Capturing Online Video Pirates

Can video fingerprinting and watermarking technology stop copyright violators?

YouTube visitors upload 65,000 videos every day and download 100 million of them. Since all those videos have to come from somewhere, it’s no surprise that many are pirated — that is, copied from commercial TV broadcasts and movies and posted without the permission of the copyright holders.

YouTube and similar video-sharing services deal with these copyright violations after they occur: by taking down the material if they receive a complaint from the legitimate copyright holder. But given the sheer number of videos uploaded to the Internet every day, it’s a losing battle.

What’s needed, say researchers in digital rights management, are ways to automatically screen out pirated videos before they’re uploaded, and to track down people who make pirate copies.