SAN BRUNO, CALIF. — To help keep their videos off YouTube, media companies may need to give their videos to YouTube.
YouTube parent Google Inc.'s long-promised method for reducing piracy, unveiled Monday, relies on TV networks, movie studios and other content owners to provide the video-sharing service with master copies of their videos.
YouTube won't post those videos. Rather, it plans to use software to find unique characteristics in the clips so it can detect copies posted by YouTube users without permission. Media companies can ask Google to automatically delete every unauthorized copy -- or to slap ads on the clips and promote them.
"We really need the content community to work with us," YouTube product manager David King said. "They need to help us help them."
Google said it has tested the program with such major media companies as Walt Disney Co. and Time Warner Inc.
If successful, the program would reduce the burden currently placed on content owners, which now have to scour YouTube and other video-sharing sites for pirated material so they can request its removal.
But some consumer groups complained Monday that the new technology could delete some online videos that use snippets of copyrighted works appropriately, for criticism, satire or education. Those so-called fair uses are protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
YouTube's changes "will infringe on users' rights and they will for sure chill speech," said Gigi B. Sohn, president of advocacy group Public Knowledge.
YouTube said the system allowed for fair use of video material but declined to say how.
The website has long been at odds with some TV studios, music companies and others who argue that it built its huge following with help from purloined shows, videos and sports footage. Media giant Viacom Inc., England soccer's Premier League and other content owners have sued Google, alleging copyright infringement.
In its defense, YouTube says that it has taken numerous steps to reduce copyrighted material appearing on its site without owners' permission and that it follows the federal copyright act by removing improperly posted clips when asked to do so.
While Google was working on the technology, its relationship with some media companies eroded, Forrester Research analyst James McQuivey said.
"I'll trust that the technology is hard to pull off," McQuivey said. "But they should have introduced this in January or at least said this is our goal, rather than stand behind the Digital Millennium Copyright Act."
