

Ask HN and PG - Justin.tv Question? - keltecp11

How does Justin.tv get by still with so many people broadcasting pirated and copyrighted material?  How have they not been shut down ie. Napster?
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qeorge
_(Not affiliated with either party, but here's my take)_

Simple: clear fair use, and responsiveness to takedown requests.

Take NFL games as an example:

At any given time you can probably find a channel showing any NFL game, but
you won't be able to find one that lasts the whole broadcast. That means
they're pulling copyrighted content in < 3 hours, which is pretty damn good.

Simultaneously, you can find lots of UGC that isn't pirated on justin.tv
(i.e., the site exists for more than piracy).

~~~
pmjordan
I strongly suspect you're right. The same is true for tennis grand slams.
Watching the last few tournament stages is practically impossible, streams are
shut down within minutes. Oh, and the infuriating "max number of viewers for
your country reached" message. Not that you can watch it anywhere else for
love nor money.

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Caligula
Justin TV's legit content consists of video game streams and young girls life
casting.

A vast majority is pirated material. If you look at entertainment, every
single one is pirated on the first page(by viewers). They are responsive to
takedowns but what then happens is a new NFL stream of the game pops up or
goes private. They are legal in following takedown requests but it highlights
that the DMCA is not very effective on live streaming sites.

Viewer numbers of their 5 biggest sections front page:

Sports-17k pirate

Entertainment-10k pirate

Gaming-2k legal

Producers-3k legal(overlaps with gaming)

Social-1k legal(barely...)

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andrewljohnson
If you hear an answer from either PG or justin.tv, I suspect it will have been
reviewed by a lawyer :)

The owners/investors of that company aren't going to create any public text
that could be used against them later in a lawsuit.

~~~
emmett
The short answer is just a google search away:
[http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2009/08/12/justintv-
steps-...](http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2009/08/12/justintv-steps-up-
copyright-protection-efforts)

The long answer: Like any site with UGC, we have to deal with the issue of
copyrighted content. We deal with it by going above and beyond the
requirements of the DMCA and working with copyright holders like Fox (among
hundreds of others we have relationships with) to make sure their rights are
respected.

I'm a founder of Justin.tv. This hasn't been reviewed by a lawyer.

~~~
physcab
Just curious- do you have to pay any licensing costs? And if so, do you know
offhand how they compare to music licensing costs?

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jasonlbaptiste
DMCA basically gives you 72 hours to take something down. Now that worked in a
world where content was intended to have an unlimited lifespan ie- music,
youtube videos,etc. With livestreaming video, the damage is done within a few
hours or less.

Livestreaming sites have put content fingerprinting technology in place and
often respond very fast to takedown notices. Even the fastest of responses
will still cause damage. So does that mean JTV puts in a system where content
owners can just start taking things down at all like ebay does with auctions?
I don't know, that's scary.

I would never cancel cable because I can watch sports on a livestream site.
The quality is usually crap with foreign commentary. Odds are the people
watching that content don't have cable anyway (like myself).

There are two missing pieces to the content side of things when it comes to
shifting people away from cable subscriptions: local news and sports. Local
news could be solved in a fairly straight forward manner. Sports is up to each
league,etc. If I were the NBA, NFL, MLB,etc. I would start working with
livestreaming sites to do test runs of pay per view content. Once most sports
games are ubiquitously available on the internet in real time and for replay
Comcast should be scared. If Comcast actually had their shit together, they
would have purchased JTV/Ustream/Livestream when they were cheap.

Right now, the real value of live video isn't from illegal sports or content,
its from real time interaction. If you've ever seen a celebrity or music
artist interact with their fans on a live video site, you know the platform is
something special. The numbers that Jonas Brothers/Ustream/Facebook pulled in
were absolutely mind blowing.

~~~
evansolomon
I am the VP Marketing at Justin.tv, this was also not reviewed by a lawyer :)

"DMCA basically gives you 72 hours to take something down"

I don't believe there's any law or precedent that states 72 hours (or any
number of hours) as a required turnaround time. More importantly, for the vast
majority of infringing broadcasts, we don't take 72 hours (or any number of
hours) to respond to a request for takedown. Instead, the vast majority of
owners of infringing content (over 150 companies including probably all
copyright owners you can name) have access to a tool that lets them take down
content instantly without any intervention on our part.

"Livestreaming sites have put content fingerprinting technology in place and
often respond very fast to takedown notices"

When you refer to these sites, I'm curious which ones you have in mind other
than Justin.tv. We do have live finderprinting and we do respond instantly to
most takedown noticed. However, I don't know of other live sites that are
doing either of those. In fact, Ustream was sued this summer due to not
responding to takedown notices and Fox's content group legal counsel has
specifically stated that Livestream has not gone to the same measures to
protect copyright holders as Justin.tv.

[http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/17/ustream-sued-by-
boxing-...](http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/17/ustream-sued-by-boxing-
promoter-over-pirated-broadcast/)

[http://newteevee.com/2009/11/11/justin-tv-live-
fingerprintin...](http://newteevee.com/2009/11/11/justin-tv-live-
fingerprinting-goes-live-this-week/)

[http://dl.dropbox.com/u/110031/JTV/Video/content%20filtering...](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/110031/JTV/Video/content%20filtering.mov)

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paul9290
Hulu and Justin.TV makes me ask, "Who needs Cable TV & why would I ever
subscribe again!" Love watching marathons of my favorite shows!

Thanks Justin!

~~~
keltecp11
I should note I canceled my cable subscription because of it.

~~~
quizbiz
Hulu will be moving to a subscription model soon.

~~~
dzlobin
Overstatement; Hulu will soon move to a subscription model for premium
content, current content stay free.

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Paton
Considering a show called "New Moon - Looping" already has 33,000+ views...
I'm not sure.

