My GooTube-Viacom Solution

Viacom's lawsuit against Google for alleged violation of copyright laws has merit. Viacom's property is protected by law, and although Google does not explicitly condone uploading copyrighted content, neither has it acted sufficiently to discourage it. A amicable resolution is in everybody's best interests. Viacom should get credit for its properties, YouTube should be compensated for hosting the engine, and users should be able to find and watch the content they want without being hassled by the government or sued by overzealous lawyers.

Abuse is so rampant that it is not logistically feasible for one company to police all the content by itself on a case-by-case basis, and the users of the site enjoy the content too much to report every violation -- or even many of them. A technological solution that will automate the process is needed.

But what would a workable solution look like, and how can we be sure it will work?

Tag and Flag
Viacom would not object to having its content put on YouTube as long as the company could be adequately compensated. However, the current standard formats for videos (and audio) do not allow for nested tagging that the hosting site could automatically search to identify content originators. Instead, YouTube relies on user-generated descriptions and tags, which typically don't have the sort of detail and certainty that would warrant sending automated checks to any broadcasting or media company. Just because someone believes he is tagging a video right does not mean he is.

To overcome this inadequacy, the industry leaders need to set aside their differences and create a single standard format - or multiple standard formats that are driven by a common engine. This engine must be capable of embedding tags that identify the content creator into the code of the file. That way, when such a video is uploaded onto YouTube, not only will the content owners be compensated, but YouTube will be better able to make product, service, and video recommendations to the user.

The Curse of Code and How to Overcome It
If we've learned anything over the last twenty years, it's that any code that must be written can, with enough time, talent, and effort, be cracked. Thus, even when the companies come together to write these identifiers into the code, it is assured that someone will create some program to unwrite it.

So how do the companies discourage code crackers from stripping movies of this important identifying content? Simple. Make it easier to comply than it is to crack the code.

Free Videos, Free Software
Since this strategy will only work with digital content, it will be necessary to discourage users from recording the videos themselves from their computers, and just put the videos online. It also means that the companies that will spend so much time and money developing the software must also give it away, for free. The software must not only enable users to easily download the programs, but it must also enable users to edit and splice different videos (and audio) together (while still invisibly maintaining the copyright info for each independent piece of content).

The software that enables this sort of editing must also be not just good, but superior. It must maintain the quality of the content, it must have a highly usable user interface, and it must have excellent compression capabilities.

Realistic Expectations
It is unreasonable to expect this to stop all copyright violations, but  with this setup (provided the hardware and OS platforms can handle it), I'm guessing a 90-95% improvement (especially after VCRs get phased out of existence) can be expected over time. Of that 5-10% that remains, my suggestion to Viacom and the other content creators would be to just let it go. It's not going to be worth pursuing.

Why It Would Work
Everyone can get what they want.

1. The users get their videos and platform.
2. GooTube can host it all, get the credit and collect the money.
3. After registering with YouTube, Viacom and similar companies can get compensated for their content.
4. Ads would be reaching people companies need them to reach.
5. And Apple, Adobe and Microsoft (plus whomever else wants to be involved with creating the software) can collect royalties for their contributions -- which may work out better for them than selling the software independently, in the long run.

Once the principle is deemed acceptable by the interested parties, the rest is squabbling over the details. Will it be hard to set up? Absolutely. But the numbers seem sufficient to support the effort. - Cam Beck

Comments

[mvellandi]

Producers should embrace such a system because the free version will always be a lower quality picture and decent sound, but making porting to big screens unreasonable.
Higher fidelity versions can be available through special advertiser supported businesses like Joost, or other models.

There'll still be piracy for anything put on dvd. But for shorter content the piracy rate will drop if all the work done by individuals in capturing, encoding, posting messages, uploading...is deemed unnecessary because a decent on-demand system will exist, without the interruption advertising as found on TV.