Unsurprisingly, whilst I've been castigating Google for their copyright infringements, the behemoth has seen the writing on the wall and has been doing what it does best - throwing technologists at a a seemingly impossible problem.
This blog details YouTube users' experiences in details (With thanks to Pete for bringing it to my attention) using Google's new pattern matching technology that can spot illegal use of music and moving images. It sounds very impressive.
But there are some ramifications in this. First of all, it doesn't help anything that's not in the Google archive, such as live events.
Second of all, it makes me wonder if Google are close to the holy grail of auto tagging and recognising the content of video files. It's still a step from matching to recognising and defining, but some serious strides are being made in the right direction.
Still, the coverage of the Royal Wedding coming over YouTube, one thing is clear. Google is acting more like a responsible rights owner every day.