In October of last year we reported on a new technology called "Audible Magic" with which it's possible to add fingerprints to MP3 songs and identify them. Today we can read a new article on Audible Magic being used at the University of Wyoming:
Audible Magic's tools are among the first of a new generation that threatens to go much deeper inside the data stream, allowing a network operator to see exactly what files are being transferred. The software lives inside a router or gateway to the broader Internet. As it is currently configured, it creates a copy of all the traffic flowing past, identifies those bits that are using FTP (file transfer protocol) or the Gnutella technology, and then re-creates those files to identify them. |
Audible Magic is taking the program to a next round of beta tests with another university, a corporation and a small ISP during the next month, CEO Vance Ikezoye said.
The next step for the technology is actually blocking songs and other content, instead of just monitoring--much the same way that Napster wound up filtering songs under court order in the waning days of its service. Audible Magic has a music "fingerprint" library that it says can reliably identify more than 3.5 million different audio files. In theory, songs could be blocked as the data passes the network monitor and is compared against this database of fingerprints.
Although these new technologies sound good in theory, the article adds that in reality these blocking and fingerprinting techniques will probably never work since it would require listing virtually every copyrighted work ever recorded.
Source: C|Net News.com
