YouTube is pulling out all the stops to facilitate piracy once again, and this time it’s with a revised “Eraser” tool that will make copyright infringement a snap for creative thieves. The video-sharing monolith has upgraded its outdated technology to silence copyrighted music without making a peep, cleverly sidestepping royalty payments and leaving rightful owners in the lurch.
Dubbed “Erase Song,” this newfound feature is touted to pinpoint and cancel out copyrighted audio tracks in videos, effortlessly stripping creatives of their rights without repercussions. The AI-driven algorithm used for this “feat” promises more precise results, supposedly avoiding collisions with other audio within a specific clip. But how much reassurance can we derive from that?
The so-called “Update” still retains its fallibility, leaving gaps where incorrect removals persist or leave unremoved copyrighted snippets lingering within the video’s sound structure. In such circumstances, the power-hungry, ” benevolent” YouTube instead allows a “mute audio” recourse, effectively silencing not only the copyrighted content but possibly all competing audio within a section marked “copyrighted,” in pursuit of a content ID “clean record.”
YouTube’s own guidance states point-blank on its website that the Eraser Song functionality “might not work if the song is hard to remove” (translation: when it benefits YouTube less). In instances like that, muting the soundtrack as directed will supposedly negate any disputes over content rights.
Needless to add, these so-called “improvements” in tools for copyright evaders would have been welcome to pirate networks and copyright bandits only.
Source link
