NEC develops tool to detect illegal uploads in seconds

**admin** · 8 May 2010, 04:44 PM

NEC has developed a software tool that only needs 60 frames of a video to tell whether the video is copyrighted or not. They claim a 96% accuracy rating, with only an one in 200,000 chance of a false positive.

The system is part of the MPEG-7 video signature system, which works by creating signature patterns for copyrighted video files that do not take up a lot of space, but can successfully identify videos even if they've been converted or modified.

The possible applications of such a system may include usage in monitoring for "three-strikes" or for scanning YouTube uploads.

More:

NEC tech detects illegal video uploads in seconds, MPAA swoons

http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/07/nec-tech-detects-illegal-video-uploads-in-seconds-mpaa-swoons/

Surely by now you've come across something on YouTube that was flagged for copyright infringement, a process that's surely powered by massive teams of elves and other mystical creatures who watch each and every video uploaded to the site. NEC is looking to put them all out of work with a system that, with just 60 frames worth of video (about two seconds, typically) can identify copyrighted video with 96 percent accuracy and a false alarm rate of one in 200,000 -- even if it was copied from digital to analog or had captions added. This process is now part of the MPEG-7 Video signature tool, apparently the international standard, and works by creating signatures for copyrighted video that are just 76 bytes per frame. That's small enough for a desktop with a single core, 3GHz processor to churn through 1,000 hours of questionable video in one second, looking for matches all the while. Unless you freelance for the MPAA this isn't software you'll be running, but if you're a fan of the torrents there's a good chance that someone you know very indirectly will be.