Copyright detection and protection system and method
A method for detecting against unauthorized transmission of digital works comprises the steps of maintaining a registry of information permitting identification of digital copyrighted works, monitoring a network for transmission of at least one packet-based digital signal, extracting at least one feature from the at least one digital signal, comparing the extracted at least one feature with registry information and applying business rules based on the comparison result.
1 . A registry of digital works comprising:
an identifier to link a digital work to associated information about the work;
at least one feature of the digital work permitting the digital work to be identified;
business rules that indicate how the digital work may be transmitted over a digital stream.
2 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the at least one feature extracted from the digital signal is selected from the group consisting of: file name, file size, file type, source address, recipient address, metadata identifiers, a watermark, a file hash, protocol type, text content, and a content-based fingerprint.
3 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the business rules indicate whether a particular address or range of addresses is authorized to transmit said digital work.
4 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the business rules indicate whether a particular address or range of addresses is authorized to receive said digital work.