There is no YouTube Filter; It’s AudibleMagic

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1. vr5 / jp
   

   February 22nd, 2007 at 8:32 pm

   YouTube is servers + bandwidth + flv + upload. Give em a billion and they suddenly become experts in audio&video analysis ?

   -turns on voice recognition-
   “false positives are probably all over the place”
   -computer-
   “my donkey likes fruit”

2. Haochi
   

   February 22nd, 2007 at 8:36 pm

   It’s rare that Google will follow other companies’ leads, MySpace, in this case, to license the filtering technology from the same company. Then again, I never thought that Google would buy YouTube.
   Whatever happens, I think you are right on this point, “… either a ruse to buy time or a failed effort that has collapsed under pressure today.”

3. Huser
   

   February 22nd, 2007 at 8:39 pm

   This technology is very simple. As long as you are in control of the video codec, you have full control over what content is uploaded. The basic principle is as simple as text censorship.

4. protestant
   

   February 22nd, 2007 at 8:55 pm

   well, should this be the case, then everyone better hurray up and try http://vixy.net/

   it’s a video conversion site that translates an url (like one from youtube) into a downloadable file of your particular encoding flavor, much like the mac app tubesock, only it’s free with no sign up.

   so i’m grabbing my favourite clips before viacom rolls over and crushes youtube.

5. Jacob Levy
   

   February 22nd, 2007 at 9:19 pm

   I see this happen all the time at the BigCo I work for — you develop something in-house and if a market leader emerges you have to decide whether to build or buy. In this case, since there’s a lot of money potentially at risk due to litigation, its much better to go with something that’s already widely used. Then you can say “well its not my fault, and anyways why dont you also sue party X who uses the same technology, or better yet, sue the provider, not me, cause its none of my responsibility!”

   The Myspace decision is likely what tipped the scales here, an in-house developed solution simply wasnt going to offer GooTube the same level of protection as going with this de-facto market leader solution.

6. Doug
   

   February 22nd, 2007 at 10:51 pm

   Baited breath? Bated breath.

   God, I’m annoying.

7. visible.mobi
   

   February 22nd, 2007 at 11:10 pm

   I agree with Jacob. I feel they are just playing it safe.

8. John / SocialNext
   

   February 22nd, 2007 at 11:34 pm

   Back in the day, I was part of a dotcom that was purchased by another.

   We had “a huge technology” (that we didn’t)

   They had “a huge technology” (that they didn’t)

   After they merged it was apparent that no one had anything they claimed to.

   I wonder if Google bought YouTube with the idea (or promise) they had this filtering technology, only to buy them and discover they didn’t.

9. Rajeev Vashisht
   

   February 23rd, 2007 at 3:42 am

   Looks like Mafia behaviour from companies, govts, media, Army and Police is order of the day.

   To conduct business one has to be businesslike.

   http://www.tekno-world.blogspot.com

10. Tim Owens
    

    February 23rd, 2007 at 4:14 am

    As to whether or not Google knew that Youtube was bluffing on the development of filtering technology, I would like to think when you’re making an offer for 1.6 Billion dollars they had to be pretty transparent about what they did and did not have in the works. So Google was most likely in on the smoke and mirrors. Will Audible Magic be added to GV as well?

11. lonelybloggers
    

    February 23rd, 2007 at 5:39 am

    I can’t wait to see how this plays out and what impact it has on % of video on YouTube …

12. Chris Dodge
    

    February 23rd, 2007 at 5:50 am

    Everyone knew YouTube was not a technology company, just a systems integrator. So, yes, Google must have known that and probably didn’t care. They wanted to buy a very strong consumer video Brand, which YouTube was/is.

13. Todd
    

    February 23rd, 2007 at 5:55 am

    Heres the original TechCrunch post about Google and their “audio listening”:

    http://www.techcrunch.com/2006.....l-content/

    …but how easy is this to hack? How much altering do I need to do the copyrighted video’s audio track to fool the filter?

14. Jacob Levy
    

    February 23rd, 2007 at 7:23 am

    Everyone is missing the point: YouTube does not care about copyright, they care about LITIGATION regarding copyright. With this move they’ve removed themselves as the target of litigation about copyright. It’s a smart move. I also believe they genuinely were developing an in-house solution, but because it wasn’t going to be as good as a commercially available alternative that many others use, it just didn’t make sense to continue with that rather than buy into the commercially available option.

15. Mitch
    

    February 23rd, 2007 at 7:31 am

    YouTube can’t actually filter the pirated content until the content owner submits the audio track for fingerprinting.

