Andre Yoskowitz
11 Aug 2007 9:27
Although Google says it will be implementing an automated filtering system later this year to stop copyrighted material from finding its way to YouTube, it seems for now, humans are employed to find the "infringing" material.
According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, BayTSP, infamous for its anti-piracy dealings worldwide has hired over 20 analysts to sit around all day and search for infringing material on YouTube and other video sharing sites. Some clients, such as Viacom ask that the analysts issue takedown notices for each and every video they find but others ask to have tons of videos logged and then have one large takedown notice sent. A recent log for one company consisted of over 100,000 videos.
BayTSP has said that it bills clients up to $500,000 USD per month to track down illegal copies of software, music and video clips and that on any given month it sends out more than a million take-down notices.
"BayTSP thinks human beings will always be needed if only to inspect automated results. There will always be something that falls into the gray area," says BayTSP CEO Mark Ishikawa. The company, as well as Viacom have faced criticism from groups such as EFF for their mistaken requests to take down non-infringing content but Ishikawa says its error rate on Web videos is only around 0.1 percent."
One BayTSP analyst however, reveals the problems with the job he does. "By the time I send notices and take them down, they'll be reposted."
You take one down, and ten new ones will appear. It is a cycle that cannot be stopped however much money Viacom pays out to try to stop it.
Source:
Wired