MySpace.com’s newly unveiled technology to block pirated video clips from showing up on its popular social-networking Web site is bound to send shock waves through rival YouTube.
YouTube has come under heavy fire recently from media conglomerates angry about the unauthorized copyrighted material that keeps popping up on the video-sharing site.
Until MySpace’s announcement yesterday of a pilot program to stop such clips from appearing on its site, both it and YouTube argued they had the right to let the content stay on their sites unless media companies made a formal request that it to be removed.
The move by MySpace to crack down on pirated material itself “lets media companies say, ‘Look, it’s your job to track down unauthorized material,” said Josh Bernoff, an analyst with Forrester Research.
“This proves there is technology out there that can do that,” Bernoff said.