    Unless YouTube is playing on recording everything broadcast to generate their own fingerprints, putting the onus on the content owner to have to spend time and money inorder to prevent YouTube from redistributing their media doesn’t seem viable in the longrun.

    And then this isn’t much different from requiring content owners from manually requesting that their media be removed, is it?

16. dreadsword
    

    February 23rd, 2007 at 8:45 am

    YouTube might not be a technology company, but Google is - or at least was. You’d thing the experts at analyzing, sorting, and storing massive amounts of data would have been able to crack content identification and rights management without having to go outside. Perhaps it was time pressure? But did Google have nothing in place on GVideo? Weird.

    This post is heavily slantted:
    http://slantt.net/news/techcru.....diblemagic

17. Tester23
    

    February 23rd, 2007 at 9:32 am

    I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again - it remains to be seen whether these technologies will actually work. We have not seen any of these technologies deployed on a large enough scale to verify whether they will work, and to see what kind of false-positive ratio they will have on a large scale. Even if they have a 10% false positive ratio, I think there will be a backlash from users, since presumably a majority of the most active ones will be caught in this filtering net at some point and then take their content to other upcoming sites that do not implement filtering. Face it, video sites are a dime-a-dozen now, and it doesn’t take too long to switch sites. YouTube has achieved critical mass because it has identified itself with the regular guy. When they start doing filtering on a massive scale, they will be seen as yet another corporation barring people from doing whatever the hell it is they want to do online.

18. Mr. Smith
    

    February 23rd, 2007 at 10:05 am

    I would like to see the algorithm that AudibleMagic has written that can tell when my use of copywritten material is used in a parody video that I created and therefore a legitimate use of the content under Fair Use.

19. Marshall Kirkpatrick
    

    February 23rd, 2007 at 10:31 am

    Mr.Smith - just ask the subject of your parody for permission! the jester was always the most subversive person in the castle anyway - good riddance!

20. Drama 2.0
    

    February 23rd, 2007 at 12:37 pm

    “With this move they’ve removed themselves as the target of litigation about copyright.”

    Jacob: you can never remove yourself as a target for litigation. Anybody can sue anybody. I could sue you and have no legitimate cause, but you’ll still have to defend yourself. I don’t believe the launch of an effective filtering technology would eliminate YouTube’s liability for past infringements. It would be an ugly legal battle for sure.

    The biggest problem for YouTube is that we all know that copyrighted content is the largest draw for the majority of YouTube users. Once that content is no longer freely accessible on YouTube, there’s a real possibility that people will move on. Napster 2.0 anybody? And of course, if AudibleMagic’s technology results in legitimate content being filtered, there’s always the chance that content creators will become dissatisfied and leave. YouTube’s success is due in part to first-mover advantage, but also because of the Wild West user experience where anything goes. Remove that and you potentially remove a lot of the appeal of the service.

    I think the copyright filtering issue is going to be hanging over YouTube for awhile regardless of this announcement but the bigger question is why YouTube has been so ineffective at signing deals to obtain the content people want. When Viacom signs a deal with Joost to license content, it can’t easily be said that Viacom is just an evil corporation that is anti-user and won’t work with anybody. It appears that Google’s arrogance and greed are the primary factors. See:

    http://www.cnet.com/4520-6033_1-6695314-1.html

    Google might want to consider hiring some strategists and negotiation experts and let them run the show when it comes to these types of deals as opposed to letting arrogant executives lead the way.

21. Jeff
    

    February 23rd, 2007 at 12:43 pm

    “…either a ruse to buy time or a failed effort that has collapsed under pressure today.”

    Or, a factual statement and the in-house filtering is yet to come. In the meantime, why not mitigate litigation and attrition by employing a respected solution?

22. Jeremy Turig
    

    February 23rd, 2007 at 7:08 pm

    I think google needs to somehow broker a deal with the media companies, otherwise youtube may become an unneeded commidity. Sure many people like to go on youtube to watch other people’s randomness, but many more go on there only to see music videos, tv clippings, commercials, and other copyrighted materials.

23. brea
    

    February 24th, 2007 at 9:11 am

    That’s the understatment of the year.

24. David Mackey
    

    February 24th, 2007 at 8:27 pm

    I’m not sure that the content networks are going to be as happy as they think they are when their content is removed from YouTube. I don’t use YouTube very often, just don’t have the time to waste. But some of the amateur productions being put out are quite entertaining and could easily replace some network shows.
    For example, sitcoms, and comedy news shows come to mind.