AfterDawn: News

Microsoft's Soapbox closed to new users

Microsoft Corp. has closed its Soapbox video sharing service to new users while the company attempts to improve anti-piracy measures on the site. Just like any other video sharing site, Soapbox immediately began to fill up with pirated video clips when the test version of the service was launched last month. No new subscribers will be allowed to sign up for access the site, but anybody who already holds an account can access the site.

Microsoft could have been faced with a dilemma of distributing legitimate videos for major content companies on one of its units, while on another there were thousands of unauthorized videos available for free. YouTube found itself the recipient of a billion dollar lawsuit courtesy of Viacom due to the thousands of video clips users have uploaded without permission.



Microsoft has licensed digital-fingerprinting technology from Audible Magic to help filter out unauthorized material. Adam Sohn, a director in Microsoft's online-services group, said that the temporary closure of Soapbox was not forced on Microsoft by its partners, but said that they were interested in how the company planned to clean up Soapbox.

"This software company is aligned very closely with the notion of intellectual-property rights," Sohn said. "We feel this is the right time to make these changes and stand up to do the right thing." Of course, Microsoft should give the uploaders of pirate content a big sloppy kiss for now, as the company can use this situation to greatly improve its relationship with content providers and make several of its competitors look bad.

Source:
News.com

Written by: James Delahunty @ 22 Mar 2007 23:12

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• 7 comments

• borhan9

  Its nice to see that its not so easy for Microsoft also. Equality thats what i like to see.

  22.3.2007 23:43 #1

• ZippyDSM

  whole eps or whole music vids,I can understand,however clips and segments will always fall under fair use they have to deal with that more than protecting the poor pitiful corporations from "sharing"

  23.3.2007 04:41 #2

• georgeluv

  Originally posted by ZIppyDSM:whole eps or whole music vids,I can understand,however clips and segments will always fall under fair use they have to deal with that more than protecting the poor pitiful corporations from "sharing"iv told you this before clips dont count as fair use, they can be orderd taken down just like full eps and anything else. lets say i am a tv show producer and i make a special where some dude jumps the empire state building with his motor bike. the special is an hour long, it goes over his special equipment, his background, his training, his insanity... then at the very end around minute 54 the dude final jumps the thing. if what you say is true someone could just take the short clip of him actualy jumping the empire state building, post it on youtube, and say "oh its jsut a short clip of the show its fair use for me to distribute it to millions of people over youtube". not true. as a producer i have been robbed of part of my show, doesnt matter if its some useless part or the money shot that everyone waited out the whole hour to see. by posting the final "clip" of him jumping the empire state building they have made it so all the viewers who want to see it dont have to wait through 54 minutes of filler and comercials, they just watch 10 seconds on youtube, thus robbing me of money because i as the producer get paid on a scale of how much ratings i get. supose i want to sell a dvd afterwords too, how many people are going to buy it if the only shot they wanna see is on youtube? if you shoot a video you own it in its ENTIRTEY. clips are not alowed, unless you as the owner allow them. whenever you see news show or entertainment shows showing movie clips its because they have been granted the right to use them.
  
  or how about this, 40 diferent people post all diferent clips but they magicly all can be combined for the entire show. is that legal? they are all clips just like you said....
  
  if you still think clips ar legal please site law code and possibly excerpts from the dmca. you will find you are wrong.

  23.3.2007 06:20 #3

• ZippyDSM

  Quote:Originally posted by ZIppyDSM:whole eps or whole music vids,I can understand,however clips and segments will always fall under fair use they have to deal with that more than protecting the poor pitiful corporations from "sharing"iv told you this before clips dont count as fair use, they can be orderd taken down just like full eps and anything else. lets say i am a tv show producer and i make a special where some dude jumps the empire state building with his motor bike. the special is an hour long, it goes over his special equipment, his background, his training, his insanity... then at the very end around minute 54 the dude final jumps the thing. if what you say is true someone could just take the short clip of him actualy jumping the empire state building, post it on youtube, and say "oh its just a short clip of the show its fair use for me to distribute it to millions of people over youtube". not true. as a producer i have been robbed of part of my show, doesnt matter if its some useless part or the money shot that everyone waited out the whole hour to see. by posting the final "clip" of him jumping the empire state building they have made it so all the viewers who want to see it dont have to wait through 54 minutes of filler and comercials, they just watch 10 seconds on youtube, thus robbing me of money because i as the producer get paid on a scale of how much ratings i get. supose i want to sell a dvd afterwords too, how many people are going to buy it if the only shot they wanna see is on youtube? if you shoot a video you own it in its ENTIRTEY. clips are not alowed, unless you as the owner allow them. whenever you see news show or entertainment shows showing movie clips its because they have been granted the right to use them.
  
  or how about this, 40 diferent people post all diferent clips but they magicly all can be combined for the entire show. is that legal? they are all clips just like you said....
  
  if you still think clips ar legal please site law code and possibly excerpts from the dmca. you will find you are wrong.Fine then,everything is CP/IP'd and nothing can be shown without the proper paper work and I am a pirate that sales the 7 seas o'the net to "truesuaring" data I like!
  
