Google Unveils Content-Protection Solution

YouTube Video Identification Launches in Beta-Testing Form

By Glen Dickson -- Broadcasting & Cable, 10/16/2007 11:10:00 AM

Google formally introduced long-awaited technology that it said will help media companies to halt the unauthorized posting of their content by its YouTube unit.

Called “YouTube Video Identification” and now launched in beta-testing form, the system uses digital-fingerprinting technology to identify copyrighted content. Media companies would submit content to Google, which would create a digital fingerprint of that media file and keep it in a database. Content uploaded to YouTube would be checked against the database for the fingerprint.

Through the system, copyright holders could choose what they wanted to do with their content on YouTube -- whether to block it from the Web site, promote it or even license it for advertising purposes, Google said. According to media reports, nine major media companies including Disney and Time Warner have already helped Google test YouTube Video Identification.

The search giant has been promising such a system since its $1.65 billion acquisition of YouTube last fall. At the National Association of Broadcasters’ show in Las Vegas last spring Google CEO Eric Schmidt (said the system, then called “Claim Your Content,” was in testing with several partners and Google was “very close to turning this on.”

Public Knowledge, which advocates for fair-use copying rights and fights what it considers copy overprotection by studios, was not pleased with Google's announcement of its new video-identification database, but it put most of the blame on copyright holders.

“On balance, this is a sad development," said Public Knowledge president Gigi Sohn in a statement. "It’s a shame that Google was pressured by the entertainment industry into devoting resources to a limited system that could restrict the free flow of information while increasing the control content companies have over otherwise lawful uses of material.”