Copyright Tool Scans Web For Violations 185
The Wall Street Journal is reporting on a tech start-up that proposes to offer the ultimate in assurance for content owners. Attributor Corporation is going to offer clients the ability to scan the web for their own intellectual property. The article touches on previous use of techniques like DRM and in-house staff searches, and the limited usefulness of both. They specifically cite the pending legal actions against companies like YouTube, and wonder about what their attitude will be towards initiatives like this. From the article: "Attributor analyzes the content of clients, who could range from individuals to big media companies, using a technique known as 'digital fingerprinting,' which determines unique and identifying characteristics of content. It uses these digital fingerprints to search its index of the Web for the content. The company claims to be able to spot a customer's content based on the appearance of as little as a few sentences of text or a few seconds of audio or video. It will provide customers with alerts and a dashboard of identified uses of their content on the Web and the context in which it is used. The content owners can then try to negotiate revenue from whoever is using it or request that it be taken down. In some cases, they may decide the content is being used fairly or to acceptable promotional ends. Attributor plans to help automate the interaction between content owners and those using their content on the Web, though it declines to specify how."
Raise. (Score:4, Funny)
127.0.0.1: $ cat robots.txt
# robots.txt for 127.0.0.1
# This file is copyright 2006 by me.
User-agent: AttributorCorporationDMCABot
Disallow: *
And if they do honor robots.txt, I'll be able to sue the fuckers for infringing on my copyright, because they must have read it in order to honor it.
Software is in beta (Score:3, Funny)
Attributor plans to help automate the interaction between content owners and those using their content on the Web, though it declines to specify how.
And apparently being written by underpants gnomes.
Re:Can't they just use google or torrent sites? (Score:3, Funny)
Imagine a tool where you could reliably return accurate and search results for images and video. Does this exist yet? No, as one who searches the web daily for pics and video for my own sordid uses, let me assure you that it most certainly does not yet exist.
And what an horrific waste to have such a tool - if it works - for policing content for copyright violations. Bearing in mind also that such "violations" are no such thing in some countries, regardless of the imperial arrogance of media companies.
As always, and tell your family and friends, only buy music directly from the artist or secondhand. It's the only way to win.
Re:Negotiate Monitization? (Score:2, Funny)
I don't understand... your post seems to imply this is a Bad Thing?
Re:Raise. (Score:5, Funny)
# robots.txt for 127.0.0.1
# This file is copyright 2006 by me.
User-agent: AttributorCorporationDMCABot
Disallow: *
Hahaha! You screwed up! I have your IP address now! I will send 127.0.0.1 to every company that uses the sniffer and tell them the person at that IP is an evil, evil person who exploits innocent people for their own profit and power!
A real use on /. (Score:3, Funny)
His IP is my IP to (Score:2, Funny)
Re:What concerns me: (Score:2, Funny)
Re:i don't like robots.txt anyway. (Score:1, Funny)
Disallow: *
(if that's even the correct syntax)