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joshcryer

(62,265 posts)
Sun Nov 3, 2013, 02:53 AM Nov 2013

Google's Content ID software is an Orwellian censor that actually works.

I just saw a video on YouTube where the radio playing in the background was completely removed, yet the relevant sounds were preserved. I didn't even hear a radio the first time I viewed the video. I just heard the relevant sounds that were applicable to the video, and went back to the discussion. In the discussion I found that, erm, the sounds were removed, and went back to the video again to check. Lo and behold, the sound of the radio had been removed and you could hear it play for a split second when the other sounds happened. My brain never noticed.

Google censored a radio out of a video and my consciousness was unable to pick up it!

Extraordinarily creepy. It is used to stop copyright claims from being uploaded, this usually works with things like music, and I knew the system was in place, but generally a whole video would get rejected, and not the sounds actually being modified automatically.

This plays into some concepts I've been thinking about lately and how corporations can use this sort of thing to further entrench themselves via copyright and such. The pirates, the sharers, they must be stopped at all costs. And they found a way to do it "friendly" so that you don't even know it's happening.

Would you casually uploading a video that had a radio playing in the background notice the removal of that radio (assuming it's not the focus of the video of course)? I don't think you would. The big, giant, corporation, though, it has to make sure your behavior is correct.

The Ministry of Truth, realized.

22 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
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Google's Content ID software is an Orwellian censor that actually works. (Original Post) joshcryer Nov 2013 OP
every sound clip that is used in a movie is copyrighted madrchsod Nov 2013 #1
Google is enabling this technology. joshcryer Nov 2013 #2
You would not have Google or Bing or Yahoo if you had to hire Bernardo de La Paz Nov 2013 #6
Yeah you would. joshcryer Nov 2013 #10
It doesn't work anything like that. There is so much FAIL in superficial "analysis" like that. Bernardo de La Paz Nov 2013 #15
I was going by the typical telecom hourly rate. joshcryer Nov 2013 #16
More fail in your post. Again with the anti-progressive wage scale and sweatshop conditions. Bernardo de La Paz Nov 2013 #17
Link me to how many hours of video is contested. joshcryer Nov 2013 #18
This message was self-deleted by its author Bernardo de La Paz Nov 2013 #19
Sooner or later someone is going to simply set up a free website JDPriestly Nov 2013 #3
Let me Google that for you Bernardo de La Paz Nov 2013 #7
If only there was a web site that could do that for you dreamnightwind Nov 2013 #20
It's Google's call Lordquinton Nov 2013 #4
Independent producers do not have the money to hire people to find copyright violations. Bernardo de La Paz Nov 2013 #8
I know a dozen or two YouTuber's who've uploaded licensed content. joshcryer Nov 2013 #12
Thanks for the pointer, but the political slant is typical of those who never create copyrightable Bernardo de La Paz Nov 2013 #5
Hey, I posted this in the Socialist Group. joshcryer Nov 2013 #9
I understand. I found it on the main DU page under Trending Now. nt Bernardo de La Paz Nov 2013 #11
... TBF Dec 2013 #22
Maybe Google is doing more than just spying on you. Skip Intro Nov 2013 #13
Yup, we are in their control. joshcryer Nov 2013 #14
JUST SO WE'RE TOTALLY FUCKING CLEAR: joshcryer Dec 2013 #21

madrchsod

(58,162 posts)
1. every sound clip that is used in a movie is copyrighted
Sun Nov 3, 2013, 02:07 AM
Nov 2013

even the ones that a mic would pick up that has no relevance in the scene.many television shows will blur out t-shirt advertising,paintings,and other copyrighted materials.

this isn't google`s call it`s the entity that holds the rights

joshcryer

(62,265 posts)
2. Google is enabling this technology.
Sun Nov 3, 2013, 02:25 AM
Nov 2013

They don't have to make it, they could hire a few thousand employees to go over takedown requests, one at a time.

Bernardo de La Paz

(48,936 posts)
6. You would not have Google or Bing or Yahoo if you had to hire
Sun Nov 3, 2013, 05:13 AM
Nov 2013

You would not have Google or Bing or Yahoo if you had to hire a few thousand people for every task like that. Sorry, but whatever the wishful thinking for make-work jobs that can be automated, that kind of economics does not work for the companies. It doesn't even work for societies because it takes people away from more productive work.

joshcryer

(62,265 posts)
10. Yeah you would.
Sun Nov 3, 2013, 05:40 AM
Nov 2013

Google could hire 384,000 workers at $10 an hour going on their most recent profit.

THREE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY FOUR THOUSAND WORKERS.

It'd take at most 10k workers to deal with YouTube's load.

