X
Business

Bot on way to catch YouTube copyright violators?

 Now here's an idea that is needed, and may already be in the works.How about a bot that crawls YouTube videos for apparently unauthorized, copyright violations?
Written by Russell Shaw, Contributor
youtubelostlarge.jpg
 

Now here's an idea that is needed, and may already be in the works.

How about a bot that crawls YouTube videos for apparently unauthorized, copyright violations? The type of violations that given the ease of tv-to-PC digital transfer are easy to commit?

Such as video clips of tv shows, such as "Lost?" Speaking of, that's a YouTube "Lost" clip at the top of this post.

There's a few ways this could be facilitated.

First, television programmers and movie studios might want to either imbed a digital video watermark inside their content that could be machine-readable by copyright-violation sniffer bots they would search YouTube with.

Alternatively, television programmers and movie studios could insert digital code that could break YouTube's Flash-enabled video engine.

Until such technology is enabled, there's always the old-fashioned way: mechanical searches of YouTube with search keywords that would match movie or television program titles. Then, physically examine each one, and if they see a copyright violation, request that YouTube delete it.

I'm not just engaging in wild speculation here. When YouTube is acquired- I said "when," not "if"-  it will likely be by a media company with substantial copyrighted assets, as well as partnerships with other copyright holders. At that point, the party will be over. 

Editorial standards