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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...
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...