
  How Serious Is Justin.tv About Fighting Live Broadcasting Piracy?  - jasonlbaptiste
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/15/justin-tv-piracy/
======
evansolomon
Cross post from TechCrunch:

Justin.tv employee here.

I want to clear up two things. First, we get more uploaded video than YouTube
by about 30% (yes, I am serious) and monitoring all of it is not feasible.
Over 150 copyright holders (ex. MLB, ESPN, etc) have access to a tool that
lets them instantly remove videos. The request is filed as a DMCA take down
notice and processed immediately. We do not take any delay for human
processing, it's immediately removed. We could process normal email messages,
as other companies do, and take down the videos several hours later. That
offers a substandard solution for live content though, so we added this extra
level of protection.

Second, the live fingerprinting is a double trigger system. We send our scans
to Vobile, who matches it against copyright holders who have allowed us to
scan for their content. That is running with Fox and has been tested with the
NFL/NBC.

In the screenshot you posted, many, if not all of the rights holders for those
broadcasts could choose to remove them instantly.

~~~
jonknee
That's great, but when at any given time a very high percentage of the most
popular content is obviously in violation it doesn't seem like you're very
serious about it. You don't need to monitor everything, just monitor what's
popular.

A $6/hr intern could rid your site of pirated content, but you don't do that
because it would also rid your site of viewers.

~~~
emmett
Teams of lawyers for every major copyright holder already have a tool that
lets them take down any pirated content that they want. What makes you believe
giving that same tool to a $6/hour intern would somehow magically fix the
problem?

The real solution is probably going to be the filtering we're adding. So far
it's been very effective for Fox; we're working on getting other copyright
holders signed up.

"Justin.tv has taken a leadership position among live streaming sites by
entering into an agreement with Fox to work together on copyright protection
for live streaming content. Justin.tv, with consultation from Fox, is
implementing an innovative and industry-leading filtering solution designed to
prevent copyrighted content from appearing on Justin.tv without
authorization."

[http://www.businessinsider.com/justintv-signs-deal-with-
fox-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/justintv-signs-deal-with-fox-gets-
serious-about-copyright-problems-2009-8)

~~~
jonknee
I think an intern would work because simply looking at the popular content on
your site leads to obviously pirated material. Whatever you have isn't
effective if your leader boards are full of copyrighted content.

There are a lot of smart people working at Justin.tv so this isn't news to you
--it's clear that part of your game plan is to get away with peddling stolen
content. Having a takedown button for media partners is a way for you to look
the other way while most of your popular content is illegitimate. YouTube did
it and they are rich now right?

~~~
abstractbill
Having an intern look at our content would weaken our claims to protection
under the DMCA.

Having an intern look at just _some_ of our content would leave us wide open
to legal action from anything that slipped through the net.

No intern would ever be able to review all of our content, because our users
are uploading content at a rate that's 30% higher than Youtube's users.

So what you're actually proposing is: We should weaken our legal position, and
then we should encourage legal action.

Like it or not, the current legal framework makes it a bad idea to have
employees reviewing our content.

------
vlad
Isn't TechCrunch one of the first investors in UStream.tv, the competitor to
Justin.tv with almost as many users and live streams? Why do they choose JTV
to write about instead of the possibility that anybody could attempt to
broadcast anything on any live video web site? You can also find minutes and
minutes of NFL (professional football) video on YouTube right now that have
been posted for years and years as an example, and YouTube is about 5 years
old and is owned by Google and should have even better technology than
Justin.tv, a two year old startup, right?

I would understand the point if other live video sites (and static video sites
like YouTube) had better technology to detect this stuff, but they don't.

