MW
09-27-2007, 07:42 PM
September 26, 2007
By MIKE WENDLAND
CONVERGENCE EDITOR AND TECHNOLOGY COLUMNIST (http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070926/BLOG01/70926058/1001/NEWS)
Google may be the world's favorite search engine but it's also a favorite destination for video pirates. Despite its prohibition about the posting of copyrighted material and its claimed filtering systems for preventing the display of pirated material, it's pretty easy to find and watch full length Hollywood movies on the site that were put there by apparent pirates.
I just watched a copy of the summer blockbuster The Bourne Ultimatum. I wasn't alone. Some 186,000 other Google Video users had done the same thing, even though the move is copyrighted and so new that it is still playing in some theaters.
This was bargain basement piracy. Someone took a camcorder into a movie theater and just rolled as the movie played. In the middle of it, someone in a row up front can clearly be seen getting up from his seat and heading out for more popcorn or something.
In today's Techcast, I talk to Ken Boehm, chairman of the http://www.nlpc.org/">National Legal and Policy Center, a Washington, D.C.-based public interest watchdog group. Boehm's organization just sent a report to members of Congress detailing their research effort to examine the extent of apparent copyright violations on Google Video.
Besides the Bourne Ultimatum, they found 300 instances of other copyrighted films, including over 60 movies released this year. Among popular summer releases on the Google Video site are Shrek the Third, Oceans Thirteen, and Knocked Up.
So what, you ask? Estimates credit Internet piracy theft for nearly $2.3 billion in lost revenue to the U.S. film industry. He suggests in the Techcast that such losses mean fewer movies will be made.
By MIKE WENDLAND
CONVERGENCE EDITOR AND TECHNOLOGY COLUMNIST (http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070926/BLOG01/70926058/1001/NEWS)
Google may be the world's favorite search engine but it's also a favorite destination for video pirates. Despite its prohibition about the posting of copyrighted material and its claimed filtering systems for preventing the display of pirated material, it's pretty easy to find and watch full length Hollywood movies on the site that were put there by apparent pirates.
I just watched a copy of the summer blockbuster The Bourne Ultimatum. I wasn't alone. Some 186,000 other Google Video users had done the same thing, even though the move is copyrighted and so new that it is still playing in some theaters.
This was bargain basement piracy. Someone took a camcorder into a movie theater and just rolled as the movie played. In the middle of it, someone in a row up front can clearly be seen getting up from his seat and heading out for more popcorn or something.
In today's Techcast, I talk to Ken Boehm, chairman of the http://www.nlpc.org/">National Legal and Policy Center, a Washington, D.C.-based public interest watchdog group. Boehm's organization just sent a report to members of Congress detailing their research effort to examine the extent of apparent copyright violations on Google Video.
Besides the Bourne Ultimatum, they found 300 instances of other copyrighted films, including over 60 movies released this year. Among popular summer releases on the Google Video site are Shrek the Third, Oceans Thirteen, and Knocked Up.
So what, you ask? Estimates credit Internet piracy theft for nearly $2.3 billion in lost revenue to the U.S. film industry. He suggests in the Techcast that such losses mean fewer movies will be made.