• Los Angeles Times, Tuesday, February 13, 2007 11:01 AM

News Corp. beat Google to the punch. While Google's YouTube has been promising a filtering system for copyrighted video, MySpace announced a new program that should automatically remove copyrighted material.

MySpace said it would weed out content belonging to Universal Music Group (as part of a settlement of an earlier lawsuit) and NBC Universal.

Crucially, the move signals that music labels, TV and movie companies may be taking the upper hand in the debate over user-generated content sites and media firms' intellectual property. Ever since it acquired YouTube in November, Google has been trying to use YouTube's massive, loyal user base, as well as its own enormous market capitalization, as leverage in negotiating with copyright holders.

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