uploaded videos are matched. When a user uploads a video onto
YouTube, that video is matched with the identification file.
If there
is a “match” (more on that later), then the video
is subject to
whatever action the rights holder has decided to apply to it; for
example, it could be blocked, “tracked” or
“monetized.” If the video is
blocked, the user will be notified, and can immediately contest the
claim by clicking onto a link.
Once YouTube receives the user contest,
it will put the video back on the site. At that point, notice
and takedown provisions
of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) would kick in.
If the
copyright holder continues to want the video removed, it would have to
send a takedown notice required by the DMCA. The user can send a
counter-notice, whereupon the video would be reinstated, etc.
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