YouTube is testing video recognition technology with partners Time Warner and The Walt Disney Co. The technology is designed to recognize copyright protected content in videos.
If all goes well in the tests, the new technology will roll out later this year, the company said. YouTube’s owner, Google, previously promised to adopt a solution to identify pirated content on its site so it could be removed or negotiate with the owners for a license.
YouTube started using audio recognition technology from Audible Magic earlier this year to either block unauthorized content or pay royalties to the major record labels that have licensed their content to the site.
The company was searching for a similar video fingerprinting technology when Google bought it in October for $1.65 billion. It found the software within Google’s own research labs.
Video recognition involves extensive indexing of images from video clips and then collecting the images in a database. Usage rules set by the copyright holder are then associated with each segment of video.
