Sunday, January 15, 2006

Bollywood Movies on Google Video

Does Google Video offer copyrighted Bollywood movies for free? Indeed, it looks like it. According to this article by the Economic Times, Hindi films like “Bunty Aur Babli”, “Paheli”, “Neal ’N’ Nikki”, and “Ek Khilari Ek Hasina” are found on Google’s website.

Searching Google Video for the titles mentioned in the article, I could often find nothing or only excerpts of up to 7 minutes (a little more than fair use, I suppose)... with some notable exceptions. I was offered to download a 1+ hour version of “Bunty Aur Babli” (you can download the movie from anywhere in the world using one of the Google Video Downloader sites). A search for “Banty Aur Babli” (note the spelling difference) returns hour-long videos as well. Searching for “Neel n Nicky” returned a movie in several different parts (the first part at 8 minutes, the second at 37, and the third part at 44 minutes). The search query “hindi funny movie” finds a movie at 1 hour, 50 minutes. The keyword “Aitraaz” returns a full movie as well (it’s split up in two parts), and so does a search for “Kya kool hai hum.”

Does Google not check the copyright of videos users upload to Google Video?

[Thanks Orli Yakuel.]

Bollywood Movies on Googl ... by Philipp Lenssen | Comments (2)

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