Our Robot Overlords

There is a great story today on io9.com illustrating just why automatic copyright filtering can never be a complete solution to online copyright issues. In short,


Apparently, a licensed clip from Dr. Who (which would have been fair use even if it had not been licensed) triggered the filtering software and exterminated the webcast. Companies like Ustream are of course free to implement whatever dumb software they like, but if filtering becomes the norm we will all be subject to prior restraint by mindless automatons. I, for one, do not welcome our new robot overlords.