IMV48: Protecting Copyrights Online

The following is a transcript for IMV48: Protecting Copyrights Online. The original podcast is located here.

Announcer:

Welcome to the Internet Marketing Voodoo podcast, brought to you by MindComet. And now, here’s your host, Paul Lewis.

Paul Lewis:

Welcome to Internet Marketing Voodoo. I’m your host, Paul Lewis, and today’s topic is protecting copyrights online. Our special guest today is Kevin Smith; he’s the Vice President of LTU Technologies. Welcome to the show, Kevin.

Kevin Smith:

Thanks. Good to be here.

Paul Lewis:

Could you start by, maybe, giving our listeners a little bit about your background and about what it is that LTU Technologies does exactly?

Kevin Smith:

Sure. My background is in management consulting and really, integrating technology into various business environments. I’ve been here, with LTU, for – going on three years now, and LTU really is all about image recognition.

We have a core technology that does a really good job of being able to produce identifiers for various types of image content, be it still or video images, based on the actual image content. So that, ultimately, we can search and filter, and tag in some cases, images.

And even do some pretty interesting things with associating images with certain types of advertising or being able to identify copyright images; along with a host of various public sector applications in law enforcement and defense and intel, and so forth.

Paul Lewis:

Great. That certainly qualifies you as an expert on this subject, and, obviously, copyright abuse is something that’s fairly rampant these days, with the changes in technology, compared to the pre-Internet days.

It – as all these content sharing sites and social network sites have cropped up, clearly, copyrights aren’t being respected. What are the affects of this from a content – a copyright holders bottom line? How is this affecting companies today?

Kevin Smith:

Content owners are being affected, obviously, because their content is out there without benefit of royalty payments or acknowledgments to the owner of the content, and that clearly has an impact on bottom line. The other side of it is the loss in viewership.

So that the revenue – the value of ads on their, sort of, historic delivery mechanisms, be it, you know, cable television or other delivery mechanisms, are beginning to be diminished. Not completely eroded but there is a shift that’s happening.

So the bottom line is certainly changing, and I think a lot of, if you at least read what’s going on in the press, a lot of content owners, or at least some, we’re looking at some of the large video sharing sites, are really – I think part of it is not only a revenue loss directly to their bottom line, but it’s also a look at how other companies bottoms lines, or some of the files sharing sites, how they’re bottom lines are growing significantly, sort of on the backs of that free content – from the content owners.

So, I think, a bit of it is actual loss to their bottom line, but some of it is also the feeling that they are owed a share of the large, or at least seemly large, bottom lines of some of the file sharing sites. So it’s a multifaceted affect on the content owner.

Paul Lewis:

Yeah – clearly it's a big challenge, but can really be done about – besides the standard textspace search to track copyright infringements and trying to run that down on a very manual one-off process.

What can marketers and copyright holders do to control their company’s intellectual property? What options are available to them?

Kevin Smith:

One of things that is growing, and that we actually have pioneered approach towards, is being able to, basically, create – well we call on a DNA of your copyright contents based on the visual characteristics.

And with that DNA, being able to go out and search suspect areas – suspect URLs, where you believe that your content may be being used. That DNA is created – you know, in the context of a video, by taking a look at key frames of the video.

So doing what we call, “enrollment of those key frames,” which is just a word to identify the process of evaluating those key frames, based on the pixel contents, for their key features. So things like color, shape, texture, moment arrangement of what’s going on and those particular images.

And, obviously, with the set of those key frames that, sort of, are representative of what’s going on in that overall clip, you can then identify where similar clips are being used in other places online. It’s a way to, kind of, go beyond the way that images are being tagged, and, frankly, it’s a similar dynamic to what we’ve done in other industries.

That, prior to our involvement, were very heavily reliant on tags, keywords, et cetera, associated with the images. The tags, keywords, become stale over time. Obviously, have to be extremely relevant, not only to the person that’s applying the tag, but to the person that’s attempting to use that tag to find the content.

