IP Democracy: Does YouTube's New Content I.D. Tool Go Too Far?

Under intense pressure by Hollywood, Google promised months ago that it would develop a filtering tool that would help protect the interests of copyright owners on YouTube and they have made good on their word. The search giant unveiled today its new "highly complicated technology platform" called YouTube Video Identification.

As I understand it, the new filter depends on content providers supplying YouTube with a database of video clips or images. Google will scan uploaded videos and compare them to the copyright holders' submissions based on some kind of marker system. If there is a hit, then the uploaded videos will be flagged and the content owners will be able to request take-down notices using some kind of automated form.

It's impossible to tell how this system will work in practice, but Google keeps stressing that it has gone "well above and beyond our legal responsibilities" in creating the content i.d. tool. At least one group, Public Knowledge, thinks Google has gone too far.

In a statement, President Gigi Sohn said

On balance, this is a sad development. It's a shame that Google was pressured by the entertainment industry into devoting resources to a limited system that could restrict the free flow of information while increasing the control content companies have over otherwise lawful uses of material.

Sohn's biggest concern is reserved for whether the tool tramples on the already precarious "fair use" rights that the copyright law protects. People are allowed to replicate copyrighted material in creating new content that allows for analysis, parody, elucidation, illumination and all kinds of new forms of understanding and knowledge.

A blunt instrument such as the content i.d. tool, which invites copyright holders to automatically shut down any further use of their material, whether the material meets the fair use standard or not, can only hurt not help the world's store of knowledge and entertainment. That would be, contrary to Google's unofficial motto, evil.

And it might end up biting Google and YouTube in the butt too by making YouTube far less attractive. As Sohn notes "People may not want to post videos if they know their worked will be blocked, and may simply give up once the automated challenge is set in motion."

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on October 15, 2007 5:45 PM to IP Democracy