Altitude with Auditude

Who says you can’t teach an old dog new trick?! Here, we are referring to the old media of television networks & Hollywood studios. Media corporations have been fighting a hopeless battle to regain control of their content, sending out endless waves of DMCA (The Digital Millennium Copyright Act) notices in a vain attempt to take down countless clips scattered across the web.
Many ways and means have been devised to prevent people from uploading copyrighted content on the Internet, ever since YouTube heralded the era of user-uploaded videos. Automated techniques for identifying pirated material have been used in filters to get rid of offending user-posted video clips before copyright holders file “take-down notices,” or worse, sue. But now, these traditional media are looking to profit from the practice.

Just last year sites like Hulu have made progress – it’s finally possible to legally embed a clip of The Office in your blog. YouTube also launched a system, VideoID, that identifies video clips and then offers copyright holders a choice between removing the material or letting YouTube place ads on it in exchange for a piece of the revenue. However, insofar, publishers continue to lose out on millions of video clips that were uploaded without permission.

In an attempt aimed at boosting revenues and capitalizing missed opportunities, MySpace has partnered with Viacom’s MTV Networks and content “fingerprinting” company Auditude to deliver ads to copyrighted MTV Networks’ videos that users upload to its site. Fingerprinting software tested or implemented at video-sharing websites to date requires copyright owners to provide films or shows so key identification points can be pinpointed and logged by computers. MySpace will be implementing the system with initial support for content from MTV Networks, aims to take advantage of the viral nature of music videos and clips from The Colbert Report, Punk’d, and Sarah Silverman.

According to founder Nicholas Seet, Auditude leverages a new and novel technology they developed, that enables them to track media content–including ads, programs, music, and all forms of media, online and offline. This means they can track ads on TV and radio, and copyrighted content on web sites such as YouTube. They present content owners with a central and comprehensive source of information on how their media is being distributed and used worldwide.

Even more impressive: Auditude can fingerprint a portion of a video that is only a few seconds long and identify which show it was originally taken from. Once the clip is identified, Auditude will overlay an ad within the video, allowing publishers to monetize their content even when it was uploaded by someone without permission and without any legible tagging information.
After years of being told not to upload these videos, users will probably take a while to warm up to the idea. Instead of pulling down those illegal videos and getting audiences to view at the ‘right’ place, Hollywood studios go right out and park themselves at where people are viewing the programs.    While media companies monetize this digital pirated booty, pirates who think they are pulling a fast one by taking programming into their own hands become unwitting accomplices to the content owners.
The phenomenon of turning users as delivery channels will probably catches on.  Content owners flocking to form partnerships with MySpace will be expected as there isn’t currently another video platform out there that is able to identify and monetize content this effectively. The Auditude advertisement platform might be implemented elsewhere as other sites try to catch up.
Exemplifying the saying, “If you can’t beat them, join them!” Auditude and its partners are empowering consumers and building a better business model