One of the embodiments of the invention includes a method of identifying illegal uses of copyright material. The steps of the method preferably include the steps of: (a) providing a primary digital media object, (b) associating an auxiliary construct with the object, (c) transforming the construct using at least one of the attributes of the object to generate a unique key representative of the primary object, (d) receiving a plurality of secondary digital media objects, (e) performing steps (b) and (c) on the secondary objects to generate unique keys representative of the secondary objects, (f) comparing the keys of the secondary objects with the key of the primary object to identify if any of the secondary objects are substantially similar to the primary object.