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TechnologyDaily Mobile
The Changing Face of YouTube
by Andrew Noyes
What do a home movie shot in a barbecue joint, a documentary film trailer about a gay professional wrestler and a music video about karaoke in Singapore have in common? They were all stripped from the YouTube video-sharing site in a recent crackdown by Viacom.
None of the videos contained material owned by the company -- whose properties include Comedy Central, MTV and Paramount Pictures -- but they were deleted anyway. Viacom admitted to making 60-70 mistakes in a recent takedown blitz, but Internet watchdogs say even a handful of incidents is too many.
"Each mistake impacts free speech, both of the author of the video and of the viewing public," the Electronic Frontier Foundation said on its Web site. "If they are making these kinds of blatant mistakes, who can tell how many fair uses of Viacom content they also targeted in their 100,000 takedowns?" the group asked.
EFF offered wronged users assistance, either in-house or by linking them with lawyers. Senior Staff Attorney Fred von Lohmann said he has heard from roughly two dozen people so far.
YouTube denied requests for interviews, but a spokeswoman sent a statement saying the company simply "removed the specific videos that Viacom identified." In response to reports about mistaken takedowns, Viacom issued several retractions and YouTube is working to reinstate the videos, she said.
Copyright Power And Responsibility
Viacom enlisted BayTSP, which used keyword searches and "acoustic fingerprinting" to analyze unique identifiers embedded in sound files. Some 900,000 clips were flagged, Viacom spokesman Jeremy Zweig said, and then a human reviewed "every single one of them."
Viacom General Counsel Michael Fricklas told John Palfrey, who heads Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, that the YouTube sting had an error rate of 0.05 percent, but he wished it was zero.
According to Fricklas' comments, which Palfrey posted on his Web log, YouTube should "retain the material and repost it if an individual believes that the copyright notice was in error." The DMCA requires companies to save allegedly infringing content for just such occasions, but the reposting process is not explicit, he said.
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act empowers rights holders to kick content offline without lawsuits or court rulings, von Lohmann said. "With great power comes great responsibility," von Lohmann said, quoting the 2002 movie Spider-Man. The takedown authority, he said, "shouldn't be viewed as carte blanche to catch dolphins in this huge driftnet."
News of the crackdown spread through the blogosphere shortly before a major content distribution deal between Viacom-owned CBS and YouTube soured. The companies were nearing completion of a multiyear agreement, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing sources familiar with the negotiations.
The same week, Viacom unveiled a similar partnership with the on-demand Internet television service Joost, the brainchild of Web pioneer Niklas Zennstrom. Viacom plans to offer a range of content on the so-called piracy-proof Internet platform.
Caught In The Takedown Typhoon
YouTube, which was bought by Google for $1.65 billion last year, is seemingly experiencing some growing pains as the service becomes more popular and content owners figure out how to leverage it while protecting intellectual property rights.
"I'm surprised that it took this long for a major content provider to challenge the rampant infringement going on," said Chris Wolf, an attorney at Proskauer Rose. "YouTube enjoyed a long period of 'don't ask, don't tell' with respect to the postings." Now companies like Viacom are realizing they cannot "stand by and allow their content to be stolen," Wolf said. He called Viacom's YouTube action "entirely appropriate."
Wolf hopes the crackdown will warn the Internet community that permissions are needed to use copyrighted material. Most entertainment companies support authorized use of their content, he said. "In the end, people will have grater access to video content if the rules are followed."
But John Aravosis, publisher of the liberal Americablog, said content owners are doing themselves a disservice. The blogger said he never watched Comedy Central's satirical news program "The Daily Show" before he caught clips of it online. "I watched more, not less, Jon Stewart via my TV as a result of YouTube and video-sharing. The networks don't get that."
Aravosis also has personally experienced turbulence with YouTube. His account was canceled after CNN, CBS and Comedy Central complained about videos he posted. He insists that his clips were "fair use," and said YouTube's complaint process is "absurdly cumbersome" and designed "to stop you from bothering them."
"I find it hard to believe that a good portion of its sale price wasn't based on the value of those 'violations' that YouTube is now so aggressive over," Aravosis said.
Dan Manatt, executive producer of PoliticsTV, said his online political TV network was caught in the takedown typhoon. Early one Saturday morning, he discovered that his YouTube account was suspended and that his videos had disappeared. Although YouTube has a three-strikes rule, Manatt said he only received a single infringement complaint before being booted. "We've been careful not to post '[The] Daily Show' and '[The] Colbert Report' content" from Comedy Central, he said.
PoliticsTV sends its own camera crews to document major events, like the recent presidential campaign announcement by Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., to avoid infringement accusations. Manatt also is reviewing his site's videos to make sure none are infringing.
Moving Beyond 'Crazy, Greedy Thinking'
Earlier this month, YouTube posted a message on its blog to address the buzz over takedown notices and terminated accounts. The suggestion that videos were removed because the company did not agree with their points of view "simply isn't true," a spokeswoman said. YouTube pledged never to "censor videos because they favor one viewpoint over another. We only remove videos for terms of use violation and copyright disputes."
On Wednesday, Google CEO Eric Schmidt told Reuters that he hopes to offer copy-protection technologies to stymie illegitimate video-sharing on YouTube and other Google-owned properties. He called such a tool "one of the company's highest priorities."
Alan Rosenblatt, executive director of the Internet Advocacy Center, said the communal atmosphere of YouTube and the viral nature of its content should be seen as attractive, not threatening, to entertainment companies. YouTube is an ideal promotional venue for television networks and movie studios because the site limits the length and quality of clips that can be posted, he said. "They can use YouTube to get the mass flash and then draw people to their own sites, where they can monetize it."
Public Knowledge President Gigi Sohn said if YouTube's administrators become "the copyright cops," users will go elsewhere. She also noted that the vast majority of the videos on YouTube are truly user-generated content like home movies. YouTube videos are no substitute for watching a television show and advertisers know it, Sohn said. Viacom-like actions are motivated by "crazy, greedy thinking."
The future of a successful YouTube may hinge on "some set of negotiated compromises" between the online service and content creators, von Lohmann said. "I'm not sure what they'll look like. I'm not sure anyone knows yet."
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