Google's YouTube is preparing to launch its long-awaited and much-promised recognition technology "hopefully by September", in an effort to stop copyrighted videos from being posted on the popular video-sharing website, according to YouTube lawyer Philip Beck.
"We hope to have the testing completed and technology available by sometime in the fall, but this is one of the most technologically complicated tasks that we have ever undertaken, and as always with cutting-edge technologies, it's difficult to forecast specific launch dates," a YouTube spokesman said.
The video recognition technology will allow copyright holders to provide a digital fingerprint that would be used by a computer system to screen clips being uploaded to YouTube, so that if anyone tries to share a copyrighted video, the system will shut it down within a minute or so.
Earlier this year, Viacom filed a lawsuit against Google seeking $1 billion in damages for alleged "massive copyright infringement." Beck said the new technology goes way beyond what the law requires to stop copyright infringement, and is counting on it to eliminate such disputes in the future. Google has angered movie and television executives who accuse the search giant of dragging its feet on preventing YouTube users from uploading clips from hit shows and movies. This is the first time that anyone from Google has set a firm launch date for a filtering-system roll out.