US Patent 9100245 Identifying protected media files

A user can have media files associated with a user account in a shared resource environment, enabling the user to access those files from multiple devices and locations. Instead of uploading each file, a process can scan the files to determine corresponding copies already stored to the shared resource environment, which can be associated with the user account without uploading another copy. In cases where encryption or other protection prevents the content of a file from being verified, a fingerprint of unencrypted records of the file can be generated and compared against an index of fingerprints for previously encountered files. If the fingerprint matches information stored for a media file, and the fingerprint meets at least one validity criterion, a copy of the media file can be associated with the user account even though the user's copy cannot be read, or potentially even played, by a component of the environment.