On Monday at the National Association of Broadcasters conference in Las Vegas, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said, "We are very close to turning this on." He's referring to Claim Your Content, the new name for Google's YouTube filtering system that would supposedly cut out your favorite music videos (and TV shows and movies, etc.). But how does it work? Will the burden be placed on the content uploaders or the content owners? With little details revealed in Las Vegas, Schmidt left the industry -- particularly the media conglomerates -- confused.
A little more to the mystery was revealed yesterday at a keynote discussion at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco. Schmidt explained further: "Under law, the copyright owner has to monitor what’s going on your sites. So we’re automating that process.” To the dismay of content owners, it's appearing that the "filtering" system may continue placing the burden on the media conglomerates to find and remove copyrighted material, a currently non-automated shitball that has already prompted a $1 billion lawsuit from lovable, friendly giant Viacom.
It's been roughly four months since an announcement was made to filter out copyrighted content from YouTube, and media companies are increasingly frustrated with what some call Google's "stalling tactics." But hey, Google's busy selling ads on all of the radio stations owned by Clear Channel Communications and acquiring ad-serving software DoubleClick for $3.1 billion. Can you blame them? And the traffic at YouTube is skyrocketing!! Besides, the filter couldn't possibly work good enough to please the media companies. Could it? Gotta please the media companies!! Sigh.
'Scuse me while I iron some wrinkles.
