MySpace has announced it has implemented a pilot program to block videos containing unauthorized copyrighted content from being posted in its community. With the program’s launch, MySpace becomes the largest Internet video site to offer free video filtering to copyright holders.

The issue of automated content filtering has proven to be controversial. Some video creators have had inexplicably banned videos, even though the video contains no infringing content. Robo-censors are also likely to ban content that makes fair use of copyrighted material.

Using digital fingerprinting technology licensed from Audible Magic, MySpace’s filter screens video uploaded by users and blocks any video matching a fingerprint in MySpace’s database.

“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 co-founder of MySpace. “For MySpace, video filtering is about protecting artists and the work they create.”

MySpace’s new video filter comes on the heels of the audio filtering MySpace launched last fall, screening audio files uploaded by users to hinder any unauthorized music uploads. MySpace has also developed and is making available a special content takedown tool to make it easier and more efficient for copyright owners to request removal of any user-posted content they claim is unauthorized.

MySpace is already blocking users from uploading any audio or video files containing Universal Music Group’s music that is not authorized, while allowing all of the extensive free authorized promotional uses that UMG and its artists currently enjoy on MySpace. MySpace has offered the full-range of its content protection tools to all other major music labels and to other content owners, free of charge.

Attorneys general of more than 20 states have written to Anheuser-Busch, asking the brewer for better tools to make sure underaged viewers aren’t accessing its new beer-themed video site, Bud.TV.

The site asks for your name, zip code and birthday to verify that you are 21 or over. The attorneys general strongly encourage Anheuser-Busch to use a more effective age-verification tool. They request that, at a minimum, you should have to enter your name and full address, or a driver’s license number, exactly as it appears on a government-issued ID before a person could access the site.

The situation raises questions about the responsibilities of online publishers, and also whether the government should regulate Internet video sites, and if so, how. Thousands of video sites offer content, without age restrictions, that is more adult than anything at Bud.TV.

Tighter restrictions at Internet video sites could reduce the sites’ usability and dramatially reduce their audience.

“Despite the fact that this software has turned away tens of thousands of visitors, we have continued to use it to show that we’re serious about wanting to prevent illegal underage drinking,” saidAnheuser-Busch representative Francine Katz. “Despite these extraordinary efforts, some have urged us to make the age verification process more difficult and even more invasive of people’s privacy.”

The Attorney Generals propose several other possible safeguards, like sending a postcard to the home or making a phone call to check that a legal-aged adult, and not a child below the drinking age, is checking out the site.

via Ad Week

DareJunkies.com, a new video challenge social networking site, wants you to submit one to two-minute videos of your “most outrageous, absurd and hilarious deeds.”

One winner will receive a $10,000 cash prize by accepting one of the various challenges on the List. The challenge will begin on February 15, and run through February 28. While submissions are restricted to US residents, anyone in the world can vote for the winner from March 1 to 15; the winner will be announced on March 25.

DareJunkies.com encourages users to select from a list of challenges written by comedy writers. These “scripts” provide the impetus for users’ creative submissions.

Users can also post their own creative challenges for pending approval from the DareJunkies team and then send their challenges to friends and other members of the community. At the end of every month, the top ten videos split a cash prize that will begin at $5,000 and the money will continue to increase monthly.

According to the site, it sets itself apart from the crowd because it gives aspiring content makers, filmmakers, actors and anyone with a camera and a dream, the opportunity to shoot a video with a purpose, showcase their work and win cash.

“DareJunkies.com gives actors, would-be actors and content makers a purpose, motivation, and a way to deal with conflict — all necessary elements of great entertainment. The challenges essentially provide a blueprint,” said Ben Bacal, CEO and co-founder of DareJunkies.com. “We provide users a set of great, safe and entertaining scripts that we call challenges. Money only further motivates people to submit content. There’s a lot of raw talent out there that is not exposed to the people making the decisions to purchase or air their materials,” he added.

MySpace today announced that it has implemented a pilot program to block videos containing unauthorized copyrighted content from being posted in its community. With the program’s launch, MySpace becomes the largest Internet video site filtering content.

Using digital fingerprinting technology licensed from Audible Magic, MySpace’s filter screens video uploaded by users and blocks any video matching a fingerprint in MySpace’s database.

“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 co-founder of MySpace. “For MySpace, video filtering is about protecting artists and the work they create.”

(more…)

A phishing attack on MySpace is using URLs embedded in QuickTime videos to take people to pornographic Web sites.

How the attack works:

It begins with a Quicktime file being embedded in a Profile page. If the user “runs” the file (simply visiting the infected page is enough to trigger the attack in most cases), it uses the HREF function to activate some javascript. HREF? Let’s take a quick look at the Quicktime website:

An HREF track is a special type of text track that adds interactivity to a QuickTime movie. HREF tracks contain URLs that can specify movies that replace the current movie, load another frame, or that load QuickTime Player. They can also specify JavaScript functions or Web pages that load a specific browser frame or window.

Allowing Javascript from a movie file….whoops.

When this happens, the profile page is “infected” and pastes a fake overlay of options onto the profile page - the most serious of which is (of course) the fake login button. If your page has been affected, you will see a strange, blue navigation bar such as this on your page. If this is the case, you will need to clean out your profile and check if any of your friends have also been infected - if they are, you will continue to be reinfected…most likely via the friends list itself. We have seen reports of users complainiing that even when they’ve removed the fake navigation bar from their page, it comes right back if one of their friends is infected - so it looks like the friends list is being exploited in much the same way the Orkut worm used a similar feature to spread. Except in this case, the only option to fix the problem is get your friend to remove the infection code from their page, or remove your friend from your list indefinitely.

via The SpywareGuide Greynets Blog