Sony Pictures Entertainment and its subsidiary Universal Music Group has filed lawsuits agains 2 popular video sharing websites: Grouper.com and Bolt.com.

Guess since YouTube.com is now a Google company with deep pockets, Sony/Universal decided to go after the smaller guys.

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From what I read, YouTube signed a last minute deal with Universal. They agreed to implement a super-secret technology that Universal has been working on, that will help filter out copyrighted works.

Personally, I think it all sounds like a bunch of :poop:

Typically there is only a very select number of "versions" of a video floating around the web. As the file is copied, the file size stays the same, as does the byte order. It's very easy for me to calculate a unique idenitifer for a file. If/when a complaint is received, you simply blacklist the file identifier in the database and no other users will be able to upload that same file.

I do concede it's easy for someone to re-encode a file and alter its properties (and thus, file signature). However, it's just as easy to upload that file to *any* server and release it, or even just post it in a forum like this one. I don't believe litigating against these video services is an improvement on the Internet.