YouTube’s failure to create a copyright detection software to help avoid legal entanglements may put spell trouble for the GoogTube. Since the announcement of Google’s purchase of YouTube on October 9, the answer to every question of copyright violations and lawsuits has been this software. It was the also arguably the pretext that allowed Google to imagine partnerships with major media companies and music labels. Probably more to come on this…
Financial Times:
YouTube said on Friday the technology would not be formally launched this year and YouTube’s offices were closed until the new year. While providing no further details about when the system would be made formally available, it said tests of the system had been under way with some media companies since October and the system remained “on track”.
If the delay lasts for more than a week or two into the new year, suggesting more than just a slight technical hitch, “this is certainly going to be a serious issue”, Mr McGuire (a digital media analyst at Gartner) added.
The delay to the software could also spell wider problems for Google, which has been trying to negotiate partnerships that will give it access to content from a number of big media and entertainment companies. The company could not immediately be reached for comment.
I have little sympathy for Google’s position in this. I have told Google for years (going back as far as 2001) that they should be working on content-based multimedia information retrieval, i.e. searching media-rich objects based on the actual content of the object, rather than using metadata or Web 2.0-like “diggs” or some similar approach. If you have an algorithm for identifying similar looking/sounding content, it allows you to detect copyrighted songs and video.
Instead of developing such content-based multimedia search algorithms, however, they spent their time developing email and chat and other non-search web software.
So now they need content-based algorithms to protect a $1.65 billion investment, eh? What is the saying? Day late and a dollar short?