And, often, there’s great myths, so, in other words, you or I may look at a content set and associate a given set of terms with it. A third person, who is actually searching for that content, obviously, would have to interpret it a similar way and there’d have to be some commonality and key words.

We’re using the DNA; it takes out that, sort of, need for us to assume similar words or tags to a given set of images. We are now relying on this binary digital file identifier for that content. Which is based, again, on the pixels of the image, not on our interpretation of those pixels.

Paul Lewis:

Right. So prior to that type of technology, we’re basically counting on the copyright infringers to use keywords that sort of alert us, for an example, with an image, if you had - a copyright infringer used the term “Jessica Alba,” then, it would be reasonably easy to track that person down.

But if they used “hot sexy model” as the term, then, you’re not – they’re not gonna show up on your list, so they skate by. But if you actually analyze the image itself and identify those pixels, then that image is going to show up regardless and – do I understand your technology correctly in that you’re not altering either the images or the video streams by injecting identifiers, you are analyzing them and determining an identifying footprint – sort of, like a fingerprint; is that accurate?

Kevin Smith:

This is correct, it – a fingerprint is a very good analogy. So we’re not modifying the content in any way. We’re analyzing the content as it comes across and creating this descriptor, this identifier, for that content.

So it’s an identifier that’s associated with the content, but it’s not dropping in a watermark, for instance – or a digimarc, as some people would call them, for a given content; and, then, looking for that digimarc in other places.

It’s really saying, “Here is the content; here is the, most importantly, the pixel content and that given image.” And that pixel content, through the analysis – you know, this enrollment process, produces a DNA that’s representative of what’s going on in that image.

Paul Lewis:

So let’s take it to the next step. Once someone uses technology like this to identify that their copyrights are, indeed, being violated and used without authorization, what are the logical next steps on the Internet to pursue that?

What – is there some advice that you can give copyright holders as to – do they begin with communication? Do they begin with legal action? What do they do with international infractions? What’s some steps that a copyright holder should, reasonably, take at this step?

Kevin Smith:

I guess the options vary. An option pins, if you will, primarily on the business decision that the copyright owner chooses to make. We, as a technology provider, necessarily, don’t advise in that way. You know, should you “Take Down Stay Down?”

Should you issue some type of warning if they, otherwise, are a good partner, but you just wanna give the warning that they’ve used – should you file lawsuits in cease and desist. There are a number of different paths to pursue, potentially, and all can make sense depending on the decision of the copyright owner.

The only, I guess, point of view that I would add to those various choices is that I think that we’re seeing, right now, that a lot of people, or at least some content owners, have made the decisions that they wanna go after folks that are sharing their copyright material and make them stop, basically.

“Take Down Stay Down,” remove the material, et cetera, and over time, the trend certainly looks that it will make sense to find ways to partner with places that are using your copyright material. Whether it’s in some type of mashup; whether it’s in some type of rebroadcast, et cetera.

Because, ultimately, as you sort of elude to in the question, there’s so many places that your content can, ultimately, end up online. Be it foreign countries, sites that are native to foreign countries, the myriad of places that people go to find what some refer as, sort of, “pirated video.”

It’s very difficult to, ultimately, sweep the entire Internet of your content and be sure that it’s not being used anywhere. At some point in time, it seems that more content owners will probably want to figure out a way to negotiate agreements with people who are attempting to share their content online, or use their content online.

So that they, ultimately, are being compensated or credited as they choose, for the use of that content.

Paul Lewis:

That’s very interesting. I think that copyright owners with large media libraries, or archives, would potentially even set up a group that specifically looks at how do we structure partnership relationships? How do we allow people to participate in these partnership relationships?

So very similar to where it was – just the legal group and it was all handled by the stick. Maybe there’s a partnership agreement where both parties can find new revenue streams for the media, and actually expand the media’s total reach, it's a very powerful concept. That’s very interesting.

