Monday, June 19, 2006
Video sites grapple with specter of smut | CNET News.com:
"...Unlike New York's consumer protection board, the federal government does have the power to force change. A bill proposed this month in the U.S. Senate would require any Web site that offers sexually explicit content to post warning labels on each offending page or face imprisonment.
The authors of the bill, called the Stop Adults' Facilitation of the Exploitation of Youth Act, or the Safety Act, want to decrease the chances that children can inadvertently be exposed to pornography by Web sites that mislabel their materials either deliberately or through negligence.
And video-sharing sites are likely to face enormous pressure to clean up their sites from big advertisers. Some companies are eager to partner with the sector's powerhouses but will steer clear if it means that one of their ads sits next to unsuitable content, said Greg Sterling, who operates Web research company Sterling Market Intelligence.
"There's absolutely a big opportunity for these sites to sell advertising, provided that they guarantee (what kind of) content...goes next to the ads," Sterling said. "Advertisers are going to want control of where their brands are placed."
That's not going to be easy for some sites. Take, for example, YouTube, the largest video-sharing site, with nearly 13 million users per month. Guaranteeing the quality of content on the site would mean hiring employees to eyeball each frame of the more than 50,000 videos that get posted daily. YouTube allows videos to last up to 10 minutes, but most are much shorter. If the average video is 3 minutes, then YouTube would be monitoring 2,500 hours worth of video a day.
"It's going to be hard to guarantee absolute protection," said Mike McGuire, a research analyst at Gartner. "You have to wonder if (these sites) foresaw the kind of expense and effort that they are going to have to put into monitoring their sites."...
...YouTube users can flag content they think violates the user agreement. If a video collects enough flags (the company declines to publish the number), YouTube will review the clip, and pull it if executives agree the material is objectionable, Supan said.
But not all flagged material gets pulled. If executives think a clip doesn't violate the agreement, it remains on the site but is accessible only to registered users 18 and older. YouTube encourages visitors to register, a process that requires entering a birth date. People who say they're younger than 13 are barred from registering.
This restriction process, however, can be circumvented. In one instance, News.com encountered a clip that had been flagged and restricted, but an identical, unrestricted clip was available under a slightly different title.
And there's no guarantee that a potentially objectionable clip will come to light to begin with. An unrestricted clip of a female television host in Europe, who spoke to a live audience while wearing only a bikini bottom, was available on the site for at least three days.
Over at Google Video, which also said it relies on user feedback to monitor content, material uploaded in recent weeks includes a parody of a car commercial that features an announcer using numerous expletives during a mock sales pitch.
"Self-policing flat out doesn't work," said Peter Pham, director of business development at Photobucket, a fast-growing photo-sharing site that has recently jumped into video. "The problem is that most of the people finding this material are the people who are looking for this material. And they aren't going to complain."
By eyeballing each frame of every clip submitted, companies such as Photobucket and San Diego-based start-up vMix want to avoid angering advertisers or family advocates. All videos on Photobucket's site get reviewed, Pham said. The company has developed software that creates a frame-by-frame "map" of a video, allowing workers to evaluate content at a glance, Pham said, adding that Photobucket recently hired 50 people to monitor incoming video and photos.
In other news:
* A bill of rights for Net users?
* Online shifts for Windows
* Road Trip 2006: At the helm of the 'Spruce Goose'
* News.com Extra: The vacancy fit for a king
* Video: Howard Hughes' Spruce Goose
A family-friendly site doesn't come cheap. The projected cost of all of this is $2 million per year, Pham said. VMix is doing something similar on a smaller scale...."
"...Unlike New York's consumer protection board, the federal government does have the power to force change. A bill proposed this month in the U.S. Senate would require any Web site that offers sexually explicit content to post warning labels on each offending page or face imprisonment.
The authors of the bill, called the Stop Adults' Facilitation of the Exploitation of Youth Act, or the Safety Act, want to decrease the chances that children can inadvertently be exposed to pornography by Web sites that mislabel their materials either deliberately or through negligence.
And video-sharing sites are likely to face enormous pressure to clean up their sites from big advertisers. Some companies are eager to partner with the sector's powerhouses but will steer clear if it means that one of their ads sits next to unsuitable content, said Greg Sterling, who operates Web research company Sterling Market Intelligence.
"There's absolutely a big opportunity for these sites to sell advertising, provided that they guarantee (what kind of) content...goes next to the ads," Sterling said. "Advertisers are going to want control of where their brands are placed."
That's not going to be easy for some sites. Take, for example, YouTube, the largest video-sharing site, with nearly 13 million users per month. Guaranteeing the quality of content on the site would mean hiring employees to eyeball each frame of the more than 50,000 videos that get posted daily. YouTube allows videos to last up to 10 minutes, but most are much shorter. If the average video is 3 minutes, then YouTube would be monitoring 2,500 hours worth of video a day.
"It's going to be hard to guarantee absolute protection," said Mike McGuire, a research analyst at Gartner. "You have to wonder if (these sites) foresaw the kind of expense and effort that they are going to have to put into monitoring their sites."...
...YouTube users can flag content they think violates the user agreement. If a video collects enough flags (the company declines to publish the number), YouTube will review the clip, and pull it if executives agree the material is objectionable, Supan said.
But not all flagged material gets pulled. If executives think a clip doesn't violate the agreement, it remains on the site but is accessible only to registered users 18 and older. YouTube encourages visitors to register, a process that requires entering a birth date. People who say they're younger than 13 are barred from registering.
This restriction process, however, can be circumvented. In one instance, News.com encountered a clip that had been flagged and restricted, but an identical, unrestricted clip was available under a slightly different title.
And there's no guarantee that a potentially objectionable clip will come to light to begin with. An unrestricted clip of a female television host in Europe, who spoke to a live audience while wearing only a bikini bottom, was available on the site for at least three days.
Over at Google Video, which also said it relies on user feedback to monitor content, material uploaded in recent weeks includes a parody of a car commercial that features an announcer using numerous expletives during a mock sales pitch.
"Self-policing flat out doesn't work," said Peter Pham, director of business development at Photobucket, a fast-growing photo-sharing site that has recently jumped into video. "The problem is that most of the people finding this material are the people who are looking for this material. And they aren't going to complain."
By eyeballing each frame of every clip submitted, companies such as Photobucket and San Diego-based start-up vMix want to avoid angering advertisers or family advocates. All videos on Photobucket's site get reviewed, Pham said. The company has developed software that creates a frame-by-frame "map" of a video, allowing workers to evaluate content at a glance, Pham said, adding that Photobucket recently hired 50 people to monitor incoming video and photos.
In other news:
* A bill of rights for Net users?
* Online shifts for Windows
* Road Trip 2006: At the helm of the 'Spruce Goose'
* News.com Extra: The vacancy fit for a king
* Video: Howard Hughes' Spruce Goose
A family-friendly site doesn't come cheap. The projected cost of all of this is $2 million per year, Pham said. VMix is doing something similar on a smaller scale...."
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