Oct 31, 2006, 19:01 GMT
San Francisco - Social networking site MySpace is set to crack down on users who put copyrighted music on their profile pages, according to an announcement Tuesday.
The move comes after the site was bought for nearly 600 million dollars earlier this year by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. whose efforts to increase advertising have alienated some long time users. Many others are reportedly upset about increased levels of spam and porn on the site, and a deluge of other unsolicited messages.
The latest surveys show the number of unique visitors to MySpace dropped 4 per cent in August to some 49 million. While MySpace dismisses this as a seasonal adjustment, the ban on the use of copyrighted material could drive more users away.
MySpace said it will use a file-filtering application to scan old and new content to weed out any unauthorised material.
Illegal files, the company said, would be removed and persistent offenders would be banned from the site.
'MySpace is staunchly committed to protecting artists' rights, whether those artists are on major labels or are independent acts,' MySpace CEO and co-founder Chris DeWolfe said. 'This is another important step we're taking to ensure artists control the content they create.'
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