More details have emerged today on the new tool in development at YouTube headquarters, which is intended to automatically find copyrighted material uploaded by users of the website. It was originally thought that the application would scan the video as it was being uploaded or just thereafter; however, Google, the owners of the popular video sharing website, have clarified the situation.
The application will search through videos already posted to the site and compare them against a database of 'fingerprints' created from copyright violating videos scanned previously or added to the 'restricted database' by the copyright owners themselves. If a video is deemed to violate copyright by the application then it is either deleted or 'flagged', in which case intervention from YouTube staff will take place to verify whether or not the video does indeed breach copyright.
Google say that taking this approach will keep it in line with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which ensures that illegally copied videos must be removed upon request from the copyright holders.
The application is currently being optimised for speed and scalability but, as it is still in development at Google, more features could not be confirmed by Ricardo Reyes, a spokesman for the search engine giant.
Last Friday, an attorney who is acting on Google's behalf in its copyright case with media giant Viacom told a US District Judge that YouTube are aiming to have the fingerprinting tool implemented by September.
Google has been implementing systems to help copyright owners on YouTube for some time. Audio recognition technology is available on YouTube already and copyright owners can manually flag videos for removal if they come across them.
Reyes put the launch of the tool into some context when he clarified that Google were always looking to update and innovate the process of protecting copyrights. He said:
"It's all part of the 'Claim your Content' technology which is a family of tools. This video-identification technology would be the latest tool we would offer. It won't necessarily be the last tool because we're going to keep trying to innovate in this area".
