The National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC) sent a report yesterday to members of Congress detailing the extent of likely copyright violations on Google Video.
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.
