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41 Comments
- ThatsUnpossible, on 10/11/2007, -2/+18@Dracker
Do you think there's any chance that the PhD's at Google have given any thought to the many obvious difficulties of fingerprinting video, including dealing with compression issues?
I love when someone announces a new technology that they've presumably worked on forever, and you get these armchair geeks pointing out all the obvious difficulties that they encountered, as if NO ONE could have possibly thought of this problem before. - merreborn, on 10/11/2007, -1/+11"The problem with this approach is compression. YouTube's flash video format is an extremely lossy codec. Something as subtle as a fingerprint will not have a chance to survive re-encoding"
You misunderstand the concept of fingerprinting. Fingerprinting is designed with compression in mind -- the idea is to take a high-level "glance" at the general layout of the video, and compare it to an existing database of fingerprints of known copyrighted works. You're thinking of watermarking, and/or raw (md5) hashing of the video file itself. Both of these are defeated by compression. Fingerprinting is not.
This is a similar concept:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_fingerprint
I'm sure you've seen a waveform in a sound editor at some point. If you take two copies of a song, say, a lossless .WAV and a 96 kbit MP3, and look at the waveforms "zoomed" all the way out, you'll be able to tell it's the same song, regardless of compression -- they'll be quiet in the same places, and loud in the same places, even though the raw binary representations of the files will be completely different (as would their MD5 hashes, naturally). This is the same idea, applied to video. - onionizer, on 10/11/2007, -4/+12Long Live Stage6 ..
- mattsinspace, on 10/11/2007, -3/+9Seriously, every copyright law on the books needs to be re-written to reflect the different times we live in.
That way companies can concentrate 100% on providing a great product, instead of spending half their time making sure their ***** isn't stolen. - haggie, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4how do they plan on determining if the fingerprinted audio is being used under any one of numerous fair use scenarios?
an algorithm than can identify parody, now THAT would be impressive. - geminitojanus, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4"You're right. What I said wasn't that FLVing the movies as they come in will prevent fingerprinting altogether - of course it would be done while the video is processed, before it's compressed for viewing on YouTube."
The fingerprinting system can fingerprint the content whenever it receives it, at any stage of reception. It works much like a hashing system but it works off of modeling the information, not necessarily how its represented.
"What I'm saying is that fingerprinting is very subtle."
Most systems are extremely blunt because they need to be. The more subtle/sensitive, the more expensive the system, the finer grained sampling and FFTs you need to make sure the fingerprint is accurate. Some of the companies I've worked with can tell the difference between a sample played on a digital instrument vs a real life one, can identify from where in the room it was sampled, etc. However, these are also multi-million dollar systems. Google's fingerprinting system is probably going to be as low tech as possible so they don't have to invest a fortune on new servers for YouTube, and so they work at the speeds of YouTube users uploading content.
"I haven't heard of any fingerprinting algorithms where it can be recognized after going through most codecs."
You haven't heard of any fingerprinting systems at all then. The whole point of these systems is to analyze the information instead of the representation, because you can compress an audio file eight different ways and have them all be represented differently in binary, but you can't hide the fact that a Britney Spears song is a Britney Spears song without adding enough noise to make it not a Britney Spears song anymore.
I've posted it before, but obviously we need to re-educate everyone here once again how these system works:
http://ismir2002.ismir.net/proceedings/02-FP04-2.pdf
Recoding it isn't going to help. Flipping the phase of the audio isn't going to help. Turning up or down the volume, skewing the signal by a few milliseconds, all of these things can't defeat the math, only the implementation. And any break in the implementation is going to be incredibly obvious (the server's going to crash, it's going to email someone, and someone's going to laugh at how someone tried to exploit the Fingerprint server). - thatsmyaibo, on 10/11/2007, -2/+6Maybe to digg users. I doubt the average person who uses youtube will actually care about this.
- OsiVert, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4Don't forget the new site the pirate bay people are building...
- KevinJim, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4"Yo ho, altogether, hoist the colours high, heave ho, theives and beggars, never shall we die"
The song has been sung. To the piratebay we shall sail. - OKeric, on 05/12/2008, -1/+3If they're not visible then they're probably being embedded into the avi file or mpeg file itself, so once YouTube converts it to flash format, those hidden watermarks are gone forever.
- hexydes, on 10/11/2007, -2/+4This is an amazing business plan that Google has. Lower the amount of content on your video website, and hopefully that will drive more users!
Seriously, I know they got some pressure from the industry, but as has been said many times in the past, they are not obligated to do anything about it, unless they are contacted by the IP owners. That's all they needed, don't pro-actively search this stuff out.
