New Software Makes it Easy to Identify Online Media Piracy

As software and technology expand to make sharing digital content on the web easier than ever before, the flipside of the coin is that many media companies are losing control over the disbursement of their copyrighted material. This is especially true in terms of copyrighted content illegally shared on popular web portals, such as YouTube.com.

In the fierce fight for copyright protection, a company based in California has put together content-recognition software, which makes it possible to identify copyright material -- even if the sounds and images are slightly distorted or blurry. (Source: nytimes.com)

Entertainment insiders are hoping that with the new software, they will finally be able to take down the biggest problem since the start of peer-to-peer file-sharing: songs and videos being posted on the Internet without license or permission.

The creators of the new software, Audible Magic, demonstrated how the software operates during a presentation for several top media executives. Vance Ikezoye, chief executive of Audible Magic, simply downloaded a random two-minute clip from YouTube and fed the content into his new video-recognition system. (Source: news.com.com)

The image re-appeared without color and revealed that it had been dubbed in Chinese. The clip had apparently been recorded with a camcorder in a movie theatre prior to being uploaded on the Internet.

The software was also able to recognize that the clip had been extracted at the -- minute and 37 second mark of the Miramax film "Kill Bill: Volume 2". The video recognition system was able to reveal all of this information despite the poor image quality of the video clip. (Source: news.com.com)

The success of the software has caused most media companies to rush out and acquire the new system. Many within the entertainment industry are also urging all Internet companies that provide music and video file-sharing on their websites to also acquire Audible Magic's new system.

MySpace is the first Internet site to agree to use the software to identify any copyright material that appears on their website. Surprisingly, YouTube has taken a different position on the topic, opting to deny using the software, although no reason has been given for their decision. (Source: nytimes.com)