Search Results for: youtube

Thailand's on-again off-again relationship with YouTube has taken another bad turn, as the government said it will go to court to have two videos blocked that it says were a threat to national security. The videos are actually a two-part series, and run about 17 minutes in total. It accuses former Prime Minister Prem Tinsulanonda of leading a government coup that occurred in September 2006, not the generals who claim to have headed it.

Supporter's of Tinsulanonda's rivals have often accused the former chief of such an act. However, the Thai government sees the talk as confusing to citizens and that it could cause public unrest. Thus it it moving to ban the videos, and is asking ISP's to voluntarily block links while it seeks a court order. YouTube could not be reached for comment on the latest dustup.

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Pop star Prince said Thursday that he plans to sue social video site YouTube, online auction site eBay, and file trading site Pirate Bay in an attempt to reign in piracy of his work on the Internet. On a statement on his Web site, Prince said that while YouTube was already filtering out pornography, it was not filtering music and film content because it "is core to their business success." The move is somewhat surprising, considering Prince has had a history of challenging the music industry and its business practices.

Prince is working with British company Web Sheriff to assist in having the offending material removed. So far, it has successfully had about 2,000 unauthorized videos of Prince removed, however it said that new content is constantly appearing on the site. It had also removed about 300 items from eBay. "Prince strongly believes artists as the creators and owners of their music need to reclaim their art," the statement read.

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A four-month ban on YouTube in Thailand was lifted on Friday, its government said. The prohibition on the Web site was lifted after the site's officials agreed to monitor and remove any videos that may be against the country's laws or found offensive by Thais. The issue started in April when YouTube refused to remove videos that were derogatory toward King Bhumibol Adulyadej.

A Thai spokesperson said that the video site had created a program that prevents offensive clips from being displayed to Thai users. Google said that it respected the King, and "likewise respect Thailand's law and tradition and hope that we will be able to reach a mutually acceptable resolution to the current controversy."

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YouTube said Thursday that it had agreed with the MCPS-PRS Alliance, the UK organization that distributes royalties to the record industry, on a system to compensate artists for music using on the UK version of the site.

About 10 million pieces of music would be licensed for an undisclosed sum, which analysts say is likely in the tens of millions of pounds. The deal would also shelter the social video site from any possible legal actions as a result of music used on its site.

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Members of the National Music Publishers Association said Tuesday that they planned to join a lawsuit against YouTube over copyright infringement, signaling more legal trouble for Google's video site.

The original lawsuit was filed by British Soccer organization Premier League in May, and sought class-action status. Since then, music publisher Bourne has joined, and Robert Tur, owner of the Los Angeles News Service also plans to join the suit shortly.

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Lawyers for Google's YouTube subsidiary told a New York District Court judge that it would have a method to "fingerprint" videos in the fall.

The new functionality will help the site find copyrighted videos easier by looking for similarities. It is being developed in conjunction with content providers, and YouTube said it will begin using the new technology by autumn, possibly as early as September.

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After a plethora of user-submitted videos that served as fuel for the banter among the eight Democratic presidential candidates at yesterday's CNN/YouTube political debate at the Citadel in South Carolina, the unasked question today remains this: Is it really a debate?

Granted, the task of situating eight candidates together for a two-hour political spectacle is in itself a logistical nightmare. In the interest of fairness, time has to be precisely allocated. Thus, producers measure the intervals they allot for candidates' responses in seconds rather than minutes. That fact alone prompts candidates to practice appropriate, attention-grabbing responses to questions well ahead of time. Spontaneity typically languishes after having been encapsulated within sound bites.

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The iPhone's exclusive hold on YouTube on the mobile phone will be short-lived. LG said Tuesday that it had come to an agreement with the social video site to bring videos to its line of phones later in the year. Unlike the Apple arrangement, LG plans to offer its customers an option that allows a user to shoot video on the handset and then upload it to the site.

YouTube had already launched a version of its site formatted for use on mobile devices. However, the agreements such as the ones with Apple and LG tie the site more closely with the phone. LG had previously worked with Google to put applications such as search, maps and Gmail on the company's phones in the past.

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Apple said Wednesday that its update to Apple TV to allow viewing of YouTube videos was available, along with announcing similar functionality for iPhone. But the lack of 3G connectivity will limit the feature's usefulness.

iPhone users will likely not be able to stream their videos across the mobile network as EDGE is often too slow to support higher-quality full motion video. Thus, the functionality would only be usable via Wi-Fi.

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YouTube launched nine localized versions of its popular social video site on Tuesday, which will at first only place navigation and functionality in the country's native language.

Eventually, the site plans to offer localized content as well, with the featured pages targeted towards the individual tastes of consumers in each market. This would include ratings specific to that country in addition to localized comments.

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YouTube plans to launch a video identification system that will help the company sniff out copyrighted material, it said earlier this week. Tests begin initially with Walt Disney and Time Warner.

In about a month, the company will start using clips supplied by the media companies to identify unique characteristics within clips posted by users. If a match is found, the content owner is alerted.

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Microsoft on Friday re-opened MSN Soapbox, the company's competitor to Google's YouTube, after two months of being closed to the public due to copyright concerns. The updated Soapbox now lets anyone view videos without being signed, and includes filtering of content.

The filtering technology, provided by Audible Magic, is intended to allow Microsoft to identify when potentially copyrighted material is uploaded to the service. In turn, the company can more easily block access and avoid the lawsuits that are piling up against YouTube from Viacom and others.

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Google said Thursday that it had signed a deal with EMI that allows users of its YouTube social video site to view videos and content from the label's artists, as well as use portions of the video in their own content. With the signing of the agreement with EMI, the site now holds agreements on content with all four major worldwide labels.

"We're excited to add EMI Music's stellar roster of artists' content to our site and make it available to our community," YouTube CEO and co-founder Chad Hurley said in a statement. The deal further insulates YouTube from lawsuits brought by content providers over the use of copyrighted content on its site. Recently, it has been sued by Viacom, which is looking for $1 billion in damages.

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In the latest intellectual property rights holders' legal attack on YouTube, and perhaps using the most blistering language to date, England's predominant football (soccer) league has launched a class-action lawsuit against Google and its YouTube division. In its complaint, the Premier League literally accuses the newly merged companies of forming an organized "protection" racket, whose methods are to deceive Congress while extorting low license fees from selected partners in exchange for IP protection.

"In a Twenty-First Century embodiment of an age-old scheme," the League's attorneys write for a filing in US District Court in New York last Friday, "Defendants have agreed to provide 'protection' against their own infringing conduct through a series of 'partnership' agreements with various copyright owners. Put another way, when the license fee sought by a copyright owner is low enough to be deemed satisfactory to Defendants, Defendants find themselves able to shed their blinders and employ technology to safeguard the rights of their new 'partners."'

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In its response filed Monday to a complaint against it by Viacom in New York District court, claiming its YouTube division is guilty of copyright infringement against Viacom properties, Google formally invoked the terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, effectively claiming it's exempt from responsibility for the content shared over YouTube because it doesn't know what that content is.

While YouTube and its new parent, Google, have been taken to task in the past by former prospective content partners for not having adopted controls against IP infringement quickly enough, it could be the lack of such controls which is providing Google with its defense against Viacom: a "safe harbor" against liability by virtue of lack of control.

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