Patent ID: 8645279

Claim:
A method for altering the behavior of a network device of a copyright protection computer system based on transmissions of digital works comprising: maintaining a registry of information permitting identification of digital works in a database hosted by a computer system, the registry information comprising data for a hierarchy of assessment criteria ordered based on consumption of a processing resource, the hierarchy of assessment criteria comprising at least two of a file name, a file size, a source address, a metadata identifier, and a watermark; monitoring a network for transmission of at least one packet-based digital signal associated with a digital work, the digital work including at least one of audio content and video content; determining whether the digital work is a registered digital work by comparing a feature, which corresponds to the first assessment criterion and is extracted from the at least one digital signal, to the registry information corresponding to the first assessment criterion; in response to a determination using the first assessment criterion that the digital work is not a registered digital work, repeating a use of a next assessment criterion to determine whether the digital work is a registered digital work until one of the hierarchy of assessment criteria results in the digital work being a registered digital work or none of the hierarchy of assessment criteria results in the digital work being a registered digital work; in response to a determination that none of the hierarchy of assessment criteria results in the digital work being a registered digital work, generating a fingerprint for the at least one digital signal, utilizing the fingerprint to assess whether the digital work associated with the at least one digital signal is a registered digital work, and altering a functional behavior of the network device with respect to a transmission of the digital work associated with the at least one digital signal; and in response to a determination that one of the hierarchy of assessment criteria results in the digital work being a registered digital work, altering, by the copyright protection computer system, the functional behavior of the network device with respect to the transmission of the digital work associated with the at least one digital signal based on the comparison of the digital work associated with the at least one digital signal with the registry information.