MySpace is stepping up efforts to guard the site against copyright violations by introducing a new system designed to prevent users from reposting copyright-protected videos. “Take Down Stay Down”, as its new tool is dubbed, will be offered for free to copyright holders who seek to remove a videos they have the title to.  How it works: When MySpace is informed that a user has posted unauthorized video content onto the site, after removing the video, MySpace then creates a digital fingerprint of the video content and adds it to its copyright filter based on the audio. If someone tries to repost removed content, the filtering system recognizes the file and blocks it. This is based on the technology DRM/filtering firm Audible Magic is providing to the company.

Taking aim at YouTube, which promises to soon unveil its “Claim Your Content” filter for unauthorized content, MySpace is touting itself as the “first website to implement a more effective solution to this challenging problem,” in the words of Michael Angus, EVP and general counsel for FIM, the social net’s parent.  In addition to video, the tool will also screen audio files to make sure music copyrights aren’t violated. Last February, MySpace began a pilot program, also with technology from Audible Magic, that detected copyrighted video content by using the audio on videos to identify and track them. MySpace continues to use that technology as a set of procedures blocking illegal content use.  Release

News.com: On whether the service will work or could it be hacked, Audible Magic CEO Vance Ikezoye said that a fingerprint is “much more robust at identifying the content. Hashes identify files,” he explained. If a Colbert Report clip were pulled at Viacom’s request, for example, MySpace’s filter would block all other forms of the file from MPEG to AVI, all various degrees of quality, and even video clips that contained only part of the content from the piece that had been taken down. “We simulate the human perception of the same content,” Ikezoye said.

• Could Video Fingerprinting End Legal Fingerpointing?
• NAB: GoogleTube Close To Its “Claim Your Content” Filtering System
• MySpace’s Filtering Efforts Begin