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Instead of just pulling down pirated clips, copyright owners are choosing to use YouTube’s copyright filters to generate advertising revenue, Google said Wednesday.

Late last year, Google introduced a copyright identification system called Video ID, which tracks unauthorized videos. It enables a copyright owner to either block the clip, leave it up, or enable YouTube to sell ads against the material.

Google said on its blog Wednesday that copyright owners were choosing to turn a buck from unauthorized clips 90 percent of the time.

“It’s clear to our (more than 300) Video ID partners that our technology has created a framework that allows copyright holders to sanction the creativity of their biggest fans,” Google said. “These partners now have a new way to successfully distribute and market their content online.”

These statistics can obviously be used to counter arguments that YouTube costs copyright owners money. Viacom filed a $1 billion lawsuit against Google and YouTube for allegedly encouraging users to commit copyright infringement.

Google has always said that most of the smart media companies choose not to war with YouTube. They are clasping hands with the Web’s No.1 video-sharing site and using it to promote shows and generate ad revenue.

But here’s the juiciest part of this story. Profiting from pirated videos can shove copyright owners smack into a moral dilemma. A source at a large media company told me recently that executives there were debating that exact question. Several start-ups are working on technology that will track unauthorized videos wherever they exist on the Web and then insert an advertisement into the clips.

I just got off the phone with Fred von Lohmann at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who chuckled when he heard about the debate.

“The second (big media companies) say yes to profiting from those clips this way, it will make it hard for them to argue that ISPs should be forced to screen for unauthorized material. It’s hard to make that argument when you’re re being compensated.”

The EFF’s von Lohman also brought up another interesting scenario. If someone uses, say for example, a piece of Prince’s music to criticize the musician–which would fall under fair use–von Lohmann wonders whether Prince would be paid for such a use?

“There would be a question about whether that would be appropriate,” von Lohmann said.

Source : CNET News.com

This molecular-beam epitaxy system is used to make small laser materials for use in compact and low-cost breath meters for early cancer detection.

(Credit: University of Oklahoma)

University of Oklahoma researchers are working on a high-tech breath test that could one day help detect cancer.

The team is using mid-infrared laser technology to measure suspected cancer biomarkers in the breath, such as ethane, formaldehyde, and acetaldehyde, and to establish the relationship between those gas molecules and the disease. Ultimately, they hope their work will lead to easy-to-use detection devices that don’t emit radiation.

But it may take a while before doctors have such devices in hand. Patrick McCann, an OU professor of electrical and computer engineering who’s leading the team, predicts that it will take 5 to 10 years for the gadgets to find their way into clinics.

Arnaud Sow, an OU graduate student from France, processes a sample for laser fabrication.

(Credit: University of Oklahoma)

Nonetheless, he sees them as a potentially profound advancement. “A device that measures cancer-specific gases in exhaled breath would change medical research as we know it,” he said.

McCann expects to rely on nanotechnology to improve laser performance and shrink laser systems, which would allow battery-powered operation of a low-cost handheld device. The sensor, he says, would be particularly useful for cancers that are difficult to detect, such as lung cancer.

The researchers’ work stems from studies showing that dogs can detect cancer by sniffing the exhaled breath of cancer patients. A March 2006 issue of the journal Integrative Cancer Therapies reported that by smelling breath samples, dogs identified breast and lung cancer patients with accuracies of 88 and 97 percent, respectively.

But even though data shows that dogs can detect cancer by smell, medical researchers still have to figure out exactly what the gases are that they’re sniffing. And that’s keeping McCann’s group busy.

The team has been active in related research since 1991. One outcome of their work includes the spin-out of EkipsTechnologies, a start-up based in Norman, Okla., that’s applying mid-infrared laser technology to develop breath analysis instruments to diagnose and monitor diseases such as asthma.

Other links between cancer and scent have emerged recently, as well. Scientists from Philadelphia’s Monell Center reported at the American Chemical Society’s annual conference last week that a common form of skin cancer could be diagnosed by its distinctive smell.

Source : CNET News.com

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Apple blew away its PC industry peers in this year’s American Customer Satisfaction Index, perhaps because it was the only company that didn’t release a Windows Vista PC.

The University of Michigan released its annual ACSI scores Tuesday for the PC industry, and Apple took top honors for the fifth straight year. Apple was the only company in the PC industry other than Dell to post an increase in customer satisfaction in 2008 compared to last year, said Claes Fornell, a professor at the university and head of the ACSI.

The ACSI scores measure a consumer’s overall satisfaction with a company, which includes product quality, value, customer service, and essentially anything else that impresses or annoys a customer of a particular company. Apple scored an 85 on the index, its highest score ever and a full ten points higher than second place finisher Dell.

Fornell attributed Apple’s score to the clear success the Mac has had among the U.S. public, but also pointed out that dissatisfaction with Windows Vista might have hurt the scores for the other companies, such as Hewlett-Packard and Gateway. HP, the market leader in PCs, is measured by its two PC brands–HP and Compaq–and both brands saw about 4 percent drops in satisfaction compared to last year.

The scores were assembled during the second quarter through thousands of interviews, and so therefore don’t reflect the launch of the iPhone 3G and MobileMe, two black eyes for Apple’s customer service this year. Fornell said he would expect Apple’s score to level off next year in any event, as “we have never seen a gap between the leader and the rest of the pack this big. If we are correct in that it has something to do with the launch of Vista, the other guys will of course correct that and come back a little bit.”

Source : CNET News.com

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So if you are still wondering where to look for your next speech recognition software, you gotta be dumb!