The next time you try to upload a video to YouTube that isn't supposed to be there, you may find it being monetized by the original content owner. That's because YouTube has recently partnered up with Nexicon, a company that acts as the middleman between content monitoring and copyright owners, enabling them to either send out automated takedown notices or monetize the unauthorized streams. And this new service isn't likely to stop at YouTube, as the company plans to launch a similar one that will sort through numerous P2P networks for copyrighted content in order to send bills to those users. Best of all, Nexicon wants to patent the entire system.

As part of its announcement, Nexicon said that it would begin using YouTube's "video identification technology" in order to claim and monetize content on the site. The company doesn't explicitly say how it plans to do this, but it all plays into Nexicon's MARC antipiracy platform. The YouTube announcement seems to focus mostly on content being uploaded, however, while its major product dependent upon MARC focuses largely on downloaders.

That product is something called Get Amnesty, which Nexicon says will be rolled out for various P2P networks soon. The system offers downloaders—not uploaders, as has been the typical focus of the music industry lately—a way to "settle" with copyright owners for their naughty deeds. Get Amnesty offers easy ways for users to "avoid possible criminal charges" by letting them pay with PayPal or any major credit card.



How Nexicon's system works How Nexicon's system works

Nexicon VP of strategy and planning, Samuel M. Glines, told ZDNet that Get Amnesty "actually provides dollars in the pocket of the musicians a fair amount for the distribution channel that online peer-to-peer file sharing, etc.," and that it would soon be able to sift through billions of illegally downloaded files and target those who take advantage of what the underground P2P market has to offer. The system will even be able to keep a history of each offender so that each can be monetized. "We're not looking to break the bank and sue individuals. We understand that these folks are the fans of these musicians. The content owners want to embrace the fans and want to connect with the fans. They just want to be compensated for the work that they have produced," he said.

To that end, Nexicon believes it has a valuable product on its hands and announced today that it has filed a patent application for Get Amnesty. The application, which has not yet been published on the USPTO's website, aims to patent Nexicon's MARC platform that analyzes "over 19 billion file transactions each day" with "specialized artificial intelligence" to validate the contents.

In the past, Get Amnesty has been called extortion, as it basically offers users a way to avoid criminal charges or a lawsuit based on what could be considered pretty flimsy evidence (an IP address). Couple that with the questionable history of the company, and the whole thing seems even more shady.