An interesting article in the Guardian about fingerprinting videos and the issues it poses, how tech vendors are using different ways to counter the fact that hash recognition can easily be circumvented, and how it is an issue to YouTube.
The article really gets interesting at then end, where it talks about commercial value in the fingerprint itself being one of the reasons YouTube has gone it’s own way with developing a fingerprint solution rather than buying in from the likes of Audible Magic.
Also raised is the possiblity of targeting advertising by using a watermark to know what someone is watching:
“If someone could make money by generating ads just because a viewer watched [part of the film] Transformers, Paramount would want to be involved in that,” Ishikawa says. He warns content owners not to give up their content without a financial agreement: “They will be a commercial asset.”
Ten Years of Free 