Combatting copyright infringement with video fingerprinting

Video upload sites like YouTube and Guba attract an enormous amount of traffic, but also face the threat of movie studios cracking down on copyright infringement facilitated by such services. From short Saturday Night Live clips to amateur music videos, plenty of copyright-laden content is available for free viewing at YouTube. Though arguably well within the constraints of fair use, the broad availability of this material has the content industry crying foul, and deploying lawyers. In an attempt to deflect the problem and avoid the inevitable plague of lawyers, video sites are looking for technological solutions.

Electronics company Philips has developed a system capable of identifying copyright-protected works by comparing digital fingerprints. With a massively comprehensive database of fingerprint data for copyright-protected content, Philips can identify potential infringement using short video snippets, including clips of only five seconds in length. Philips plans to make this technology commercially available to the companies behind services like YouTube as well as p2p network operators.

Full article: Ars Technica