Oh well, it'll be interesting to see what ultimately replaces YouTube. They had a good run, anyway. - geminitojanus, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2Quote your sources please? They _never_ said fingerprinting was impossible. Hell, they even have argued that they should be allowed to distribute fingerprints and thumbnails and excerpts because, well, they're insignificant pieces of data when compared to the whole book/image/sound/video file.
- Drevor, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2well ... it completely failed* on microsofts video site thingy im sure it will work just as well for google ;)
*not feeling like digging out the article - they tested it with a daily show clip - gowans007, on 10/11/2007, -2/+3What about when you use the content under fair use? what will stop the fingerprint using the hammer down?
- geminitojanus, on 10/11/2007, -1/+1"Lower the amount of content on your video website, and hopefully that will drive more users!"
Even better business plan: allow the users to run around doing whatever, and get sued every thirty minutes because one of them is uploading content they don't own.
Losing the few users who are going to do nothing but upload content they don't own is going to help their business, not hurt it. Hopefully it'll cause the users that are left to want to actually produce content instead of ripping others. - merreborn, on 10/11/2007, -2/+2Because they don't want to be sued when users upload copyrighted videos.
- rip747, on 10/11/2007, -2/+2Does this work when the person only uploads a clip from the copyrighted video? I'm wondering if a full episode of say Family Guy would need to be uploaded in order for FOX to know about it.
- Cantrellv, on 07/18/2008, -0/+0Liquent Brings New Regulatory Information Management Solutions to Market Through Partnerships With Thinspring and Eclinso
http://www.sourcerelease.com/corp/4w2?r=hmmmmn - crlake, on 10/11/2007, -2/+2So this is basically the "END" of YouTube? This is so stupid? The video quailty on YouTube is sh*t. A bunch of blurry pictures of Madonna and Maroon 5? So what? All that's going to happen is, everybody will stop uploading video on YouTube and move somewhere else.
- inactive, on 10/11/2007, -2/+2I assume they would eventually use this to prosecute 'offenders', I really don't understand how Paramount, Sony, etc.. see the uploading and subsequent 'free advertising' of their product a bad thing?
Someone is going to look back to our time in retrospect and think.. "They opposed free marketing? ***** idiots". - locojones, on 10/11/2007, -3/+3Gee, wasn't it Google who said, at trial, that such a technology was impossible and that's why they couldn't be held liable for copyright infringement on Youtube? Hypocrites.
- FRANKeB, on 10/11/2007, -4/+3Hacker hard-ons will rise to the challenge
- Uranium118, on 10/11/2007, -3/+1I thought movies and films already had dot patterns ans watermarks (not normally visible) to prevent this.
- peppino, on 06/03/2008, -5/+2It will be hacked one way or another. Not by me though. Ok? I'm not a hacker. Ah crap... people are going to think I'm a hacker. Especially since I added the part about me NOT being a hacker. It's getting worse now, right? WELL, I'M NO HACKER!
- synthsrkl, on 10/11/2007, -4/+1long live the video bay!
- Dracker, on 10/11/2007, -6/+3@ThatsUnpossible and @ajh16
You're right. What I said wasn't that FLVing the movies as they come in will prevent fingerprinting altogether - of course it would be done while the video is processed, before it's compressed for viewing on YouTube. What I'm saying is that fingerprinting is very subtle. In audio and video alike it's undetectable, necessarily so otherwise consumers would complain. However, the *goal* of lossy compression algorithms is to take out what the consumer won't notice. I haven't heard of any fingerprinting algorithms where it can be recognized after going through most codecs. Most fingerprints are designed to fool maybe one or two at best. Recoding before uploading will likely kill off any utility the fingerprint provides. Straight DVD rips are the videos these will detect. - blaze4metal, on 10/11/2007, -10/+6Fingerprint spoofs...
- TabControl, on 10/11/2007, -5/+1Does this check for the video to be like with in 80% of the original fingerprint, up to 60% or does it make sure the video is 99.9% same as the copy right video?
- Ratking, on 10/11/2007, -8/+4@ Dracker
I think that this was INTENDED to be for newly added videos. As the mass of videos is getting exponentially larger and what has been previously uploaded is increasingly combed finer and finer, looking to the future is more important than the past. - astrotrain, on 10/11/2007, -6/+1"The technology was built with the Disney's and Time Warner's in mind."
Interesting quote, I suddenly invisioned a Disney cartoon with Goofy as being a lead Technician. - ablez3, on 10/11/2007, -6/+1....thank you Google for RUINING YOUTUBE (granted..youtube already kinda sucked before Google bought it...)
