copyright

YouTube will launch a system in September designed to prevent pirated material from going up on the site, a Google lawyer said in court on Friday.

Google, which acquired YouTube in October, plans to generate a library of digital video fingerprints that would be used by a computer system to screen clips being uploaded to YouTube, said Philip Beck, one of the attorneys representing Google and YouTube. Beck added that the screening process would take only a few minutes to determine whether a clip is copyright material.

Google, Viacom and the class of copyright holders that have filed suit against Google and YouTube within the past year, were in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, for a scheduling hearing.

Beck's statement is significant because it would appear to be the first time that anyone from Google has set a firm launch date for a filtering-system roll out. The company has frustrated numerous media executives by promising to produce better copyright protections for YouTube but not delivering. Critics are quick to note that many of YouTube's competitors already screen content.

What may not go over well in Hollywood is that Google appeared to hedge once again when asked to respond to Beck's statement. … Read more

The Sex Pistols once sang about "Anarchy in the U.K.," but that's not how we should view this news that the British government has rejected an extension to its 50-year copyright term. This is the same government that rejects software patents.

Looks like the land of Mary Poppins is ahead of us Yankees in how it views intellectual property.

Not everyone, of course, agrees:… Read more

Updated Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has withdrawn anti-file sharing legislation that had drawn yowls of protest from universities this week.

Reid, without explanation, on Monday nixed his own amendment that would have required colleges and universities--in exchange for federal funding--to use technology to "prevent the illegal downloading or peer-to-peer distribution of intellectual property."

Instead, Reid replaced it with a diluted version merely instructing higher ed institutions to advise their students not to commit copyright infringement and tell students what actions they're taking to prevent "unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material" through campus networks. The revised … Read more

Hollywood hasn't decided what it thinks about the whole "Net neutrality" debate, but it knows one thing: Any rules that would stunt roll-out of the next new whiz-bang filtering technologies or encourage unfettered sharing of copyrighted works over peer-to-peer networks would be very, very bad.

That's the gist of the 9-page comments (PDF) that the Motion Picture Association of America filed with the Federal Communications Commission this week. Monday was the deadline for comments for an FCC inquiry into "broadband industry practices," and most of the some 27,000 filings focused on the thorny … Read more

As we reported earlier this week, many Webcasting services kept streaming without incident after feared new music royalty fees took effect, as talks with the record industry about alternative arrangements seemed to be proceeding on a favorable track.

How quickly things can change.

Now a new spat appears to be brewing between the Digital Media Association (DiMA), a lobby group representing large Webcasters like Pandora, Yahoo, RealNetworks and AOL, and SoundExchange, the group that collects and lobbied for the new payments on behalf of musicians and record labels.

The issue? Whether Webcasters should be required to cloak their streams in … Read more

A co-worker sent me a link to the kids pages at the US Patent and Trademark Office. Part of me is delighted that our government is trying to make itself more accessible to children. Indeed, next month I intend to take advantage of that very accessibility when our family visits Washington DC to see the three co-equal branches of our federal government and the various departments they operate. If we are lucky, we might even meet one or more of our elected representatives in person!

But part of me is mortified by the levels of propaganda filling pages that purport to be educational and the thought that millions of children may be exposed to such propaganda without thought or review by tech-savvy parents.… Read more

In what appears to be the first such occurrence, the recording industry must foot nearly $70,000 in legal bills incurred by an Oklahoma woman whom it unsuccessfully accused of "vicariously" aiding copyright infringement.

Until Monday's ruling in this case, called Capitol v. Foster, the Recording Industry Association of America had never been ordered to pay attorneys' fees as part of its ongoing battle against allegedly illicit file swapping, according to attorney Ray Beckerman, who has been tracking such suits at the blog Recording Industry vs The People.

The RIAA, for its part, said in a statement … Read more

The hits just keep coming to Google Video.

Pirated versions of Hairspray, Bruce Willis' Live Free, Die Hard and last weekend's top grossing film Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, were available at YouTube's sister site on Monday.

The films were first flagged by the National Legal and Policy Center, a watchdog group that tries to prod public figures to act ethically. The NLPC argues that Google treats the entertainment industry unfairly by allegedly looking the other way when users post pirated material to its sites.

For a month, the NLPC has dug up hundreds of … Read more

Here's something that shouldn't surprise many people: The video journalist who has been in a closely watched legal tussle with YouTube is also peeved at Apple.

Bob Tur is famous in Los Angeles for buzzing around the city in his helicopter and filming historical (and often bizarre) moments, such as O.J. Simpson's slow-speed Bronco chase, oodles of high-speed police pursuits and the beating of a trucker at the beginning of the Los Angeles riots. A year ago this month, he filed a suit against YouTube, claiming the company encouraged copyright violations on its site.

He's … Read more