Regardless of what you think about Scientology, this video is all the buzz right now.

Gawker was asked to remove it, as was YouTube, but it seems to have reappeared. We’ll see how long it lasts before its taken down, but while its still news, we’re posting it.

Finally. At last. Phew. About F*&ing Time.

YouTube announced yesterday that they have begun testing an anti-piracy video batching database to protect themselves from copyright infringement lawsuits. The original announcement of the YouTube Video Identification system was back in June.

According to the Official Google Blog, the Video Identification system goes above and beyond the company’s legal responsibilities, but I’m not entirely sure thats the right message for them to be putting out. “We do what we can,” isn’t the warm, fuzzy sentiment that will prevent future lawsuits.

It remains to be seen how well the technology works, and how easily it can be circumvented by modifying basic elements of a video file. Additionally, the burden of the workload seems to be put on the content owners. As with the previous system, where content owners needed to find their protected material among the thousands of clips added daily, the new system requires content owners to upload their original material into the system to be scanned. For large archives, that can be decades worth of video content.

YouTube Video Identification will help copyright holders identify their works on YouTube. We have worked with Google to develop one-of-a-kind technology that can recognize videos based on a variety of factors. As its Beta status indicates, our Video Identification is brand-new, cutting-edge stuff, so we will be constantly refining and improving it. Early tests with content companies have shown very promising results. As we scale and refine our system, YouTube Video Identification will be available to all kinds of copyright holders all over the world, whether they want their content to appear on YouTube or not.

No matter how accurate the tools get, it is important to remember that no technology can tell legal from infringing material without the cooperation of the content owners themselves. This means that copyright holders who want to use and help us refine our Video ID system will be providing the necessary information to help us recognize their work. We aim to make that process as convenient as possible.

Popular Piracy Players Go Primetime

Anyone who has dabbled in downloading music, movies and software has undoubtedly heard of BitTorrent. The technology, originally developed by Bram Cohen, caught fire within the pirate community as the most popular way for sharing large files over the internet.

But BT isn’t just technology used to rip of “the man” anymore. In Februrary of this year, BitTorrent went legit (at least as a company), and opened its doors with content partnerships from leading studios such as 20th Century Fox, Comedy Central, Lions Gate, Paramount and Warner Brothers.

Today, BitTorrent announced that it is extending its content distribution technology - dubbed BitTorrent DNA - to other publishing platforms as well. Their first partnership is with the popular web publishing technology provider, Brightcove.

P2P technology enables publishers to reduce their streaming costs and increase efficiency by delivering streams from multiple content hosts, also known as seeds, rather than delivering from the one original source.

BitTorrent President Ashwin Navin explains the benefit of using torrent technology this way: “Companies spend more than 20 cents an hour to stream video over the Internet, which means they lose money because they cannot pull in more than 20 cents an hour in advertising revenue.”

Other pirate faves are also going legit. Azereus, formerly just the most popular bittorrent client, has also begun signing deals and distributing long-form, high def and DVD quality videos, as well as niche content from leading media companies. They recently announced content deals with Showtime Networks, BBC Worldwide, A&E, History Channel, National Geographic, and Starz Media. Content is distributed using the Azereus Vuze platform.

Ben Adds: Bittorrent’s accelerator follows on the heels of similar products such as Swarmcast’s Autobahn and Speedbit’s Video Accelerator. These products can improve user experience by providing a smoother, often higher quality stream while lowering the cost of delivery for distributors but network providers appear to be the losers and have so far been hostile to them.

Increased P2P traffic as a result of these kinds of applications will increase the load placed on networks by end-users on flat-rate data plans and ISPs will react. Network capacity is a zero-sum game. If P2P lowers costs for distributors like Brightcove while increasing traffic and network congestion for providers, ISPs will be forced to raise rates in new places.

If you enjoy watching online video and expect to use a lot of upstream bandwidth, be prepared to pay more for that privilege in the future.

It took a Minnesota jury only 4 hours after 2 days of testimony to find single mother of 2 Jammie Thomas guilty of copyright infringement. She is now responsible for the $222,000 judgment for re-distributing 24 songs.

