Google gets tough on copyright infringement

December 2, 2010 By Jeffrey Van Camp

Today, Google announced four new ways it plans on cutting into illegal piracy and copyright infringement.

The Internet ain’t the pirate-friendly place it used to be. Today, on its blog, Google announced four new anti-piracy measures it will be taking in the coming months, likely in an attempt to appease network TV channels that are currently blocking its Google TV service. The new changes affect autocomplete, Ad Sense, copyright infringement requests, and how authorized content is promoted on the search engine.

Changes to copyright policy:

Google will act on reliable copyright requests within 24 hours. If they know you’re a copyright holder and you’ve made legitimate requests before, your takedown requests will happen faster on services like YouTube. “Counter-notice” tools will also become easier to use, allowing legitimate or “fair use” content that has been removed the chance to defend itself.
Autocomplete, the feature that fills in words for you while typing searches, will no longer complete words that are closely associated with pirating and copyright infringement.
Ad Sense, Google’s ad serving program, will more thoroughly review web pages for piracy before allowing ads to be served on them. Copyright holders will also be able to request that Ad Sense be removed from pages that are illegally serving copyrighted materials.
Just as it’s done with music, Google plans to make legitimate movies, TV shows, and other content easier to find in search results, even if that content is only preview-able.

Though copyright holders can still make takedown requests, Google’s Content ID system on YouTube has become quite advanced. Content ID automatically identifies videos and audio that contains copyrighted material. Upon the copyright holder’s request, infringing content can be removed or ads can be placed into it, allowing the copyright holder to make money from the infringing videos.

While these changes are proactive, it may not be enough to satisfy certain copyright holders. TV networks would like Google to completely block all illegitimate content from its search results, effectively censoring the web. So far, Google has not done this. Would you like to see it go further to protect copyright, or is it already doing too much?

Showing 7 comments

Dave Moehle at 9:47am 7th December 2010 The Google Youtube Content ID function is a joke!! I am an audio engineer and artist, this year I was involved with a Christmas CD for an artist, he needed another song, and I suggested recording my wife and letting me play with Autotune. When finished, I published the tune to Youtube to promote the album, and the auto ID function said it matched content.... here is the kicker.... It matched it to "Believe" by Cher !!! LMAO What a Huge Steaming pile of useless !!
David at 7:22am 7th December 2010 I will no longer use google.
ted cordova at 1:21pm 4th December 2010 googleserce ioo irregulnwadays..
Internet Andy at 4:00pm 2nd December 2010 This is going to far, the net used to be the only truely free place in existance... Now it's just getting cut up by companies for their own personal gain.
Dave at 3:50pm 2nd December 2010 BS... I have repeatedly tried to report copyright infringement to Google only to be ignored.
1. @JeffreyVC at 4:33pm 2nd December 2010 Yes, it goes the other way too. Many legitimate programs are being blocked. Even big tech broadcasters like Leo Laporte's TWIT have had trouble with YouTube's Content ID system blocking episodes because of a single clip, which is likely under fair use. Hopefully the enhancements will help both sides.
2. anonymous at 10:46am 3rd December 2010 @ Dave Just so you know, the actual copyright holder (or legal representative) has to be the one to make the take down request. Otherwise, many sites would be plagued by bogus take down requests from disgruntled or malicious users.