jducoeur: (Default)
jducoeur ([personal profile] jducoeur) wrote2007-10-16 07:27 pm
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And another arms race begins...

The big tech news of the day is that YouTube, as expected, has come up with a super-secret technology that will allow them to automatically detect and delete copyrighted materials being posted on the site. This is being ballyhooed as a fundamental sea-change.

Any bets on how long it'll take for the first circumvention program to come out? Oh, it'll be trickier than usual: since Google is (I assume) not going to release any details of the algorithm, the hackers will have to use trial-and-error to figure out what it's doing. But I confess, I'd be genuinely surprised if it takes a month before it is not only cracked, but packaged in an easy-to-use way. I mean, this is basically waving the red flag in front of the bulls, and the hacking community loves a challenge.

Of course, Google will then begin to tweak and refine the algorithm, and the back-and-forth will get going in earnest. They might even eventually get it good enough to prevent the posting of any reasonably high-quality copies. But I will be *very* impressed if they can do it in less than ten rounds...

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