This, the first RIAA lawsuit to go to trial sets a major precedent for the music industry. Sharing music online is illegal, the law is immutably clear and a jury when presented with proof has no choice but to enforce it.

That said, Thomas’ lawyer Richard Gabriel’s defense: “Someone used her name and IP address—it’s not impossible.” was pretty weak. There are still major challenges to the recording industry to come in the form of the society has changed argument employed by Google, Veoh and DivX that media is being used in fundamentally different ways.

Major League Baseball is testing Teletrax digital watermarking technology reports Broadcasting & Cable. MLB becomes the first sports league to protect its content this way and joins broadcasters CBS, FOX, ABC & NBC already using Teletrax.

A division of Medialink, Teletrax enables broadcasters to embed an invisible digital watermark “by subtly manipulating the noise that naturally occurs in moving images”

The company also provides global monitoring, providing “full details of the station and location where your video was aired as well as the section of your footage used and the duration of broadcast.” So you can send them an invoice.

Teletrax has this down to a science for broadcast, showing how successful digital watermarking can be. But when you compare that to the state of online DRM, there’s still a long way to go.

The Purple One, Prince, plans to sue YouTube and other online outlets in an attempt to “reclaim his art on the Internet,” according to a Reuters report.

“YouTube … appear(s) to choose not to filter out the unauthorized music and film content which is core to their business success,” according to a statement.

We couldn’t agree with you more, Prince. We’ve been critical of YouTube in the past for their lack of content filtering, be it copyright material or hate speech. One of these days they are going to get tired of fighting these court battles, and just buy some filtering technology that really works.

What happened to the copyright detection technology that the GooTube announced back in April?
Clearly it isn’t working very well.

Whether or not you believe that all content should be free, the law says it ain’t. The sheer volume of open copyright infringement on video sharing sites is outright appalling.

The suit(pdf) filed by video sharing site Veoh against Universal Music Group turns everything around on the traditional system of copyright law.

Veoh’s argument, like Google’s answer to the Viacom suit enters new territory based on theoretical societal changes that have taken place as a result of the democratization of media. Both companies put the onus on the user, and argue that as a result they cannot be held liable.

Google has argued that Viacom’s complaint:

threatens the way hundreds of millions of people legitimately exchange information, news, entertainment and political and artistic expression

The Veoh argument is much more succinct. Veoh is simply an internet “service provider.” They are protected by the Terms of Use all users must agree to prior to uploading content. And because all content is uploaded by third parties who acknowledge they are the rights holders Veoh is not responsible for any infringement.

Veoh claims to have done more than is required under the DMCA, and as a result is seeking relief from a potential future suit UMG has threatened. While the suit is against Universal, if Veoh wins, it would set a precedent protecting them from similar suits by all rights holders whose copyrights have been similarly infringed.

What is so unique about this is that Universal and other copyright holders have for years been comfortable knowing that the high cost and exclusivity of content creation required producers to work with them because of built-in entertainment industry safeguards. Networks and Studios have developed policies requiring all material to be licensed and approved by E&O folks before being distributed to the public.

These safeguards all fell apart once online music distribution and online video came in. The industry responded to this disruption with the DMCA and began sending takedown notices in bulk, paying temps $11 an hour to troll for unlicensed material online. Most of these notices are sent for long tail content which is freely available but rarely viewed.

The problem is that the online video distribution model offers no way to predict whether a piece of content will be viewed 10 times of 10 million times. The amateurs creating 99% of the online video out there are not making any money. Requiring them to pay license fees for something no one views is ludicrous.

Instead what is needed is a system requiring material to be licensed when used by professional new media content producers. The entertainment industry is no longer run only by those with deep pockets. Music and stock footage should be accessible at a reasonable cost to those producing video professionally at all levels.

The entertainment IP licensing firms have had it good for a long time, they can fight it all they want, but sooner or later they too, will need to adjust to the new media environment.

“There is no middle ground. We demand that all copyrighted material be removed immediately,” said composer Hideki Matsutake at a press conference addressing YouTube’s content.

Speaking on behalf of a group of television, music and movie companies, Matsutake said, “YouTube has to stop how it runs its site and get rid of the illegal clips. We want them to reset the service.”