YouTube will start using technology to recognise copyright-infringing videos on its site by this Autumn, according to one of its lawyers.
Recently three major content owners- Viacom, music publisher Bourne and the Premier League- have filed lawsuits against YouTube. These have been combined for trial purposes before US District Judge Louise L. Stanton.
During the US trial last week, YouTube lawyer, Philip S. Beck, told the judge that the firm was working "very intensely and cooperating" with major content companies on video recognition technology as sophisticated as the fingerprint technology used by the F.B.I.
Beck said the video recognition technology would allow owners of videos to provide a "digital fingerprint" so that if anyone tried to share a video that infringed copyrights, the system would remove it within a minute or so.