Interesting story in the Wall Street Journal today about the latest technology to scan the Internet looking for copyright violations -- it's a start-up in Redwood City (where else?) called Attributor, and it's backed by $10 million in venture capital. Among its backers is Silicon Valley investor Ron Conway, who also backs Snocap, a digital-music registry. Snocap, Audible Magic and other services seek to identify copyrighted audio files, usually in a certain space such as a peer-to-peer network or social networking site. Attributor plans to scour the entire Internet (although P2P isn't in the plans for now) searching not just for infringing music but images, video and text. (On that last one, text copying, Wikipedia will light up the service so much it might grind Attributor to a halt!)

I think we'll be seeing more of these services crop up, and like anti-virus software, the programmers will have to stay vigilant to catalogue new content and deal with tricks used to avoid detection. Services like this will obviously help copyright owners identify infringement. It will also potentially help if orphan works legislation becomes law; I could see someone wishing to use a certain photograph lacking identifying features they've found online being expected under a "reasonable search" to use a service like Attributor to find its owner.

For some reason the article's author gets diverted momentarily by the DRM debate, as if any such service could ever completely replace DRM. Just as no data-security technology completely protects a server from a breach, no scanning technology will ever completely eradicate piracy, and no DRM technology can completely prevent piracy. Already we're seeing a range of DRM technologies, with differing strengths and flexibilities, on the market. Services like Snocap and Attributor can help increase the variety of offerings out there, including offerings lacking DRM or containing only mild restrictions. But ultimately, consumers have the power to decide whether DRM is acceptable; when they stop buying content with DRM, content with DRM will no longer be offered on the market.

posted by Patrick Ross @ 11:20 AM |

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