• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, December 5, 2007

Nielsen is reportedly set to join the ranks of companies offering online copyright policing.

The company has partnered with Digimarc for the program, Digital Media Manager, which will roll out next year, according to media reports.

The new program will examine video clips submitted by comparing them to a database and looking for similar "digital fingerprints." If it recognizes a video, the program will only allow it to be uploaded if the owner has authorized its use.

Nielsen, which has already encoded a huge trove of TV shows, will be able to launch the service with a large database of clips. But Nielsen isn't the only company attempting to use technology to end online piracy. Others include Audible Magic, Vobile and BayTSP, according to today's Wall Street Journal. Google, currently facing a lawsuit by Viacom over pirated clips on YouTube, also is working on developing a system to preempt the upload of such material.

If these types of systems prove effective, it seems likely that media companies and video-sharing sites will be tempted to use them to forestall copyright infringement lawsuits, if for no other reason.

But computerized copyright enforcement systems also carries serious risks to users' ability to express themselves: computerized fingerprinting systems can't determine if someone is making fair use of the material -- to criticize it, for example, or to parody it. Consider, for instance, the "Voices of Uncertainty" video in support of the striking Writers Guild, which uses snippets of TV interviews with Rupert Murdoch, Sumner Redstone and other executives in order to skewer the networks. It's not at all clear that an automated fingerprinting system would have allowed this clip to post.

Of course, it's possible that YouTube and other sites will decide they're willing to use a program that prevents even legitimate material from uploading, if doing so means there's less chance of a lawsuit. But those sites will then make themselves a lot less valuable to many users.