Here's a video of Grand Theft Auto IV. Give it a listen, preferably at the 6:32 mark. That's the moment when YouTube's copyright bots claim a Sonny Rollins Quartet jazz song plays. Do you hear it?
I tried. I tried hard to hear it. And all I heard was sirens. I bet that's all you heard, too—as if our impressions of YouTube's automated flawed copyright/content-ID system weren't bad enough.
This copyright claim recently hit YouTuber Taltigolt and left him wondering just what YouTube's bots are listening for. "Sad thing is, I acknowledged it, thinking it was accurate before I even looked," he told me over e-mail this week.
Here's the claim:
And here's the Sonny Rollins Quartet playing St. Thomas, the song that is supposedly in the video.
That Sonny Rollins song is in GTA IV. It just doesn't usually sound like six minutes of police sirens. Go figure.
To contact the author of this post, write to stephentotilo@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter @stephentotilo.