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Re:Rackspace accused of patent infringement for hosting Github by rossjudson on Tuesday September 18, 2012 @05:12PM (#4540546)
Document and image management systems have been doing this sort of thing for decades. Form a unique identifier for an image by hashing, split the bytes out into a path name by hex converting, and you have a file system path.

I'd say that this particular troll is going to get stepped on pretty hard, and all of these patents are going to be invalidated.

Re:Rackspace accused of patent infringement for hosting Github by rbanffy on Tuesday September 18, 2012 @07:31PM (#4541154)
I never claimed I invented it ;-) It just seemed like the obvious way to prevent duplication when someone would rather update the same file again than search for a previously existing version.

In the end, when a dupe was uploaded for the second time, the uploader would be rewarded by not having to edit any metadata - as they would be redirected to the original asset page.

If someone ever uploads a second, valid, JPEG that collides in md5-space with a previously uploaded one, the sysadmins in the app group will receive an e-mail commemorating the fact someone defeated our deduper.