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 at 5:45 PM | Print | Comments (0)In the wake of Radiohead's groundbreaking move to sell its latest album "In Rainbows" directly to fans online, any unusual distribution strategy by a rock band is suddenly news. Case in point: Led Zeppelin announced today that it will sell its music digitally and this is getting a lot of press.
Under a new series of deals, the band will make ringtones and other mobile features available exclusively through Verizon Wireless. The group's albums will be made available through "digital music services" including iTunes. Unlike Radiohead, Led Zeppelin is doing it all through a major record label, Warner Music.
Hello? The fact that Led Zeppelin is just now getting around to selling its music online via iTunes is a metaphor for the band itself. Both were once cool and groundbreaking but are now, well, destined to be great historical breakthroughs. As Mathew Ingram (who calls Led Zeppelin "rock dinosaurs") writes: "Nice to see the boys have finally decided to join the 20th century, six years after it ended."
Not only is this a somewhat late development, it's also kind of sad. Led Zeppelin will always, always be the quintessential album rock band that flaunted the establishment with its adamant refusal to trim song lengths for car radios and its disdain for classic song hooks. As Nick Carr writes Led Zeppelin has agreed "to allow its monstrous headstomping slabs of metalwork to be shrunk down to tiny-whiny ringtones and MP3 filesshrunk down to tiny-whiny ringtones and MP3 files."
Verizon is trying to spin this development as an example of how cool and innovative they are, and as such shouldn't be regulated. Over at Verizon's Poliblog Jim Gerace writes that the Led Zeppelin ringtones and whatnot prove that "we compete day in and day out to bring relevant, innovative services to our customers."
I don't quite see the connection between this deal and regulation, although Gerace writes that critics are arguing for "more regulation because we're dazed and confused." (Ed. note: CZ, are you ever going to talk to me again?)
Just about two years ago, few TV programs were available in full online, at least on a free, ad-supported basis. Now that TV shows are available in abundance on the Internet, around 16% of U.S. homes watch TV "broadcasts" online, according to a study by the Conference Board.
Based on the Consumer Internet Barometer, a quarterly panel study involving 10,000 potential respondents, four out of every five online viewers say that watching the TV shows online hasn't diminished the amount of time they watch regular television. More than three out of five online TV viewers cite personal convenience as the major reason for watching TV broadcasts online.
More than a third chose online viewing in order to avoid watching television commercials (and these folks were surely disappointed given that most free online TV shows come embedded with advertising.)
Although 16% seems like a small number, and I'm not sure of the definitions used by the Conference Board when it comes to "TV broadcasts," there is no question that this figure could double (triple) again next year as better awareness of online choices increase and as even more TV content migrates to the web. So, when nearly a third of all homes watch TV on the web, we're definitely in the mass video medium territory.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 10:24 AM | Print | Comments (0)Discovery Communications will announce today that it is buying HowStuffWorks.com for $250 million, the biggest purchase to date by the cable network company. What's interesting is that Discovery is paying the premium for the privately-held company not because it's picking up a highly profitable cash flow generator but because it's looking for a strategic way to come up to speed on web-based video delivery.
HowStuffWorks.com explains it this way:
Can anyone combine the best things about TV with the best things about the Web to create something new -- a sum that's greater than its parts?
That's what the fusion of Discovery Communications and HowStuffWorks is all about: A giant experiment -- one which we can all watch unfold. We are attempting to create a new media company for the 21st century
HowStuffWorks is planning to embed videos from Discovery's various channels as well as serve as an oulet for the display of new short-form videos that could very well turn into long-form series for Discovery's cable networks if they prove to be popular or sticky enough. This cross-fertilization between web and TV (or as HowStuffWorks puts it this marriage of "high-quality, credible, family-friendly, entertaining multimedia content both on television and the Web") is a hard act to pull off, particularly for Discovery, which, according to CEO David Zaslav, is "way behind in new media and digital."
The $250 million price tag seems steep for a site that counts only 3.8 million unique U.S. users per month and 11 million users globally. But, in addition to serving as a prime online outlet for Discovery videos as well as a farm team for the creation of new long-form TV series, Discovery is presumably buying the HowThingsWork for its expertise in all-things-Internet.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 9:05 AM | Print | Comments (0)The prolific Tim Wu has this piece on Slate today, part of a fun series on little-enforced laws, that discusses how it's technically still illegal to download porn in the U.S., a fact that would come as a great surprise to tens of million of men (and a few women, I might add). Federal law makes it a crime, punishable by up to five years in prison, when someone uses a computer service to transport over state lines "any obscene, lewd, lascivious, or filthy book, pamphlet, picture, motion-picture film, paper, letter, writing, print, or other matter of indecent character."
Who could have guessed? With the exception of lewd material involving children, nobody ever gets prosecuted for downloading anything "filthy." As Wu writes:
Over the last decade, and without the repeal of a single law, the United States has quietly and effectively put its adult obscenity laws into a deep coma, tolerating their widespread violation with little notice or fanfare.
The Bush Administration has taken a last crack at getting prosecutors to bring cases against distributors of extreme content, but few D.A.s have the appetite for actually prosecuting Joe Shmoes sitting in their underwear watching videos that involve adult men and women. As Wu notes, this neglect of the law hasn't been a conscious decision on the part of lawmakers or law enforcement. It has just sort of happened.
Instead it was a combined product, over decades, of the decisions of hundreds of prosecutors, FCC officials, FBI agents, and police officers -- all of whom decided they had better things to do than chase around pornographers the way they chase murderers. Their consensus -- that normal pornography just isn't harmful in the sense that, say, drugs are -- has driven the current law more so than any official enactment.Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 8:26 AM | Print | Comments (0)
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