
Show HN: Spotter – Search for copies of videos on the internet - joaodmj
https://dashboard.spotter.tech
======
mysterypie
It's still beta (i.e., slightly buggy) I think.

I did their suggested Pepsi video search[1], then picked a lower ranked
YouTube video titled "GiveMeNews"[2] where it claims that "61% of your video
was found here".

But that video consists a single frozen frame from the Pepsi ad and someone
talking for a couple minutes. One frame isn't 61% of the video.

[1]
[https://dashboard.spotter.tech/reports/1?platform=youtube](https://dashboard.spotter.tech/reports/1?platform=youtube)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKrDECFhosA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKrDECFhosA)

~~~
joaodmj
Hey mysterypie. Yes we just launch and want to collect as much feedback as
possible.

Thanks for that note, we are checking that. The good thing is that we were
able to found a single frame from the original video :)

~~~
nefitty
Yeah, that actually sounds like it could be very useful as well! Good work on
this so far.

------
smnscu
It'd be interesting to build a tool to detect all the copyrighted material on
YouTube that bypasses the automated checks. Some of the tricks used:

* picture-in-picture: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rp1aOWUSRZg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rp1aOWUSRZg)

* mirrored image

* higher pitch

* other?

~~~
abdias
How will you deal with fair-use?

~~~
Asooka
You don't have to, fair-use is a defence only applicable in court, the easiest
way is to sue everyone and let their lawyers assert fair-use. AFAIK it's not
unlawful, nor will you incur any fines, if you sue someone for using your
copyrighted material if it ends up being declared fair-use. Additionally, I
think youtube is even more lenient than that towards people asserting unlawful
use of their copyrighted material. In short, fair-use does not exist outside
of the courtroom and no amount of "I own no copyrights" or "No copyright
intended" tags, or citing the copyright code on your videos can summon it.

~~~
dickbasedregex
YouTube already does an absolutely horrible job with handling take-downs and
fair use. I have zero interest in seeing any systems or algorithms built that
would aid the sloppy, lazy, and greedy organizations shot gunning take downs,
even on their own material and channels (always funny).

~~~
yomly
This amuses me greatly, got any tangible examples?

~~~
emodendroket
jwz posted a thing about his long saga fighting a takedown of horror movie
reviews.

~~~
yomly
>even on their own material and channels (always funny).

I was referring specifically to this? Am I right to infer that DMCAs are so
scatter gun that publishers have managed to DMCA themselves?

~~~
Nadya
_> Am I right to infer that DMCAs are so scatter gun that publishers have
managed to DMCA themselves?_

Yes this has happened multiple times. Notable one that's somewhat recent that
comes to mind: [https://torrentfreak.com/warner-bros-flags-website-piracy-
po...](https://torrentfreak.com/warner-bros-flags-website-piracy-
portal-160904/)

------
aaaawweeeee
Do you track what people search? What do you do with that data? Who do you
share it with? What's the business model, if any?

~~~
Kiro
Who says they're looking to monetize?

~~~
nerdponx
Suggested by the fact that it's not Free Software, or even open source.

~~~
Kiro
Suggested, yes, but anecdotally I release a lot of web services in the wild
that is not open source and I don't have any plans on making any money off
them. It's not binary "OS or monetization".

------
doh
Congratulations to the team on the release. It's exciting to see more
companies entering the market.

We built a similar service [0] although from the first look it seems we took a
different path. Our approach is to crawl all videos and music on the web,
fingerprint the multimedia content and search through the fingerprints.

We just recently passed 4B indexed videos (we run a bit large scale [1]). Thus
our results are bit different. Here is an example for gangnam style for
comparison [2].

Anyway good luck. Feel free to reach out if there is anything we can do to
help.

[0] [https://pex.com](https://pex.com)

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13259415](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13259415)

[2] [http://i.imgur.com/3KDKHsI.png](http://i.imgur.com/3KDKHsI.png)

~~~
joaodmj
Hey doh! Thanks for reaching out. We have no videos indexed and we are doing
strictly visual search - we are Computer Vision evangelists :)

Thanks for your availability, likewise: feel free to drop us a note.

~~~
dang
Please don't reply to people with their usernames; HN's threaded comments make
that redundant, and it breaks the sense of normal conversation in much the way
that repeating people's names out loud would.

~~~
joaodmj
Thanks for letting me know. I'm new to HN :)

~~~
dang
You're welcome, and welcome!

------
rwinn
Jumped through the hoops and signed up to submit my own video, still "Queued
to analyze..." after 1h.

~~~
rwinn
Got the results now, posted one of my own videos I know has been reuploaded
multiple times:

    
    
        0 total copies were found
        with 0 total views
    

Original: [https://vimeo.com/132700334](https://vimeo.com/132700334)

Some known re-uploads:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0oSKFUnEXc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0oSKFUnEXc)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onbi3Ws8fng](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onbi3Ws8fng)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCE-
QeDfXtA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCE-QeDfXtA)

\---

Great concept, would love if it actually worked.

~~~
doh
I know you didn't ask for this, but I took the liberty to run the video you
asked for through our data and here are the results [0]. As you can see,
pretty decent amount of them found across many different sites. These results
look much more impressive for massively viral videos, but even this paints an
interesting picture.

[0]
[https://www.dropbox.com/s/2913aiiug2bvwb9/pex_Inside_an_Arti...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/2913aiiug2bvwb9/pex_Inside_an_Artificial_Brain_HD__copies_05112017.csv?dl=0)

~~~
rwinn
Impressive results! Even where the original is distorted and mixed with other
videos it's detected. I take it you use a different technique than spotter?

~~~
doh
Thank you. Can't comment on their technology as I have no idea what are they
using. Our service is very complex environment that consists of many different
parts and pieces. We run at a huge scale (many thousands of servers) and
indexed more than 4B videos. That allows us to do what you see above.

------
personlurking
FYI: You can only test the default videos. Trying any other (Youtube) video
URLs leads to them asking for you to sign up in order to see the results.

~~~
joaodmj
Hi personlurking! Yes, because we just launched today and need to control our
servers we are asking for you email to send you the reports and hear back from
your experience. Thanks for trying :)

------
gondo
similar service [https://pex.com/](https://pex.com/)

~~~
joaodmj
Thanks gondo! Please try our tool and give us feedback ;) Which one got the
best results?

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mholmes680
just fyi - got flagged as malware in my company network.

~~~
joaodmj
Hi mholmes680! That's important for us to know. Can you share some details?
What page were you in or what were you doing?

~~~
mholmes680
Just clicked the link directly from HN, redirect ends up "This domain is
blocked due to a security threat."

no real info on that page that i can share though. My company is very
aggressive with security and maybe out of date blacklist?

~~~
joaodmj
Thanks mholmes680... probably related to the previous owner... not sure how we
can change that. If you have any insight please share

And thanks for the heads up :)

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Sir_Cmpwn
Sounds like an excellent tool for censorship and copyright enforcement. Can we
not make things like this?

~~~
darkstar999
A knife can be used for good or for evil. You don't stop tools from being made
just because they can be used in bad ways.

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
Wrong. You should always consider the potential for abuse when you make
software. OP seems to be pushing a commercial angle as well - who exactly do
you think is going to pay?

