Prior to YouTube's Content ID system the video-sharing website was a bit of a wild west of pirated content. YouTube relied upon eagle eyed viewers (usually the copyright holders themselves) noticing pirated content in order to be able to take it down.

Content ID changed all of that, and now means that pirated content is a rarity on the service, since the system allows copyright-infringing content to be automatically detected and removed.

Now one individual going by the name of Thuy Pham has found a clever way to circumvent Content ID: by uploading movies as part of a 360 video.

Pirate romcoms

One example of a movie uploaded in this way can be found below. It's a full video of the 2008 Disney Movie High School Musical 3.

On three sides of the video is a still from a different 360 video of three dancers in a studio, but on one side there is a full-screen video of the movie itself in its entirety.

The quality isn't great, and the audio appears to have had an effect put on it to prevent it from being caught by Content ID's audio recognition functionality, but the movie is still watchable in the same way as a bootleg VHS.

It's difficult to see many people watching movies in this way with The Pirate Bay continuing to exist online despite years of legal battles being fought against it, but it's an interesting flaw in Content ID that will need to be addressed by Google.

Via: Quartz