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Given this explosion of creativity and innovation, a sense of growing and justifiable bewilderment in the creative community exists over a recent FCC proposal<\/a>, commonly referred to as \u201cAllVid,\u201d that would force creators, networks, and pay-TV providers to give away their products and services for tech giants like Google to exploit for their own commercial purposes<\/a>. The beneficiaries of this government handout would be free to repackage video content as they see fit, drop programming or bury it on the channel guide, add their own advertising and strip out existing ads, and mine viewer data \u2013 all without negotiating with cable programmers or distributors or adhering to privacy laws and regulations that apply to traditional providers.<\/p>\n Further, there is nothing in the proposed rule to stop tech companies from combining legitimate content with video from piracy sources. \u201cWalking Dead\u201d producer Gale Ann Hurd articulated these concerns well in a recent USA Today op-ed<\/a> stating:<\/p>\n [The proposal] would also allow Google \u2014 and for that matter\u00a0set-top box manufacturers from all over the world, including China (where rogue boxes are being built by the millions) \u2014 to create and market applications or boxes with software that will treat legitimate and stolen\u00a0material exactly the same, and may in many cases help to steer consumers to piracy.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Her concern regarding piracy-laden devices is legitimate. As just one recent example, the UK’s Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit arrested six people<\/a> for selling Android set-top boxes modified to deliver illegal movies and TV shows. And Hurd\u2019s concerns about boxes manufactured in China are made plain in this Forbes<\/em> article<\/a>.<\/p>\n Proponents of AllVid claim they merely want to show consumers \u201call their video<\/a>,\u201d meaning they want to mix and match content from YouTube and other online sources with pay-TV. Setting aside the fact that existing technologies like Roku and Apple TV already provide that capability, the creative community is understandably nervous about stolen content appearing alongside legitimate video if Google gets its way with the set top box proposal. As Hurd points out, \u201cGoogle’s search engine does this today. Here\u2019s what happens when I search \u201cwww.google.com<\/a>\/?gws_rd=ssl#q=watch+Fear+the+Walking+Dead\">watch <\/a>www.google.com<\/a>\/?gws_rd=ssl#q=watch+Fear+the+Walking+Dead\">Fear the Walking Dead<\/em><\/a>.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n The role search plays in facilitating piracy is significant, so those concerns about the mixing of stolen online video with legal pay-TV content are well founded. According to one survey<\/a>, 74% of consumers say they used a search engine when they first viewed pirated content. And researches at Carnegie Mellon University conducted an experiment<\/a> conclusively demonstrating that search rankings drive consumer behavior. The more prominently pirated content appears in search results, the more likely consumers are to choose it.<\/p>\n
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