Bernardo de La Paz

(48,936 posts)
15. It doesn't work anything like that. There is so much FAIL in superficial "analysis" like that.
Sun Nov 3, 2013, 06:52 AM
Nov 2013

1) I never thought I'd see [font size = "+1"]someone advocating in a "Socialist Progressive" forum hiring people at $10 per hour,[/font] even to make a bogus claim by a bogus calculation.

2) The profit is not $8 billion as you claim. It is $3 billion (from the link you reference).

3) I never thought I'd see in a Socialist Progressive forum someone seriously using analysis that demands sweatshop working conditions. Well, on second thought I'm not surprised there are flippant off-the-cuff claims made in internet forums.

The cost to a corporation of workers is not only the nominal hourly wage. If a company is paying employees $20 per hour, their costs are more like double that, more like $40 per hour, ... if the corporation is going to house them in a heated building with lights and power and computer equipment and servers and ventilation and fire protection and parking spaces, etc., ... and if the corporation is going to provide reasonable benefits and services such as progressives usually advocate, ... then the burdened cost of the employees is about double their wages.

4) A business model that depends on lots of workers doing dull work that is better automated is not going to survive.

5) If you spent all the profit hiring workers, then there would be no money for teacher, public employee, and other pension funds to make from the investments and no money to pay their retirees. There would be no incentive for anybody to invest in a company that makes no money.

6) Advocating that thousands or millions of employees do deadly-dull boring mind-stultifying work is not progressive.



I really wish people would think things through and not have reflex ideological reactions and wishful thinking. Yes, it is a nice pipe dream that one could magically wave a wand and employ 20 million workers and have everybody happy, but it's a pipe dream and not worth wasting our time presenting us with such fantasies.

Note: the post #10 originally claimed that there would be 20,000,000 workers. The updated claim is effectively just as superficial and bogus.

joshcryer

(62,265 posts)
16. I was going by the typical telecom hourly rate.
Sun Nov 3, 2013, 07:03 AM
Nov 2013

I lowered the standards to debunk your idea that they couldn't hire that many employees.

Even at 3 billion dollars, your number, they could hire 144,000 workers. So your original contention that they couldn't hire workers to check the copyright claims is objectively false. So what if some numbers were skewed, it's a fact that they could hire workers to check the copyright claims.

Hiring workers to check faux-DMCA claims would be far more progressive than having programs that selectively edit programs and censor uploads, for the simple fact that the DMCA is a regressive law and that those workers would otherwise be out of a job (even you say it's a dull job).

The key here is that it would put the onus on copyright holders to prove their claim, because humans would be looking over the work. To prove it they themselves would have to hire millions, if not tens of millions of workers amongst them to go after claims. So, in defense of copyright, you are arguing for corporations using algorithms to put people out of a job with less than perfect accuracy, and putting the onus on other creators as opposed to the copyright holders themselves.

Bernardo de La Paz

(48,936 posts)
17. More fail in your post. Again with the anti-progressive wage scale and sweatshop conditions.
Sun Nov 3, 2013, 07:57 AM
Nov 2013

You still advocate employing them at $10 per hour.

You are still making simplistic calculations.

If we use the Seattle minimum wage of $15 per hour and account for non-sweatshop burdened costs, the actual minimum cost would be $30 per hour.

If we allow the company half the profit, so they can attract some capital to innovate and compete worldwide and continue to exist to employ some people and so that pension funds that are invested can continue to pay some teachers pensions, that's $1.5 billion.

A work year has 2000 hours, if you allow the employee only two weeks vacation and not statutory holidays. The actual work year is less, 1790 in the USA. http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=ANHRS

The employee is not going to watch videos all the time. They have to attend ongoing training and there is overhead for things like performance reviews. But the biggest factor is that everytime they might find a violation, they have to stop watching to write it up. So 1667 hours a year watching videos would still be very optimistic but a more reasonable figure to use for calculations.

1667 x 30 = 50000 dollars per year, of which the employee only sees about half.

1.5 G$ / 50 K$ = 30,000 employees.

Youtube gets 100 hours of video uploaded every minute. That is 6000 minutes of video per minute, 24 hours per day. There are 60 x 24 x 365 minutes in a year = 525,600 minutes. Multiply by 100 That is 52,560,000 hours of video a year.

52.5 million hours of video / 1667 hours per year to monitor => 31,529 employees. Google has 41,000 employees already worldwide.

Even using generous assumptions about productivity (1667 hours per year), it would still require more employees than are reasonably available.

Even so, the business model is unsustainable.

joshcryer

(62,265 posts)
18. Link me to how many hours of video is contested.
Sun Nov 3, 2013, 08:04 AM
Nov 2013

Then we'll talk.

You're assuming every single hour of YouTube is contested. It is up to the copyright holder, under the DMCA, to contest a given video. The host has no legal requirement to determined the legality of the upload. Google goes out of its way to do that. It isn't necessary within the law. Google is playing patsy to corrupt copyright law at the expense of creators.

