By Alexandra Berzon

It’s hard to forget the hilarious spoof video featuring George Bush and Tony Blair singing a touching rendition of “Endless Love.”

The parody, a huge hit on Google Video, YouTube, and other video-sharing web sites, pokes fun at the unusually close relationship between the United States and British leaders who plunged their countries into the disastrous Iraq war.

Iraq

The video, which fuses the Lionel Richie/Diana Ross duet with video clips from mainstream media outlets, is considered by some a form of political speech and an example of “fair use”—the exemption to U.S. copyright law that lets people borrow and transform copyrighted material to comment, criticize, teach, or report news.

But new video-filtering tools that MySpace and YouTube hope will automatically detect and block copyrighted content could prevent commentators from posting such videos in the future. To free-speech advocates, these “fingerprinting” tools are a dangerous threat to an emerging form of free speech on the Internet.

“It’s like using a sledgehammer on a thumbtack,” said Anthony Falzone, director of the Fair Use project at StanfordUniversity’s Google-fundedCenter for Internet and Society.

StanfordGoogle-fundedCenter

Pressure to adopt filtering tools has come from large media companies that are threatening legal action against web sites they believe have not done enough to block users from posting copyrighted content.

Bending to Pressure

Web sites such as News Corp.-owned MySpace and Google-owned YouTube have begun to bend to the pressure, even as they risk alienating users who love the sites’ edgy and freewheeling atmosphere.

YouTube is seen to be moving slowly, but MySpace has already started to filter all content owned by Universal Music Group, NBC, and Fox. MySpace has also invited other media companies to sign on to the system to have their content blocked.

Users who try to post videos containing content in the database are supposed to receive a notice that their video is ineligible. MySpace users can appeal, but their video remains blocked while the complaint is reviewed.

A key issue is that the fair use law is vague and difficult to interpret. John Palfrey, executive director of HarvardLawSchool’s BerkmanCenter for Internet and Society, said he was concerned that an automated system could end up curbing fair use content that is socially desirable.

LawBerkmanCenter

“That would be a terrible outcome,” he said. “The onus is on the intermediaries to make sure they’re implementing it in a way that doesn’t kill the golden goose.”

Man vs. Machine

Vance Ikezoye, whose Los Gatos, California-based company Audible Magic invented the tools that MySpace and YouTube are licensing to filter content, said the problem isn’t with his technology. He argues that the issues are legal and business-related.

Ikezoye, whose Los Gatos, California-based company Audible Magic

Mr. Ikezoye said he expects to be given a clear, numerical, fair use definition to plug into the filtering tools. For example, if a clip is 20 percent copyrighted content and 80 percent homemade content, Audible Magic’s tools could declare it “fair use” and allow it to appear on the site.

Ikezoye said

Humans need to come up with the formula, Mr. Ikezoye said, and then the technology will do the work from there.

Ikezoye

But free speech advocates rejected Mr. Ikezoye’s argument because the fair use exemption does not include numerical definitions. Free speech advocates and others involved in video search contend that, given the right context, almost any piece of copyrighted material could be protected under fair use. They say the law is too nebulous to automate.

“With technology like this, there’s no ability for a human to make a reasoned judgment,” said Mary Hodder, founder of the video search site Dabble. “Fair use loses in this context. That’s really important because that’s the genre that a lot of the users do on these sites.”

Fine Line

Fine Line

Alex Laats of video search site Podzinger took a far different view. He said the debate over blocking copyrighted content is short-sighted and could have a disastrous effect on mainstream media groups and the video-sharing sites that are trying to walk a fine line between content providers and Internet consumers.

Instead, he argued, all parties should be working on revenue-sharing systems that automatically compensate copyright owners for video posted on user-generated sites. With such systems, which YouTube cofounder Chad Hurley has said the company intends to implement, no video would ever have to be blocked because copyright owners would be compensated.

“It would be a disaster for people to start pulling down this content,” said Mr. Laats. “It would be a disaster for the audience, and for the content owner. Let’s not focus on tearing it down. Let’s focus on making sure they’re getting paid.”