17. A system for processing multimedia streams, the system comprising: a storage device; and at least one processor coupled to the storage device, wherein the storage device stores a program for controlling the processor, and wherein the processor, operative with the program, is configured to: identify a multimedia stream associated with a link, the uitimedia stream comprising content and metadata that describes content; remove the metadata from the stream and encode the content using a compression algorithm to generate a fingerprint for the multimedia stream, the fingerprint comprising a set of unique bits; compare the generated fingerprint to at least one fingerprint stored in a fingerprint database; determine, based on the comparison, whether the generated fingerprint matches at least one fingerprint stored in the fingerprint database; store the generated fingerprint in the fingerprint database when it is determined that there is not a match to the generated fingerprint; create a canonical resource locator for the identified multimedia stream by resolving the link and at least one other link into a simplified format; and associate the canonical resource locator with the generated fingerprint.
17. A system for processing multimedia streams, the system comprising: a storage device; and at least one processor coupled to the storage device, wherein the storage device stores a program for controlling the processor, and wherein the processor, operative with the program, is configured to: identify a multimedia stream associated with a link, the uitimedia stream comprising content and metadata that describes content; remove the metadata from the stream and encode the content using a compression algorithm to generate a fingerprint for the multimedia stream, the fingerprint comprising a set of unique bits; compare the generated fingerprint to at least one fingerprint stored in a fingerprint database; determine, based on the comparison, whether the generated fingerprint matches at least one fingerprint stored in the fingerprint database; store the generated fingerprint in the fingerprint database when it is determined that there is not a match to the generated fingerprint; create a canonical resource locator for the identified multimedia stream by resolving the link and at least one other link into a simplified format; and associate the canonical resource locator with the generated fingerprint. 20. The system of claim 17 , wherein the at least one processor is further configured to: compare the canonical resource locator to at least one stored canonical resource locator; determine, based on the comparison, whether the canonical resource locator matches at least one stored canonical resource locator; and store the canonical resource locator in the fingerprint database when it is determined that there is not a match to the stored canonical resource locator.