Tuesday, 20 February 2007

MySpace Deals with Video Piracy

In an effort to clean up its image MySpace has unveiled plans to use digital-fingerprinting technology from Audible Magic. The aim of implementing this program is to curb piracy on the site and filter copyrighted video clips.

"MySpace is dedicated to ensuring that content owners, whether large or small, can both promote and protect their content in our community," said Chris DeWolfe, CEO and cofounder of MySpace, in a statement. "For MySpace, video filtering is about protecting artists and the work they create.

Earlier in the month, the social networking site had licensed technology that will help it prevent unauthorised copyrighted music from being posted to MySpace users’ pages. The 'audio fingerprinting' technology, offered from Gracenote, will allow MySpace to block unauthorised copyrighted music recordings from being posted. It uses Gracenote’s MusicID audio fingerprinting technology and Global Media Database.

MySpace will review all music audio recordings uploaded by community members to their profiles, identifies that which is copyrighted, and blocks the uploading of such music as appropriate.

"MySpace is staunchly committed to protecting artists' rights, whether those artists are on major labels or are independent acts," said Chris DeWolfe, MySpace chief executive and co-founder.

The company said users who repeatedly attempt to upload copyright music files would be permanently barred from the site.

Online sites such as MySpace and YouTube have come under fire from major record labels who have sued in some cases to prevent copyright music from being included as the soundtrack to a user-generated video.

Several record labels recently announced licensing deals with YouTube, which has chosen to share ad revenue with record labels rather than filter the song files itself.

P2pnet took a rather different point of view, describing the Gracenote software as 'a spy program to keep a check on user pages'.

Doubtless MySpace's enthusiasm for copyright protection is unrelated to its own plans to begin selling music downloads, for which it needs the backing of major record companies.

Last month Universal Music Chairman Doug Morris web site accused MySpace and its rival You Tube, of being copyright infringers that owe the music industry 'tens of millions of dollars'. This deal should go some way to assuaging his concerns.