Reappearing on YouTube: Illegal Movie Uploads

Google’s YouTube has a familiar problem: Plenty of illegally uploaded movies are finding their way onto the website. Hundreds of full-length feature films including blockbusters from Walt Disney and Sony's Columbia and Tristar studios have been illegally uploaded to the world's most popular video site, generating hundreds of millions of views over the past year. Why the movie studios didn't block the films by using a special YouTube program—called Content ID—for identifying their copyrighted content is a mystery.

On Feb 7, after inquiries by The Wall Street Journal, Disney used Content ID to successfully block some of the classic animated films that have been on YouTube for as long as a year, including "Peter Pan," "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," and "Fantasia." Representatives of Disney, Sony, MGM Studios and Warner Bros. declined to comment on the situation or why they haven't blocked the films using Content ID. A YouTube spokeswoman said the site "invested heavily in copyright and content management tools to give rights holders control of their content on YouTube" and that more than 4,000 media companies use Content ID. The site is continually improving the technology behind Content ID, she said, adding that to date it has identified more than 200 million copyrighted videos that were uploaded.