• The Wall Street Journal, Tuesday, October 16, 2007 11 AM

Nearly one year and several lawsuits after buying YouTube, Google has finally unveiled a digital fingerprinting technology to help identify user uploaded videos that violate the intellectual property rights of media content owners. Reviewers of the long-delayed new system applaud Google's efforts, but say the search giant still needs to do some refining.

On Monday, Google began soliciting copyrighted materials for the "YouTube Video Identification" system from copyright owners, so that it can copy, identify, and remove illegally uploaded videos. Nine media firms, including the Walt Disney Co. and Time Warner, have participated in the test. Previously, Google relied on an automated program from Audible Magic to identify and remove copyrighted materials.

Viacom, which is suing Google for $1 billion due to copyright violations on YouTube, said it was "encouraged" by the new fingerprinting technology, but Google still owes it plenty for the sustained period of infringement of its copyright. The search giant said the technology would be available to anyone, regardless of their business relationship with Google.

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