Kevin Smith:

I think it is interesting. I think it holds some pretty interesting potential for the content owner. When you think about – if, ultimately, you come to the conclusion that your content will be used in some way, shape or form, and that you may be able to take down, sort of, the known large actors, if you will, file sharing location, at a given point in time.

But it’s gonna be used in all these – in a number of other places in unauthorized ways. The incentive, if you will, for the content owner is that now, through these negotiator agreements, you at least have some say in how your content will be used.

You may be able to do some pretty creative things and reach some audiences. If you just think about something as simple as broadcast news, and how 24-hour cable news networks, and so forth, have just completely modified, if not just dismantled the old model of the, you know, 6:00 news.

Well, even now, the broadcast 24-hour news service model is being significantly modified by the ability to mashup, and, sorta, create your own news report, if you will, or your own spin or your own approach to communicating what’s going on.

So I may shoot a pod on a given topic, and I have some footage, which is mine – that I’ve generated – user generated. And I have some footage from other reports on the topic that I, quote, “mashup,” into that report. Well, if you are the owner of that mashed up content, maybe you could partner with me.

Maybe you could either sponsor the pods. We could work together; you know, some of your advertising, your existing relationships with various advertisers through your other, either web delivery channels or even on-air delivery channels, would be interested in taking a look at – working together to sponsor ads on that given pod.

Because, over time, at least if the trend holds, there’s gonna be significant viewership in the, sort of, “mashed up” environment. And as a content owner, to lose that revenue or lose that potential viewership and – which equates to ad revenue, it’s too much to, ultimately, again, if trend holds, to sort of let go.

So it’s very interesting. I mean, I think there’s incentive on both sides to figure out a model of cooperation, as opposed to, as you said, sort of the legal root with the stick, if you will.

Paul Lewis:

I love it when new technology not only provides – I guess, the initial impetus for this type of technology as an enforcement viewpoint. But to think about the new implications of where this takes us to actually bring in new preferred revenue streams, greater exposure, better ratings.

I mean, if you really look at what Nielsen or Arbitron and all those rating systems are doing is trying to find out how often media is being watched. What a great technology to explore how broad, on a worldwide basis, this media is being used, and then, develop a partnership revenue stream for those companies.

So I think that’s very, very powerful – very interesting state of where things are going. Well, listen, Kevin, we reached the part of the show where we need to move to our “Truth or Marketing.” Are ‘ya ready to play?

Kevin Smith:

I am.

Paul Lewis:

All right. So question No. 1: Copyright owners prevail in court against YouTube and shut YouTube down. Truth or marketing?

Kevin Smith:

[Laughter] I would say that’s marketing.

Paul Lewis:

[Laughter] Question No. 2: User-generated news reporting and mashups, a site that supports that – or a series of sites that support that, become the No. 1 source of news in the world, surpassing CNBC and MSN, and any of the other current news sites that are out there.

Kevin Smith:

I think that could be true.

Paul Lewis:

All right, last question: This year, hybrid car sales hover at about 1 percent. By 2009, hybrid car sales exceed 5 percent of the overall cars sold.

Kevin Smith:

I think that’s true or at least I’m optimistic that that would be true.

Paul Lewis:

All right. Well, there you have it. We’ll see – we’ll call you back in 2009 and see if your predictions were true. Listen, Kevin, thank you so much for joining us on the show today. If people wanted to find out more about LTU Technologies, they could go to your website at “www” “LTU Tech” dot com? Is that correct?

Kevin Smith:

Let’s say yeah – “www” dot “LTU Tech” – and “tech” is “T-E-C-H,” dot com.

Paul Lewis:

Perfect. So thanks again for being on the show today.

Kevin Smith:

You’re welcome, my pleasure.

Paul Lewis:

Okay, and for the rest of you out there, thanks for tuning in to another episode of Internet Marketing Voodoo. I hope we’ve provided you with some important and relevant information in our rapidly changing times. Take care.

Announcer:

For more information on this week’s topic, visit “Internet Marketing Voodoo” dot com. This podcast has been brought to you be MindComet, The Relationship Agency.

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