Google Video Guilty of Piracy?

The National Legal Policy Center Lays out a compelling argument about why they are, and plans to expose them for doing so.

In a world filled with sites streaming copyrighted video content, it’s ironic to point out that one of the world’s most high profile and valuable companies is consistently breaking the law with seemingly little hassle from copyright holders bent on taking such sites down.

Now it’s no secret that copyrighted video content winds up regularly on Google Video, the last one I observed being Michael Moore’s "Sicko" which was subsequently removed after a few days of being available, though a friend has mentioned that "300" is up on there right now as well.

But, the National Legal and Policy Center, an organization dedicated to promoting "…a single standard of ethics in public life through research, education and legal action," takes umbrage with this dirty little secret and criticizes Google for not doing more to filter out copyrighted content.

In fact, it states that its goal is to "… to do our best to expose the pirating of copyrighted material by finding and posting as many apparently pirated works as possible."

Why Google Video? "For starters, we are focusing on Google Video because it hosts many full-length movies and concerts and because it has received less attention than YouTube, also owned by Google."

Now who are these guys you may ask? This is apparently the group that successfully forced Hillary Rodham Clinton to open up the meetings and records of her secret health care task force back in 1993, and then in 2003, helped kill the the $30 billion scheme for the Air Force to lease, rather than buy, 100 mid-air refueling aircraft. So this no ordinary, fly by night group looking for headlines. It’s the real deal.

So why Google Video? I think it’s because they find it in poor taste that copyright holders like the MPAA and others seemingly go after the companies who can least afford to fight their case in court like TorrentSpy, DailyMotion, IsoHunt, PeekVid, YouTVPC and others. Sites like Suprnova and LokiTorrent were sued out of existence for doing the practically the same thing as Google Video and it has yet to be taken offline or forced to filter copyrighted content. Is a company worth some $158 billion USD and home to some of the finest programmers and engineers in the land really incapable of such a technical feat? I doubt it.

I think it just merely proves the point that copyright holders go after the easiest targets, whether it be starving students or unemployed teenagers. I can’t blame them really but, the least they could do is knock off the whole "its so unethical" routine and admit they usually take the path of least resistance while the big fish swim free.

The National Legal Policy Center has a chart up, with screen captures to boot, which lists the the "Top 50" most viewed copyrighted movies, the top 10 of which I have listed below.

1) Title 2) Number of Views 3) Days Up

Farenheit 911 – 739,111 – 284

Jet Li – Twin Warriors – 425,107 – 285

Stay Alive – 443,577 – 284

Spiderman 3 – 353,529 – 37

How High – 217,283 – 161

Alice In Chains (MYV Unplugged) – 224,051 – 250

Cars – 208,683 – 95

Harry Potter & The Goblet of Fire – 165,367 – 434

300 – 154,289 – 67

Will Google Video now be the next target of the MPAA or will it continue to pick on the "little" guys?

digg_url = ‘http://www.digg.com/tech_news/SURVEY_Users_of_File_Sharing_Networks_Don_t_Mind_Ads_for_Free_Content’;

Looking for more stuff to watch or download?
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MPAA targets YouTVpc and Peekvid
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3 Quick Ways to Watch Movies for FREE!
3 quick ways to watch TV shows for FREE
BitTorrent torrent sites & search engines
Azureus – A Beginner’s Guide to BitTorrent Downloading
uTorrent – A Beginner’s guide to BitTorrent downloading
Watch The Simpsons, The Office, Jackass, South Park, Lost, X-Men, and More, On-Demand For Free
News Tip? Comment? Suggestion? jared@zeropaid.com

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