Web Scanning Technology for Copyright Violations

eldavojohn writes "I've heard a lot of talk about software being used to detect pirated media anywhere on the web, but haven't seen a lot of details. PhysOrg has a good article on one of the tools out there. Automatic Copyright Infringement Detection (ACID) boasts a patented technology dubbed 'meaning-based computing' that is reportedly capable of finding relationships among 1,000 different types of files. The important thing is that this is not tagging-based searching. 'Autonomy's search technology uses automatic hyperlinking and link clustering that the company claims isn't built into keyword search engines. According to the company, this technology allows computers to perform searches with greater context, so it finds a wider range of related documents or research citations than is possible from keyword searches.' For more details on how this magic works, check out Autonomy's patent and the many patents by its subdivision, Virage."

Comments

Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to complain about the article too much, but is there anyone out there who didn't find it completely contradictory and useless?

As far as I can tell, the article starts off by saying that they have a wonderful system to inspect and compare the video content of a clip against a HUGE database (eg. tens of thousands of hours of copyrighted movies, TV series, music). And, that they know how to read _any_ media format (eg. an AVI using some particular codec embedded into a Word document which is zipped....) The suggestion is that the software could "read" a Youtube video clip, and recognize that it contains a few minutes of a Jay Leno monologue. Needless to say, they don't explain how they might possibly do this - because, as far as I can tell, they can't. Not even close.

If you look at the patents, they're pretty much all about text or metadata searching. For example, they seem to have found an innovative way to find keywords to categorize a document....by scanning for words in the document! Or of categorizing a video file...by looking at metadata (eg. comments) embedded in the file. The only amazing thing about these algorithms is that some dimbulb in the patent office decided to give them a 20 year monopoly on something people have been doing for decades.

It's a hopeless pursuit

[heretic108]

Back in the early days of cars, most folks thought the red flag act was entirely justified.

Sorry, but we've hit a new age of abundance. With the overwhelming percentage of internet users using LimeWire, BitTorrent etc, attempts to sustain a manufactured scarcity in the face of this abundance will similarly fade away into obsolescence.

The copyright enforcement versus piracy arms race will make for interesting history courses in future decades. I can see the courses now - "The Rise And Fall Of Intellectual Property".

I'm looking forward to blowing my grandkids' minds when I tell them about the era when information wasn't free.