Reuters reports that YouTube is close to launching a video fingerprinting technology called video ID that will be tested by Time Warner and Disney.
The technology, developed by engineers at YouTube-owner Google, will help content owners like movies and TV studios identify videos uploaded to the site without the copyright owner's permission, the company said on Monday.
The so-called video fingerprinting tools will be available for testing in about a month, a YouTube executive said.
YouTube has also been testing technology to help identify the audio tracks of video clips with major record labels using technology provided by privately held Audible Magic as early as the first two months of 2007, the company said.
Eventually content being uploaded to YouTube will probably be scanned and rejected almost immediately if is found to have copyrighted content. Content owners have continuously complained that they are forced to wait until their copyrighted content is already on YouTube before they are able to get it removed. The article says the video ID will be available for all content providers by the end of this year.
Reuters 
