I wonder, Barbara, if there is some way that people allowing their music for use under Creative Commons licenses, could add some sort of meta tags to their music, that would be some sort of digital signature. Any sample of their music samples they forward to youtube would have to match the authors data. So if you used the song " bing bang shattamattabuttu (yes, I made that up, How good am I with titles?
) the meta tag would automatically tell youtube that you are uploading a specific song by so and so and who the author is what license it holds. It could then match the music to that sample, as it would easily know what it is.
This way, it would not only match against notes, but meta info also. If your song is flagged, the meta data could be checked against the lists offered by creative commons authors and if the music, title and meta data match, you come up clean. Photographs have exif info and author and extra meta tags can be added. I know when you make an mp3 in audacity, we enter Name of author, title, genre etc., perhaps their is a way to add that data also. I think companies such as Photodex etc., would have to have this data be readable of course.
Obviously, someone could figure out how to change the meta data, but they'd have to know what data went with which song and sing both had to match, it would be really hard to fool the system.
Just an idea though, heck if I would know how to do it. ! LOL