Copyright detection and protection system and method

1. A digital works identification system comprising:

a first memory for storing information permitting identification of digital works of copyright owners including at least one content based fingerprint for each of the digital works, wherein each of the at least one content based fingerprint has a corresponding feature sequence;

a digital input receiver for receiving at least one packet-based digital signal transmitted over a network;

a second memory for storing at least one portion of the at least one packet-based digital signal; and

at least one processor for

identifying at least one of a file type of the at least one packet-based digital signal and a content of the at least one packet-based digital signal;

obtaining at least one feature from the at least one digital signal, wherein each feature is a plurality of characteristics of the at least one packet-based digital signal at a point in time,

generating a content-based fingerprint for the at least one packet-based digital signal from the at least one feature, wherein the content-based fingerprint of the at least one digital signal has a corresponding feature sequence,

determining whether the at least one feature matches stored identifying information of a digital work of a copyright owner by performing an identification comparison between the feature sequence of the content-based fingerprint of the at least one packet-based digital signal and the feature sequence of a content-based fingerprint of one of the digital works of copyright owners to determine that a work represented by the at least one packet-based digital signal is a match to one of the digital works of copyright owners, and

upon a successful determination of whether the at least one feature matches stored identifying information of a digital work of a copyright owner, performing at least one of

sending a message to a destination address directing the destination address to a commercial site where authorization to obtain the content may be purchased, and

disabling transmission of at least a portion of the at least one packet-based digital signal if the destination address is not authorized to receive the content of the at least one digital signal.

2. The system of claim 1 , wherein the system is intended to identify new digital works.

3. The system of claim 1 , wherein the at least one digital signal comprises one or more of digital audio information, digital video information, digital representation of text, software, and digital image information.

4. The system of claim 1 , wherein the at least one processor identifies digital works carried by the at least one packet-based digital signal.

5. The system of claim 1 , wherein the at least one packet-based digital signal is characterized by at least one of: a source address; or a destination address.

6. The system of claim 1 , further comprising a third memory for recording the identified transmissions.

7. The system of claim 6 , wherein the third memory further includes a transaction database.

8. The system of claim 6 , further comprising a report generator for generating reports on transmissions carried by the at least one packet-based digital signal.

9. The system of claim 5 , further comprising a transaction request broker for identifying whether a destination address is authorized to receive the content of the at least one digital signal.

10. The system of claim 5 , further comprising a transaction request broker for identifying whether a source address is authorized to transmit the content of the at least one digital signal.

11. The system of claim 10 , further comprising means for disabling transmission of at least a portion of the at least one packet-based digital signal if the source address is not authorized to transmit the content of the at least one digital signal.

12. The system of claim 5 , further comprising a message generator for sending a message to the source address or destination address upon detection of an identified transmission.

13. The system of claim 5 , wherein other content is inserted into the transmission.

14. The system of claim 5 , wherein other content is substituted into the transmission.