Porn pirates exploit well-known loophole to upload raunchy videos on YouTube

It’s no secret that YouTube has a whole sea of videos hidden underneath the surface, but it appears pirates are getting smarter by the day as heaps of vigilante porn uploaders have been exploiting a loophole that allows them to host raunchy content on the popular platform

TorrentFreak reports that a number of adult streaming websites have began using a known backdoor that ultimately makes it possible to store infringing material on Google’s servers – entirely free of charge.

To pull this off, the pirates essentially take advantage of YouTube’s option to upload content without sharing it publicly, which effectively allows them to embed the videos on their websites and bypass Google’s Content-ID takedown system.

This means the content remains unlisted on YouTube and is served directly from the GoogleVideo.com domain instead.

While the move hasn’t gone unnoticed by the porn industry, California-based adult content-maker Dreamroom Productions claims it has made it much harder for producers to hunt down and flag infringing material, since the videos are not shared publicly.

Dreamroom admits that although the content eventually gets removed, it does take significantly longer than usual to process such takedown requests. Instead the company is pleading to YouTube to scrap the private sharing function altogether.

The porn-maker insists such immense amounts of illegal content are being hosted on Google’s servers that YouTube might have basically become “one of the world’s largest databases of copyright infringing material” on the Web.

Still, while adult entertainment producers certainly have a right to feel cheated out of their deserved earnings, disabling the private sharing option will also render the service unavailable to millions of people simply looking for a quick and simple way to store their private videos online – and it would be a shame to lose that.

And let’s be honest: Though ditching the private sharing function on YouTube might stop illegal uploaders for a short while, chances are pirates will simply regroup and migrate their infringing materials to another hosting service. As it usually happens.

Update: As pointed out by our readers and contrary to TorrentFreak’s coverage, it appears private videos don’t automatically bypass YouTube’s Content-ID system. In fact, numerous users have reported having their private videos taken down or silenced. This means the pirates must be using a trick another trick circumvent Content-ID.

[H/T AshTube / Mason Pelt]