YouTube is perhaps the largest online video sharing platform on the planet.
Since its early days, YouTube has made sure that pornographic material doesn't appear on the site. However, the content in question may not be visible to users directly, but it's there (on Google's servers) on YouTube and is used to feed countless people to third-party websites.
Various websites that facilitate pornographic material are exploiting a loophole in YouTube's functionality. This loophole has already been exploited by websites that upload pirated content to YouTube. Yes, it exists, and everyone knows it.
They can upload a video to YouTube and create a private link for it. The video is not publicly displayed on YouTube and goes unnoticed by content identifiers, a piracy protection system. The private link is then embedded on pirated websites, using Google as a hosting service, where the videos are streamed via googlevideo.com. It is the same domain that serves the videos on YouTube.
This process is implemented by various websites that provide pirated adult content. They use Google servers to host the videos and embed them on their websites. This issue is known to porn content producers and generally takes about three weeks to remove the content.
Another source it hosts is Google Drive, the company's free cloud storage solution. It is also used to power various websites that serve graphical content.
It's unlikely that YouTube would be oblivious to this situation. But the reality is that YouTube, determined to protect the rights of copyright holders, could become a huge source of illegal content on the Internet.
