Too much legalese to get in to. Bottom line: Court says that Veoh - and presumably other video sharing sites - are protected under the DMCA provided they make a reasonable attempt to remove copyrighted content.

Peter Kafka at Alley Insider has the deets and the full court doc.

Interesting to Peter, and to me as well, that the court is getting into the distinctions between what a platform “can” do and what it was “designed” to do. I didn’t see the Napster vs. Veoh comparison coming at all. Have enough legal content, and the law gives you a pass on the copyrighted stuff as long as you make an attempt to monitor and remove it. Good deal.

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.

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.

“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.”

The National Legal & Policy Center today posted a list of the Top 50 movies and television programs that are widely available through Google Video and YouTube, in efforts to call attention to The Big G’s lack of attention to copyright protection.

Their intent is to “expose the pirating of copyrighted material by finding and posting as many apparently pirated works as possible.”

In case anyone thought they were bluffing, they were kind enough to post a PDF with screenshots.

I am a staunch advocate for the protection of copyrights. And I’m sure that we’ll find a technologically sound and financially beneficial solution to distributing media in a digital environment.

But I would like to know, however, why they put Miami Vice at #6 when its only been viewed 663 times. Yes, I see that the chart is ordered by “Days Posted.” But 663 times over 276 days is roughly 2.5 views per day. Jesus Camp with its whopping 48 views? Bewitched with 242 views over 207 days? 1.1 view a day. It seems a stretch to say that piracy is a $2.3 billion loss for the movie industry when Miami Vice makes your Top 10 list. To be clear, I’m not supporting piracy in any way shape or form. Just pointing out a minor flaw in the way they are presenting their evidence.

CNet’s Greg Sandoval explores the impact of P2P file sharing on Hollywood movie releases. Do they build buzz or bust ticket sales?

Personally, I don’t believe that file-sharing helps build buzz. Its the result of buzz. People want to see a movie without standing in line, sitting in a bad seat, and paying for an overpriced ticket. But they download because they already have made the decision whether or not to see the film. Just not how they’ll see it.

How do you see it?