YouTube finally unveils the anti-piracy filters

YouTube finally rolled out the long-awaited technology that automatically remove copyrighted clips, hoping to solve the movie and television studios fed up with the website’s persistent piracy problems. The filtering tools are designed so the owners of copyrighted material can block their stuffs from appearing on YouTube, which has become a havoc in its two-year existence. The tools also give the owners of copyrighted material the option to sell ads around their material if they want the clips to remain available on YouTube. To find and remove copyrighted music, YouTube already uses separate filtering tools developed by Los Gatos-based Audible Magic Corp.

As the YouTube’s traffic getting bigger, movie and TV studios became increasingly frustrated with the rampant piracy fuelling its popularity, although YouTube said it has followed copyright laws by removing any protected video upon request. YouTube’s critics have argued that the site turned a blind eye to flagrant piracy so it could show more appealing material to build its audience and pump up its value. Google prized San Bruno-based YouTube so much it paid US$1.76bil to buy the site 11 months ago and after that YouTube has been working with Google engineers ever since to develop the tools needed to flag copyrighted video, said David King, a YouTube product manager. Google and YouTube began promising the new copyright protection technology six months ago.

It’s still too early to tell how YouTube’s new filtering system will affect the Viacom suit, said Mike Fricklas, Viacom’s general counsel. “We are delighted that Google appears to be stepping up to its responsibility and end the practice of infringement,” he said.

YouTube’s previous lack of copyright protections for video content prompted Viacom Inc to sue it for US$1bil (RM3.4bil) for showing thousands of clips that the New York-based company owned.