"MySpace took steps on Monday to eliminate unauthorized music from reaching the site. To do it, MySpace turned to a new technology from audio-recognition company Gracenote that identifies waveforms unique to every digital recording.

Gracenote scans music downloaded to MySpace and cross checks songs with those in the Emeryville, Calif., company's 10 million-song database, according to Jim Hollingsworth, Gracenote's senior vice president of sales and marketing. The system only needs a few seconds worth of music to identify the music and discern whether a song is copyrighted."

News.com

Some day courseware systems will be audited in a similar way...