MySpace introduces automatic video blocking

Social networking market leader MySpace will use software to monitor videos posted to the site in a bid to block unauthorised use of copyrighted content. The company will use technology to analyse videos' audio tracks to identify infringing posts.

The move is a bid to placate the big copyright holding music and entertainment industries, which are taking legal action against social networking and video sharing sites over the copyright infringing activity of their users.

MySpace, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, will use technology from Audible Magic to screen content which users try to upload. If the audio track matches that held by the software and is identified as belonging to someone else, the video will be flagged by the system.

YouTube is the world's biggest video sharing site, but industry observers estimate that MySpace, with its huge community of virtual friends, is the second biggest source of user-submitted videos.

Much of that material is self-made and causes no copyright problems, but a huge amount is professionally produced and owned by a major entertainment company.

Those companies will now be able to upload 'fingerprints' of the digital audio of a given video. If a user submits a video for upload with the same audio, that video will be blocked.