Facing several copyright lawsuit (including one for $1 billion from media giant Viacom), Google's lawyer said the company was working "very intensely and cooperating" with media companies to come up with high-tech fingerprinting technology. The video-recognition technology would only take a few minutes to compare each uploaded clip to a stored library of content, and illegally posted content could be removed quickly.

Viacom's lawyer wasn't impressed, saying it would take the next year to identify the extent of YouTube's infringement, and threatening to continue with the suit over past violations. Louis Solomon, an attorney representing several major European sports leagues told CNET that even with the technology in place, Google's actions would be too late to justify dropping the suit.

"If in fact Google puts this (system) in place, it is obviously way too late," Solomon said. "But we encourage Google to come forward and do what other companies have already done and treat all the content providers fairly. Not just the favorite few who have agreed to share advertising revenue with YouTube."