  AVAST YE!!!! AARRR!!! :P
  
  I am sorry but the current laws were made for a world without a internet (or easily copied data for that matter)the whole system needs to be updated and made fair for sharers and the mighty corporations,if not its just a draconian order wrathing around in its eternal death throws.....

  23.3.2007 06:35 #4

• georgeluv

  i actualy find the laws to be quite in our favor as comsumers. youtube is a "nuetral intermediary", its been up for almost two years serving millions with copywrited work, possibly costing copywrite owners millions if not billions of dollars, yet it still stands, on american soil no less.
  
  i have been downloading shit off the net since napster, not once have i ever been botherd (aside from my short stint as sharer, and in that case i only got warend for feture movies, i asume anything less they see as a lost cause to go after).
  
  only sharers are the ones who get fucked, but i can honestly see that as wrong. i as a leecher am only downloading things openly offerd to me over the net. i am not even commiting an illegal act by downloading them. only the sharing is illegal. i can live with that, leave the sharing up to the brave robin hoods of our time.

  23.3.2007 07:17 #5

• ZippyDSM

  georgeluv
  
  Is it because youtube do not make a profit off CP/IP directly that they can stay afloat?
  
  I worry abotu data and thoughts begin so protected you can not speak them without gettign in trouble,its silly I know but the media mafia can sue you over such things if they wish to.
  
  
  I have looked at acouple new movies only to find they are not even worth renting,I cant drive and have a fear of people and thus kinda live off the net,I see the corporations doubling profits yet refusing to deal with the future and blame the consumers more and more for all their woes.

  23.3.2007 07:32 #6

• georgeluv

  Originally posted by ZIppyDSM:Is it because youtube do not make a profit off CP/IP directly that they can stay afloat?one of the reasons, yes. the biggest reason is that they are not set up for piracy. they are just set up to share videos that people post. its not diferent than this message board. afterdawn.com can not directly give you a guide on how to rip a copy protected dvd for some reason but the users can and afterdawn is not responsible for what they do. people dont seem to realize how important the supreme court ruling was that protects site operators from being held liable for what their users do. ill bet that ruling sent a chill down every major media companies spine, cause they all knew it meant one thing: "no matter what gets posted to youtube and no matter how fucked over we get from it, well never be able to sue youtube as long as they take down videos as we ask and report ips". this of course is no where near good enough to actualy stem the titdal wave of illegal content on youtube, just like viacom complained that it would take a small army of people to constantly watch youtube, send out take down notices, and check to make sure they are taken down only to have the same video get posted again 30 more time in the hour. its way too easy to post vids to youtube without leaving a trail. see, for every youtube watcher viacom would have to pay for, there are 100 warez nuts uploading videos over, and over, and over, and over again. vid gets taken down, 10 more pop up. now, i do not see any reason why youtube should change. viacom should not be able to interfier with emerging technology, if the will of the people is so strong that viacom cant fight them off then guess what? the people should get there way this is a democratic society, at least i thaught it was.
  
  and also consider the only efective way to give the MPAA what they want: full on federaly regulated corporate controlled censorship, something i think even our government isnt stupid enough to give into. if they ever do, youll see me on the next train to canada because no citizen should put up with having its actions limited by the whims of a company trying to profit from him or her.
  
  the other way to stem it is by federaly regulating that all message boards operating inside the US have maditory resistration to post anything, overseen and archived by the us governmnet. that my freinds, would be the strictest blog polocy on earth if it happened, not even china does that. all it would do is force the youtube server location outside the us, cost tons of great jobs, and steam inovation in the internet service field in america, thus costing more jobs in the future. not to mention it would certainly leave the populous very VERY pissed off at the government. then it would be buisness as usual, until america pulled a turkey and started banning whole sites from american servers. another thing we will never do.
  
  but wait, there is one more way! make it illegal to even view the files. this is impossible for obvious reasons. they cant even go after leechers because of fundamental mechanisms of our legal system.
  
  we are all bearing witness to the desparate end of monopolistic age in media ownership. in most other countries the fight has already been won by the consumers thanks to very social fair use and privacy laws.
  
  side note: how come this sites servers trace back to dallas? i thaught it was finnish. if this sites servers physical location is inside the US then it actualy proves my point that a site cannot be heald liable for what its users post liek i said before

  23.3.2007 20:36 #7