Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

You’ve got to feel bad for YouTube.  After becoming the Internet’s darling for such fun gags, it wants to get a day job.  No longer content with just the clearing house for pranks and short clips, it wants to be in the full length movie business as well as the TV show business. 

YouTube served up this kind of content at one time but was forced to take most of it down over copyright claims.  Now YouTube is working with Hollywood to gain their trust and their content.

But it isn’t an easy road.  Sure YouTube has the traffic, 81 million folks in September but they also have the baggage.  And it’s more than just past indiscretions.

Find out what’s next for YouTube.

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Sections: Video, Content, Web, Websites, Online Music/Video

You don’t even have to be illegally sharing your files to have the gaming firms after you apparently.  Just ask Gill and Ken Murdoch. 

They’re senior citizens who don’t even play computer games and had never even heard the term “peer-to-peer” until they got a letter in the mail telling them they were being accused of sharing the game Race07 by makers Atari.  Their case was eventually dropped, but there are still hundreds of people this is happening to according to a Which? Computing magazine investigation.  More details after the break.

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Sections: Computers, Networking, Security, Software / Applications, Gaming, Miscellaneous, Peripherals, Web, Downloads, Web 2.0, Web Apps, Web Browsers, Websites, Online Music/Video

“The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to five years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.“  So says the warning on all movies released since early 2004. Well, granted many get a bit of a chuckle every time they pop a movie into their player and see that flash across their screen knowing they’ve just downloaded it from somewhere on the ‘Net, but still…it’s the thought that counts. And apparently, the thought of RealNetworks is that they want to make it a little easier for their customers to burn those dvds; since they are coming out with a new product called RealDVD which allows users to burn a digital copy of the movie of your choice…ummmm..legally?  Guess that remains to be seen.  Because there hasn’t been enough chatter about the whole piracy/fair use thing lately.

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Developed by the Canadian company Idee, the TinEye search engine is a fantastic new breakthrough in the realm of search engines that allows users to search for their photographs anywhere on the Internet.  Users are able to actually search for a picture by uploading it, and then having the program run a pixel by pixel search across the ‘Net. All found instances of the image are flagged, regardless of whether it has been cropped, merged or digitally altered in any way.

Leila Boujnane, CEO of TinEye, has the following to say about their program.

“TinEye does for images what Google does for text. We are not limited by words, Google can only find an image if a particular search word is in proximity to it. We have the ability on a large scale to tell somebody where one of their images has appeared and how it’s being used.“

The program is also not limited by the quality of the input image according to Boujnane.  She states that “anything you would consider a preview image or low resolution image would work. I can take a photograph of a picture in the Louvre with my mobile and upload it to TinEye and it would dump me on the page of that Wikipedia page related to that painting.“

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Sections: Computers, Software / Applications, Imaging, Web

Your right to privacy is no longer as private as you once thought or hoped. By court order, Google is being forced to hand over all the records of every video watched by YouTube users. This information will include users’ names as well as IP addresses, and the request has Google lawyers arguing invasion of privacy.  The judge in his ruling, however, found this argument “speculative” and ordered them to turn over the logs on a set of four terabyte hard drives.

The purpose behind the lawsuit is that Viacom intends to prove that infringing material is more prominent than user-created videos. This would most likely increase Google’s liability if they are found guilty of contributory infringement. The suit was originally filed in March of 2007, with Viacom seeking over $1 billion in damages. Google tried to argue that the law provides a “safe harbor for online services so long as they comply with copyright take-down requests.“  Apparently Judge Louis L. Stanton, the senior judge on the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, who issued the opinion and order, wasn’t buying it, since the order also requires Google to supply copies of any video that was taken down for any reason.

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Sections: Web, Downloads, Websites, Online Music/Video, Google

The Guardian is reporting that according to a study by the industry group British Music Rights, 95% of 18-24 years old engaged in what it calls “home copying” which refers to things such as making copies of CD’s and MP3 files. The study reported that 2/3rds of that group copied five CD’s a month for their friends.

Is this something new? Not really. Anyone who grew up in the 80’s probably has fond memories of making mix tapes with their double deck boom boxes, or by using their stereo systems to copy LP tracks onto cassette, and when the VCR came out, people eagerly copied and traded tapes of their favorite shows and music videos.  Is sharing bad for the music industry? The RIAA would have us all believe so, but others argue that it’s actually beneficial because it exposes people to music they otherwise may never have heard. The debate rages on.

This recent study was made as the UK government ponders the introduction of an exception to British copyright law that would allow citizens to legally copy music they have bought for private home use. However that turns out, it’s a sure bet that home copying is here to stay.

Read [The Guardian]

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Sections: Web, Downloads, Online Music/Video

Swedish prosecutors have charged the founders of one of the most popular file-sharing torrent sites - Pirate Bay - with conspiracy to break copyright law.

On the basis that Pirate Bay does not host the ‘illegal’ material, just offering links a la Google to material that already exists on the internet, it does seem like their reputation is going against them as there must be hundreds of sites and blogs across the internet that do the same thing, maybe not to the same level sure.

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Sections: Web, Websites, Online Music/Video