The MPAA wants YouTube to get tough, not only on pirated movies, but also on fake pirated movies uploaded onto the site to trick users.
Most YouTube users should be aware of these fake uploads, where from the preview image and even the video's length, it appears to be the correct content. But playing the movie will only result in a blank video, usually with a message to visit a third party site to obtain the actual movie. Users who throw caution to the wind and follow the links will rarely find what they're looking for, and will be instead met with malware or unrelated downloads.
The presence of fakes on YouTube also makes it increasingly hard for pirates to find real pirated content, and contributes to giving piracy its bad reputation when it comes to malware. It may in fact be one of the best ways to deter users from going down the piracy route, at least on YouTube.
Which is why is was unexpected that Hollywood, via the MPAA, has made fake pirated uploads an issue in its on-going war against Google. The MPAA tweeted an article written by Vox Indie's Ellen Seidler, who went into detail just why fake uploads are a problem, not just for pirates, but for content owners too.
The crux of the problem, according to Seidler, is the fact that YouTube's anti-piracy system, Content ID, can fill up with these fake videos when rights-holders try to manage content removal.
"Removing them is an incredibly time-consuming task as it seems YouTube has purposely chosen to make the Content ID dashboard as inconvenient as possible for users," writes Seidler.
It appears Seidler and the MPAA both want YouTube to take proactive action against these fake uploads, even if it could make YouTube movie piracy viable again. The MPAA may also see any proactive action on YouTube's part as a thin-wedge in its campaign to get Google to proactively remove pirated content, not just from YouTube, but from its search results too.
[Via
Vox Indie,
MPAA]
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