16/10/2007, 10:05 AM
LA times Wrote:To help keep their videos off YouTube, media companies may need to give their videos to YouTube. YouTube parent Google Inc.’s long-promised method for reducing piracy, unveiled Monday, relies on TV networks, movie studios and other content owners to provide the video-sharing service with master copies of their videos. YouTube won’t post those videos. Rather, it plans to use software to find unique characteristics in the clips so it can detect copies posted by YouTube users without permission. Media companies can ask Google to automatically delete every unauthorized copy — or to slap ads on the clips and promote them. Google said it has tested the program with such major media companies as Walt Disney Co. and Time Warner Inc.
If successful, the program would reduce the burden currently placed on content owners, which now have to scour YouTube and other video-sharing sites for pirated material so they can request its removal. But some consumer groups complained Monday that the new technology could delete some online videos that use snippets of copyrighted works appropriately, for criticism, satire or education. Those so-called fair uses are protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. YouTube said the system allowed for fair use of video material but declined to say how. Is this the end of YouTube as wee know it now?
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