Response to joshcryer (Reply #18)

JDPriestly

(57,936 posts)
3. Sooner or later someone is going to simply set up a free website
Sun Nov 3, 2013, 04:17 AM
Nov 2013

where people can copy music for free that the person who offers the website wrote specifically as background possibilities for fun videos.

If I had the right equipment and know-how, I could probably do it.

"A day at the beach with the kids videos -- background music"

A kiss -- background music

Funny kittens (or dogs) -- background music

That could be fun.

If Bob Dylan could write music, think what highly trained musicians could do just for fun and free.

Plus there are very old tunes that are no longer subject to copyright. Is, "Darling I am growing older" subject to a copyright?

Or how about "I'm stickin with the union" also known as "Redwing." (Oh the moon shines so bright on pretty Redwing . . . .)

There are a lot of songs like that that could be reworked into instrumental arrangements and put to interesting rhythms without violating copyright laws. It's a matter of generosity, time and equipment. There are so many people with the talent to do that. Your church organist could probably rearrange a hymn to accompany your videos. Collaborate and enjoy.

Bernardo de La Paz

(48,936 posts)
7. Let me Google that for you
Sun Nov 3, 2013, 05:15 AM
Nov 2013

Say, what a brilliant idea! Do you think somebody else might have thought of it? Let me Google that for you.

https://www.google.com/search?q=free+background+music

Lots and lots of results.

dreamnightwind

(4,775 posts)
20. If only there was a web site that could do that for you
Sun Nov 3, 2013, 07:40 PM
Nov 2013

I wonder if anyone else has thought of it:

Let me Google let me Google that for you:
https://www.google.com/search?q=let+me+google+that+for+you
First result returned:

http://lmgtfy.com/

Popping the stack another level:
http://lmgtfy.com/search?q=free+background+music

Now if only there was a site that could automate googling let me google that for you, that would have saved me a lot of trouble. I wonder if anyone has thought of it? lmglmgtfy.com? Time to step away from the keyboard...

Lordquinton

(7,886 posts)
4. It's Google's call
Sun Nov 3, 2013, 04:18 AM
Nov 2013

They get a request and act on it, then it's the up-loader's burden to prove they aren't the one's at fault, and they usually can't because the system is rigged in the favor of the corporation. Youtube is bad about censorship, it should be the Copyright holder's burden to show proof that something is up, not just a click to ruin someone'e life.

Bernardo de La Paz

(48,936 posts)
8. Independent producers do not have the money to hire people to find copyright violations.
Sun Nov 3, 2013, 05:21 AM
Nov 2013

Reasonable incidental usage is not going to ruin someone's life, even if a corporation holding a copyright might object, and in my mind there should be some reasonable leeway for such usage.

However, independent producers of music, photographs, fiction, non-fiction, and videos do not have the money to find willful blatant commercial copyright violations.

Putting all the burden on the copyright holder is not an effective societal mechanism to protect them. Copyright protections enable them to produce in the first place.

joshcryer

(62,265 posts)
12. I know a dozen or two YouTuber's who've uploaded licensed content.
Sun Nov 3, 2013, 05:55 AM
Nov 2013

But their content was taken down and they had to reupload because one copyright group had literally the copyright on a few scales or tunes used within the music or whatever that was uploaded.

Now, the original licensed content, which the YouTuber paid for, wasn't attacked, it was the YouTuber themselves. I think the most egregious forms are the bandcamp bans that have happened. People using bandcamp and some scales were copyrighted by someone else, and they lose their YouTube video.

Bernardo de La Paz

(48,936 posts)
5. Thanks for the pointer, but the political slant is typical of those who never create copyrightable
Sun Nov 3, 2013, 05:09 AM
Nov 2013

Many people's livelihoods depend on creating copyrightable material that would go away without copyright protection. I don't know if you produce copyrightable material for a living or not. There are many independent producers. Also, if you take away copyright protection, then you remove the incentive to invest millions of dollars to produce the movies and videos that you've enjoyed and would enjoy, and to invest tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce the music that you've enjoyed and would enjoy.

joshcryer

(62,265 posts)
9. Hey, I posted this in the Socialist Group.
Sun Nov 3, 2013, 05:36 AM
Nov 2013

Not sure many here are for copyright, and I understand what you're saying (I myself am writing some novels I plan to publish), I'm just saying, I posted this under the Socialist Progressive group because I think most if not all of us here are anti-copyright.

joshcryer

(62,265 posts)
21. JUST SO WE'RE TOTALLY FUCKING CLEAR:
Thu Dec 12, 2013, 07:57 AM
Dec 2013

Watch before judging. Sorry for the all caps.



Google is going totally fascist.
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