MySpace to Use Audio Fingerprinting

dptalia writes "MacWorld reports that MySpace is going to start implementing audio fingerprinting to prevent copyrighted material from appearing on their site. The new technology will be used to review all uploads and prevent 'inappropriate' material from ever seeing the light of day."

Re:SHA256

[tibike77]

Ah, yes, because every MP3 file playing a certain specific song is identical in length/checksum ... [/sarcasm]

Re:How soon before this is widely defeated?

[tibike77]

How about the "fair use" dispute ?
You know, as in parody, for instance, to name but just ONE of the legitimate "false positives".

The evaders will win

[Paul Lamere]

I wonder how well this will actually work. Audio Fingerprinting is designed to be insensitive to most 'naturally occuring' music distortions such as encoding artifacts, noise and changes in equalization, but I don't know of any audio fingerprinting system that will work well when faced with people who are actively trying to evade detection. It won't be too difficult for a properly motivated MySpace user to find a set of filters that can be applied to any song that will allow the song to get a unique fingerprint, without actually changing how the song sounds. A quick trip through Audacity to apply a micro-pitch change, a little equalization, and perhaps a slight tempo change will probably do the trick. Of course, the folks over at Gracenote are pretty smart and may be able to adapt to evasions, but this will no doubt lead to even more sophisticated evasions. In the end I don't think it is possible to create a fingerprinting system that will be able to deal with people who are actively evading the system. In the end, the evaders will win.

Re:I've been waiting for this moment

[Rob the Bold]

Plus, do you really think that first responders enjoy scraping your dead ass off the highway or that other motorists want to see your internal organs spread out all over the road, all because you weren't quite comfortable enough with a seat belt on. No, it definitely does hurt other people.

OK, the seat belt analogy was bad, but this argument for requiring seat belt use takes the cake. To prevent others from seeing your mangled remains!?! I guess I can finally ask for my pet law: Mandatory stomach stapling for the morbidly obese and pants-belt legislation for kids whose underwear sticks out above their trousers. Cause I don't enjoy those, and I'm forced to see them.