One of the main threats to the YouTube business model has always been the threat of lawsuites from copyright holders. The biggest testiment to this threat is the ongoing lawsuit between Sumner Redstone’s Viacom and Google.
When Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion back in October 2006 they were heavily criticised for disregarding this huge threat, however little did we know that Google not only took it into account but also has been preparing to combat it with technology.
Google has started using technology provided by Audible Magic, a Los Gatos, Calif.-based company that identifies copyrighted material by creating a digital fingerprint of a song or video and comparing it to a database of copyrighted works.
This is how Audible Magic describe their service offering:
“(Our) company’s core copyright-sensing technology, CopySense®, accurately identifies digital or broadcast media content based on the perceptual characteristics of the content itself. Built on a patented electronic fingerprinting process, the technology is robust, efficient, and massively scalable.”
This technology is sure to bring Google’s YouTube nay sayers back into the believer’s fold, and maybe, just maybe, Sumner will decide to drop his lawsuite against the big G. Yeah right!
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