This is like complaining about Apple for rejecting lots of developers during
the app store beta when other mobile companies didn't even have anything
similar. Surely, they could have hired $6/hr interns to approve more
developers!

~~~
wgj
A commenter on TC makes the same point:

"I think Techcrunch is displaying some significant bias here.

First of all lets get the fact straight – one of Techcrunch’s advertisers and
partners is Ustream a company that is fighting neck and neck with Justin.tv.
Ustream has paid Techcrunch as an advertiser, streams their events for free,
and has even setup a live cam in their office.

I think Michael Arrington should come clean in any story written on Techcrunch
where a competing company has this level of connection with his blog.

Secondly, Justin.tv is taking a lead in the industry to try to prevent
copyrighted content on the site. This story has done nothing to look at the
other sites in the industry and compare Justin.tv’s efforts with theirs.

Lastly, Fox a big content company, has already stated publicly that Justin.tv
has taken a leadership position on this front.

I think this story is unfortunate for Justin.tv – but I wonder why Robin
didn’t write the same story about Youtube."

------
gyardley
Breaking a rule or two (or turning a blind eye to users that are breaking a
rule or two) in an attempt to get large is a tried-and-true startup strategy.
If you get large, you'll hopefully have access to the resources required to
figure out a way out of your mess, and if you don't - well, most startups fail
anyway. This is actually an area where startups have an advantage, because
more established competitors have something to lose.

An example: the online mortgage lead generation companies were breaking every
regulation in the book when they started - mainly due to ignorance. (Who has
time to read state mortgage law?) But by the time the attorney generals of
various states started suing them, they had the cashflow to begin the very
expensive process of getting registered as a mortgage broker in fifty
different states. Worked out rather well for the bigger parties.

------
thehigherlife
I don't really understand why, at least for sports, they care as much. You are
still watching the advertisements that they want you to watch; the only
difference i can think of is how difficult it is to track how many people are
watching. If anything, this just proves that there is a market for putting
live sports online with the same commercials and people will still watch.

~~~
qeorge
Sports are by a mile the most valuable content on television, and the only
thing that you can't watch online.

Any revenue they could make with online ads would be irrelevant compared to
the TV contracts. Here's some anecdotal data:

 _Baseball:_

\- Fox pays MLB $625 million per year to show the World Series, every other
NLCS and ALCS, the All-Star game, and 26 Sunday Night games. In addition, Fox
pays $43 million per year for an additional 2 games during the week with no
exclusivity.

\- Simultaneously, TBS pays for one Sunday afternoon game per week, and the
remaining NLCS and ALCS games not shown on Fox. I couldn't find a price-tag,
but based on similar deals $200MM/year is about right.

\- On top of that, ESPN pays $80 million per year for 2 games on Wednesday and
the Sunday night game.

\- In addition, the rest of the games are sold to major and local networks.
There are > 2400 MLB games in the regular season alone.

 _Football:_

\- ESPN pays $1.1 billion per year just to show the Monday Night Football game

\- NBC pays $600 million per year for the Sunday night game. Interestingly,
the Sunday night game is the most expensive 30 second spot on a recurring TV
program, at $400,000 per spot.

\- If you're at all familiar with the NFL, you'll know about the ongoing drama
between the NFL network, Comcast, TWC, and DirecTV. I don't know what DirecTV
is paying for the rights to broadcast every game, but I would be shocked if
its less than $1 billion per year.

And that's just some of baseball and football. There's no way in hell online
ads are worth threatening that cash cow.

~~~
dschobel
Unless I'm mistaken though, the OP's point is that if you're streaming the
video directly from the network justin.tv's stream will still have the FOX,
ESPN, et al, ads in place.

The real threat would be a live stream from the game or as another poster
said, PPV content.

~~~
qeorge
Right, but of my monthly TWC bill, $45 is for internet and $90 is for cable.
If I cancel the cable because I can watch everything online, they'll have a
very difficult time recouping that $1080/year another way.

That's bad for the content producers as well (NFL, MLB, etc). They don't want
their best customers going out of business. Nothing online can offer them
anywhere close to the money they get from cable and DirectTV contracts (yet).

So although there may be some additional revenue opportunities through online
viewing, neither the NFL or the cable company will risk cannibalizing their
main source of income.

------
jsm386
I'm thinking, despite the employee's post to the thread, that Justin.tv is not
very serious at all - or rather that they hope that the system they've setup
isn't used much.

I know probably a dozen people who've used Justin.tv to catch an out of town
game, especially during the NFL season; I don't know a single person who has
ever used Justin.tv for anything else. Most of those people don't even know
it's meant for something other than picking up a game.

------
ErrantX
I thought Justin.tv did away with popup ads... and yet there they are again??
:)

Anyway.. a lot of the channels they must know about! they broadcast film/tv
regularly...