- cozb, on 10/11/2007, -9/+4
didn't know videos had fingers... - MikeonTV, on 10/11/2007, -6/+1why would youtube want to have anything to do with this?
- speaker219, on 10/11/2007, -6/+1Crap. :(
- AJH16, on 10/11/2007, -7/+1@dracker
I would guess that the fingerprinting that they are talking about is based on the FLV compression systems. Compression by its very nature is dependant on patterns in the work and it would be possible to fingerprint something by introducing anomolies that would be unlikely to occur normally that would not really alter the image but would be likely to survive atleast one re-encode using a compression based on the same algorithm. Work along these lines has already been done with a fair amount of success on images. - my10cent, on 10/11/2007, -8/+2I think you are right, people are not going to use a site that spies on them.
- sowlerrmgh, on 10/11/2007, -11/+5this marks the end on youtube
- FrawQ, on 10/11/2007, -7/+1Well guys they gots new hax and wes about to get pwned. shiiiiiiiiiiiiit!
- Dracker, on 10/11/2007, -10/+3Comment Abuse, bury if unwanted. Since the site's so damn slow and duggmirror only gives you the first half of the article, Here's a paste:
By Kenneth Li and Eric Auchard
NEW YORK/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Top online video service YouTube will soon test a new video identification technology with two of the world's largest media companies, Time Warner Inc. and Walt Disney Co..
The technology, developed by engineers at YouTube-owner Google Inc., will help content owners such as movie and TV studios identify videos uploaded to the site without the copyright owner's permission, legal, marketing and strategy executives at YouTube told Reuters in an interview on Monday.
The so-called video fingerprinting tools, which identify unique attributes in the video clips, will be available for testing in about a month, a YouTube executive said.
"The technology was built with the Disney's and Time Warner's in mind," Chris Maxcy, YouTube partner development director, said, adding that, since early this year, Google has been testing audio-fingerprinting tools with record labels.
These tools will be used to identify copyrighted material, after which media companies can decide if they would like to remove the material or keep it up, as part of a revenue-sharing deal with YouTube, which can sell advertising alongside it.
Once proven to work, the technology could be used to block the uploading of copyrighted clips, YouTube product manager David King said. It aims to make the tools widely available to any copyright owner later this year.
YouTube has come under fire from several other traditional media companies, which say it has dragged its heels in offering reliable ways to identify video clips uploaded by regular users without permission.
Unable to reach a distribution agreement, MTV Networks-owner Viacom Inc. sued Google and YouTube for more than $1 billion in damages in March, charging the company with "massive intentional copyright infringement" after demanding the removal of clips of its popular shows "Colbert Report" and "Daily Show," hosted by comedian Jon Stewart.
Media companies have eyed the wildly popular video-sharing site as a mixture of opportunity and threat as they seek to reach consumers wherever they spend time.
On one hand, they view YouTube as a powerful promotional medium to drive viewers back to television or their own sites. On the other, YouTube's traffic has soared as users upload copyrighted shows globally onto the service.
Nine months ago, YouTube said such tools would be made available to media companies for testing by the end of 2006. But the reliable identification of content has proved a complex task that required Google to develop its own technology tools.
Maxcy said other media companies planned to test the technology, but he declined to name these other parties. "There are a couple," he said, referring to Disney and Time-Warner. "There are more that we can't talk about right now," he said.
YouTube officials said they have quietly been testing ways to help identify the audio tracks of video clips with major record labels using technology from privately held Audible Magic as early as the first two months of 2007.
These tools will be made available to all content owners later this year depending on the results of the tests, YouTube executives said on Monday.
"It's typically not something we talk about," Maxcy said, adding, however: "We wanted to clear the air."
Maxcy said that over time, Google planned to add additional layers of technology to better spot content on its service. - inactive, on 10/11/2007, -12/+5Fingerprinting hackers ...
- Dracker, on 10/11/2007, -14/+6The problem with this approach is compression. YouTube's flash video format is an extremely lossy codec. Something as subtle as a fingerprint will not have a chance to survive re-encoding. Unless YouTube has stored uncompressed versions of their current videos -- very unlikely -- this can only take effect on NEWLY ADDED videos.
Besides, copyright infringing material has in general been quickly removed from YouTube anyway. Fingerprinting will do nothing against the submitter - They'll get banned anyway. All the fingerprint will show is what torrent or whatever the submitter got the video from. YouTube fingerprinting won't give anyone more information than fingerprinting in general already does. Besides. This is easily countered. Just re-encode video with a lossy codec before you upload it. YouTube is so lossy that it won't make a difference, and the digital fingerprints cannot survive re-encoding.
Also, the site hosting the article is terribly slow, and this comment is being posted while the story is still in upcoming.
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