YouTube is the go-to place to find all sorts of videos, be it the funny cat videos or snippets from your favourite TV shows. But there's more. Hackers are now using a loophole in Google's video sharing platform to upload sexual and pirated content, which is in direct conflict with the web giant's guiding policies.
TorrentFreak reported last week that hackers are using YouTube as a platform to host porn and pirated content by tricking Google's Content ID security system. They are simply listing the videos as "private" and sharing direct links on their websites. As a result, these videos are served from GoogleVideo.com domain without being listed on YouTube.
It is nothing new that YouTube already has a host of pirated videos, albums and movies on the site, but porn was off limits until now. Several adult entertainment websites are using YouTube as hosting provider, which has also ticked the adult production houses.
"There is a big loophole on YouTube. Copyright infringers take advantage of a private-video-share setting. They upload and store videos, and freely use them on third party websites to earn profits," California-based adult producer Dreamroom Productions told TorrentFreak.
The company is also blaming Google for not fixing the loophole, which can be done by disabling the sharing function under special settings.
"The world biggest TUBE site may have become one of the world's largest databases of copyright infringing material," a Dreamroom Productions spokesperson said.
In Google's defense, the web giant has been combating adult content on YouTube, but keeping a track of it all is proving to be a tedious task, especially, if the uploaders use private video tags to stash porn.
