Google Video Called On Copyright Violations

Back in July the NLPC examined the extent of copyrighted material being hosted on Google Video and released a "Top 50" list of copyrighted movies. In the latest inspection of the site, conducted from September 10 to September 18, the NLPC uncovered 300 additional instances of copyrighted films, including 60 movies released this year.

The NLPC says that the 300 pirated films have received 22 million views in the past year and that many other copyrighted works continue to show up on Google Video. Google maintains that it respects the rights of copyright holders and is developing tools for copyright holders to identify and remove their work from the site.

"While Google faces numerous legal challenges related to the posting of copyrighted content on its video sharing websites, there is also a growing chorus who believe that evidence of Google’s seemingly indifferent attitude towards Internet video piracy has resulted in a legitimization or ‘mainstreaming’ of video piracy which will have broad and damaging implications for all intellectual property owners," the letter, signed by NLPC Chairman Ken Boehm, accompanying the report reads. "We share those concerns."

Mr. Boehm’s letter also points out Google’s promise that it intends to install video filtering technology on it video sharing services. "Google has been promising video filtering technology to screen for copyrighted content since at least the fall of 2006," said Boehm.

"On July 27th of this year, Google again announced that it would launch a filtering system by September of this year to prevent pirated material from being uploaded to its YouTube video sharing site. As of this Monday however, it appeared that Google still had not implemented the promised technology either for its YouTube or Google Video sites."

Estimates of Internet piracy theft are as high as $2.3 billion in lost revenue to the U.S. film industry.

Watchdog Group Growls At Google Video

The Top 50 list includes the name of the movie or program, the production company, the number of days it has been hosted on Google Video and the number of viewers. The NLPC says all the content in the Top 50 list was still available on Monday, July 9th.

"We realize that this is probably a ‘drop in the bucket’ in ferreting out copyrighted content among the millions of videos posted on Google Video, YouTube and other popular video sites, but we hope that our efforts both raise awareness of the issue of video and music piracy and hopefully serve as a resource for copyright owners to check if their content is on the sites without their knowledge or approval," said National Legal and Policy Center’s Chairman Ken Boehm.

The NLPC says that movies like Warner Brothers Blood Diamond, Columbia’s Spiderman III and Disney films like Meet the Robinson’s as well as Cars are available on Google Video. The NLPC will update the Top 50 list periodically to expose potentially infringing content.

"It’s difficult to know for sure whether all of the content included in the Top 50 list is being hosted in violation of copyright laws – NLPC makes no assertions — but it’s a reasonable assumption that much of the content has been uploaded without the copyright owner’s knowledge or approval," added Boehm.

Google has been embroiled in a slew of copyright infringement suits over the past year, including Viacom’s $1 billion lawsuit. Google has maintained they are protected under the DMCA and that they comply when asked to remove infringing content.