Here’s a video of Grand Theft Auto IV. Give it a listen, preferably at the 6:32 mark. That’s the moment when YouTube’s copyright bots claim a Sonny Rollins Quartet jazz song plays. Do you hear it?
I tried. I tried hard to hear it. And all I heard was sirens. I bet that’s all you heard, too — as if our impressions of YouTube’s automated flawed copyright/content-ID system weren’t bad enough.
This copyright claim recently hit YouTuber Taltigolt and left him wondering just what YouTube’s bots are listening for. “Sad thing is, I acknowledged it, thinking it was accurate before I even looked,” he told me over email this week.
Here’s the claim:
And here’s the Sonny Rollins Quartet playing St. Thomas, the song that is supposedly in the video.
That Sonny Rollins song is in GTA IV. It just doesn’t usually sound like six minutes of police sirens. Go figure.
Comments
6 responses to “Clueless YouTube Copyright Bots Think GTA Sirens Are A Famous Jazz Song”
Oh the fault lies in that Jazz song. The bots are only discriminating a relativistic change in tone and tempo. Since the jazz video has a simplistic beat at the start the bots can’t differentiate between that and the crash noises in GTA.
Wow, I don’t think we have to worry too much about Skynet yet
Maybe not, but then again – imagine Terminators using a similar id match technique. Suddenly, everyone is Sarah Connor.
At about 4:30 and 4:43 there are a couple of bits where the sax player basically cycles up and down the scale repeatedly a couple of times. I’m guessing that’s where the match is coming from.
They don’t need a match on the entire song, just part of it.
Still, dodgy as all heck.
Wait…if I made a song that was just a long loop of every note from every instrument, couldn’t I flag all of youtube?
That would be like typing Google into Google, you’d just end up breaking the internet. Everyone would just be like “GEE THANKS A LOT NAMIWAKIRU. I DIDN’T WANT TO WATCH YOUTUBE ANYWAY.” Could you handle that much hatred?