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March 26, 2007

Microsoft's MSN is reportedly shutting down its SoapBox video-sharing site to any potential new users for up to sixty days, so that it can implement improved safeguards against potential pirated content.

On March 20, Microsoft agreed to distribute movies and TV shows for big media companies, and as a result has seen its Soapbox site rapidly fill up with unauthorized video clips since a mini test version of its site launched in February.

Adam Sohn, a director in Microsoft's online-services group said "as a result of Microsoft's decision, no new subscribers will be accepted. However, anyone who has already signed up for Soapbox can continue to access the Web site."

Microsoft's MSN Live could be embarrassed by the existence of pirated work on Soapbox. There was a real possibility that the company could have found itself distributing video from News Corp. and NBC Universal, at the same time another one of its units was hosting material stolen from those same companies.

AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo have all agreed to be part of a new online joint venture of media conglomerates that also includes NBC Universal and News Corp.

Scheduled to begin this summer, the new video network will feature full-length programming, movies and video clips from at least twelve television networks and two major film studios.

For many months now, copyright issues have become a central issue to the nascent online video market. On YouTube, the largest video-sharing site, there are thousands of clips posted to the site without the copyright holder's consent.

In an effort to help create a better filtering system that would prevent the uploading of copyrighted video clips, Microsoft licensed digital-fingerprinting technology from Audible Magic.

Sohn said the changes were not forced on Microsoft by its new partners, although he acknowledged that some of the content providers were very interested in how his company planned to clean up Soapbox.

Sohn added "this software company is aligned very closely with the notion of intellectual-property rights. We feel this is the right time to make these changes and stand up to really do the right thing."

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Source: C-Net News