Grantastic Designs’ Blog

Last week, much of the technology media covered Google’s announcement of its anti-piracy filter for its YouTube site, a means of removing unauthorized copyrighted video clips. This proactive technology implementation appeared to have been spurred by the media giant Viacom suing Google for not previously taking proactive steps with the wide proliferation of its copyrighted video content appearing on YouTube.

Previously, YouTube already had manual copyright infringement notification guide for users to fill and and submit. Now, YouTube has also included a content verification program for reporting copyright infringement of multiple videos, or those expecting to have an ongoing need to remove potentially infringing content from YouTube).

My question to YouTube: how could this potentially affect video publishers using 3rd party content for “fair use” purposes? Could the filter make a distinction, or was video content to be automatically removed without first verifying the context of its use?

To that, I received the following statement from YouTube’s Director of Engineering, Jeremy Doig:

“We appreciate ideas from the various media companies on effective content identification technologies. We’re glad that they recognize the need to cooperate on these issues, and we’ll keep working with them to refine our industry-leading tools.”

OK, not exactly a direct response to my question. So I then did a follow up phone call with a YouTube spokesperson, who was very helpful with his explanation. How it works is like this: If you were to upload, as a 3rd party, some potentially infringing video content, you would receive a notification that your video content matched the original copyright owner’s in their database. You would then have the option of giving a counter-notification if you felt your content fell under fair use (or some other legitimate means, such as being an authorized provider). So just because the YouTube anti piracy filter might “ping” your content would not cause an automatic removal of said content.

YouTube’s spokesperson added that the anti-piracy actually isn’t in place just yet, and that their press release was just meant as an open-invitation for others to start signing up for the program. Right now, its simply a beta launch for YouTube to get their video catalogs and libraries up to date, and for them to recruit more companies than what they have for now.

In addition, YouTube’s spokesperon also mentioned that lot of media publishers are actually looking to use the technology just as a means of tracking their content online for advertising purposes (i.e., matching the video content with AdSense, overlay ads, or other ad opportunities ). According to YouTube’s spokesperson, many media publishers have said that they’re alright with leaving the content up there, since content owner has the option not just to block the content, but to leave it up there and monetize it through advertising.)

So if the anti-piracy filter work for YouTube as planned, 3rd party video content “posters” in YouTube that apply fair use practices to original copyright owner’s video should not have to be concerned with removal of such content.

So with that information, I guess my own video of Viacom’s Daily Show footage should stay up there after all. (I’m glad the thousand-plus viewers can appreciate it.)

In today’s article at the SearchEngineWatch blog, I posted on the video search engine blinkx’s new partnership with the UK online video advertising network Utarget, which will be featuring pre-roll ads for blinkx’s UK video inventory, including media partners ITN News and ITN Celebrity. (Apparently this will not include other UK media partners, such as BBC News.)

What I found interesting to learn is that the UK audience seems to be more receptive to pre-roll ads than over here in the U.S. According to a YouGov study (commissed by UTarget Networks), 93% of UK users are opn to pre-roll online video advertising, provided that the ads don’t extend past 15 seconds in length.

As someone who watches a great deal of video online, the majority of pre-roll ads I come across for U.S. sites tend to fall in the 30-second time frame. That tends to show that most ad agencies still are operating with the broadcast television mentality, rather than working with the internet medium of shorter spurts. This has actually been acknowledged by some creative media agencies I’ve spoken with in the Chicago area, who are trying to work with their clients on not just repackaging their television content for the web, but producing more stand-alone internet video content which falls in the shorter 15-second pre-roll time.