Google asked to police stolen webcam videos on YouTube
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-33817028
In a report released at the Black Hat conference, the
Digital Citizens Alliance said it had found thousands of videos
on YouTube that featured stolen footage. In total the clips had
racked up millions of hits, said the group. Webcam hijackers
profited from their trade via adverts on videos and by selling
access to some streams. Adam Benson, deputy director of the
non-profit DCA, said the trade in stolen webcam footage was
"troubling" and called on Google, which owns YouTube, to stop
relying on computer-based methods to find and remove the videos.
In other cases involving videos that showed shocking or illegal
images, YouTube had deployed teams of people to handle
complaints and hunt down offending clips, he said.
- - -
Google puts extraordinary resources into dealing with abusive videos on
YouTube -- involving both algorithmic and human assets.
At Google scale, this is anything but a trivial undertaking, and I feel
that Google should be congratulated for their efforts in this regard.
That said, I do have a very specific suggestion in this context, that
goes beyond the specific category of stolen webcam videos. YouTube
currently has the video "Report" link hidden under the "More" link on
the standard YouTube watch page player. I frequently have users ask me
how to flag inappropriate videos, and they've never thought to look
under More. While avoiding false reports and other false positives is
important, I believe that strong consideration should be given to again
making the reporting link visible on the main watch page interface,
rather than it remaining in the More submenu. And I believe it should be
quite explicit -- e.g. as in "report inappropriate content." While it
would be expected that false reports would rise under this model, it
also seems likely that proactive steps to make it clearer to users how
to flag videos in these situations may also help to stave off
undesirable and unwise government efforts at dictating these interface
and reporting regimes.
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein ([email protected]): http://www.vortex.com/lauren
Founder:
- Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org
- PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com/privacy-info
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org/pfir-info
Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
Google+: http://google.com/+LaurenWeinstein
Twitter: http://twitter.com/laurenweinstein
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com
_______________________________________________
nnsquad mailing list
http://lists.nnsquad.org/mailman/listinfo/nnsquad
