‘Johnny’ screens out copyrighted video

Cory Bergman August 22nd, 2006

The video-sharing site Guba says it’s developed a technology dubbed “Johnny” that compares submitted video files with a database of commercial videos to identify copyright violations. Named named after the Keanu Reeves character in “Johnny Mnemonic,” the system reduces videos and their accompanying audio tracks to mathematical fingerprints. When a fingerprint of a submitted clip matches a clip in its massive copyright database, it’s quarantined and flagged for review. Guba says “Johnny” is so accurate, that only one percent of the flagged video files turn out not to be copyrighted. But others are skeptical. “Updating such a large and fast-growing fingerprint database, and making it efficient enough to be used in the filtering of copyrighted material from a site like Guba, seems utterly impractical,” writes Bill Rosenblatt, editor of Jupitermedia’s DRM Watch. Nevertheless, Guba is using “Johnny” as negotiating leverage as it talks with the networks and studios about selling downloads on the site.