Owners of videos in the future will be able to provide a digital fingerprint that allows the system to remove an uploaded video within a minute upon detection. To date, Viacom, Bourne, and the Premier League have filed lawsuits against YouTube for trial purposes, where Viacom is looking for up to a billion dollars in compensation for damages incurred in the unauthorized viewing of its programming from MTV, Comedy Central and other networks. I don’t know about you, but opening many windows or tabs simultaneously just to view a single show isn’t my cup of tea, and I’m pretty sure that the perceived damages are certainly way higher than they actually are. After all, if Google’s got a whole lot of dough in their coffers at this moment, why not take advantage of the situation?

YouTube on the other hand claims that those lawsuits have gone beyond what is required under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This Act will provide web hosts protection from copyright lawsuits so long as the company complies with requests to remove unauthorized material. While this requires a whole lot of manpower to monitor the millions of video clips on YouTube, the video fingerprinting being developed will definitely come in handy for automated regulation. How many of you actually log on to YouTube to get a dose of TV shows?