Ever since Google purchased YouTube last year for $1.65 billion, it has essentially put a big target on Google’s back. Part of the reason that YouTube caught on so quickly was the fact that they didn’t do much in the way of filtering content, especially with regards to copyrighted material. Once Google became the owner of all the assets, however, suddenly their vast pool of money became a lot more inviting for all the corporations who had their property posted on the site without permission, and Google had to start pulling stuff down. Most of the videos that have been taken down so far have been clips from TV shows, but it looks like Google is now under fire for something else: full length pirated movies.

Independent watchdog group, the National Legal and Policy Center, have released an open letter stating that between September 10th and 18th, they tracked over 300 pirated movies that were viewed about 22 million times. (I am assuming the full-length movies in question were actually found on Google Video rather than YouTube, since the video length on YouTube is limited to under 10 minutes.) While this group cannot file any lawsuits themselves, they’re definitely trying to alert studios of the potential problem here. Google claims that they remove content as soon as it is discovered, but with the amount of users and videos, that can sometimes take months. To be honest, I don’t expect this era of YouTube freedom to last much longer. It’s unfortunate since it’s such an amazing resource, but there’s just too much money at stake. To be honest, I’ve always been surprised that Google hasn’t gotten in more trouble for piracy, even just for the fact that they index sites that host pirated files. I’m sure someone could spin that against Google with a few good lawyers. What do you think, are studios losing money here, or is Google helping to promote their content?