Website providers have a moral obligation to stop pupils posting offensive school videos that demean their teachers or other children, according to UK education secreatary Alan Johnson. He argues that companies have a responsibility to ensure their sites are properly policed to prevent young people putting humiliating clips taken by mobile phone cameras on the internet.

Addressing a conference of the NASUWT union in Belfast, Mr Johnson said cyber-bullying was “cruel and relentless, able to follow a child beyond the school gates and into their homes”. He added: “The online harassment of teachers is causing some to consider leaving the profession because of the defamation and humiliation they are forced to suffer.”

Letting teachers confiscate mobiles being used maliciously in school would help, he said. “But there is a wider responsibility upon the providers of the sites which broadcast this material. (more…)

MTV has announced record traffic and video streams for mtv.com since the beginning of the year. January and February were consecutive record-setting months for the site. The site delivered a record 84 million streams in January, only to beat that number in February with 85.1 million streams.Year-to-year comparisons are even more striking: January 2007 streams were up 258 percent over the previous January, while February streams were up 228 percent over the year prior.

The announcement adds fuel to the fire over the issue of Viacom’s YouTube takedown requests. While many argued that Viacom (parent company of MTV) was shooting itself in the foot by asking for its videos to be removed from YouTube, their numbers argue otherwise.
In January, mtv.com attracted 24.2 million unique visitors, an all- time-high and a 56 percent increase over January 2006. In February, the number of daily unique visitors grew another 10 percent to 1.1 million a day, up from 1 million a day in January. March also is roaring in like a lion. mtv.com earned 7.1 million unique visitors for the week ending March 4, second only to the week ending Aug. 28, 2006, which featured exclusive behind-the-scenes and show content from the Video Music Awards.

“Viewers are constantly telling us they want to dig deeper into the content they see on-air, and they are obsessive about following our programming from one platform to the other — and back,” said Christina Norman, President of MTV. “When the TV show ‘The Hills’ inspires a community of fans to connect with their favorite cast members and devour exclusive content online and on the handset, the payoff for viewers is a more immersive experience all the way around.”

Google’s attempts to turn YouTube into a moneymaking venture are failing to impress some analysts.

Google moved some of its top executives to YouTube to hammer out deals with media companies, but at least one major deal recently fell through. YouTube promised to roll out new technology to prevent copyrighted material from appearing on the site, but in the meantime, pirated clips continue to pop up. Unhappy with YouTube’s terms, Viacom decided to forgo YouTube, and instead is striking out on its own online-video ventures.

“I give them a C-minus” in dealmaking, said Josh Bernoff, principal analyst with Forrester Research. “When you negotiate with a media company, you have to demonstrate respect for their content.”

Bernoff adds that YouTube needs to use more sophisticated technology to prevent unauthorized uploads, which would in turn help foster more trust between YouTube and media companies.

“There is software out there — it’s not perfect, but it’s out there,” he said.
via Washington Post

While most recent coverage of YouTube has focused on the controversy over users publishing corporate copyrighted material, a new report suggest that YouTube users prefer homemade videos over ripped mainstream content.

According to research company HitWise, user generated media is more popular on the service. Hitwise general manager of global research Bill Tancer said in a statement: “If you look at the search terms driving traffic to YouTube, it turns out a lot of the content people are seeking is user generated.”Tancer added in the report: “I know everyone is up in arms about the Google announcement that they will have to put some copyright controls in place. But, our data is telling us that may not impact YouTube visits as much as people think it will.”

Hitwise further claimed that during the week of February third, online traffic to YouTube was greater than that to all television network websites combined!

While user-generated content may rule at YouTube, a quick look at the top YouTube videos of all time shows that at least half of the videos are either content ripped from television or videos that contain traditionally-copyrighted music.

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.