Video sharing site YouTube has reportedly reached a deal to automatically filter out copyrighted material. Digital "fingerprinting" technology from content protection firm Audible Magic will be used to pre-screen user-submitted videos for copyrighted work, according to the San José Mercury News, which cited "anonymous" sources.
Spokespersons for YouTube and Audible Magic declined to comment to vnunet.com. YouTube first announced that it would be working on a content filtering system in September. When the systems were not in place by January, and pirated videos remained plentiful on the site, media companies began to demand that YouTube and parent company Google manually remove hundreds of thousands of copyrighted clips.