According to the eSoft Threat Prevention Team, there are now over 135,000 such sites sprouting up all over the Web, many of which can be found by a simple Google search. Because the sites look and feel like YouTube, many users will not check the URL to verify that it actually is the giant video sharing website.

The “media codec” that the users download is actually a trojan that infects the computer and can access sensitive data, even taking control of the entire system. Currently, only 8 of 41 virus scanners are picking up the new malware, although that will probably change as the threat becomes more widespread. People who are concerned about inadvertently visiting one of these sites should use web filters that will detect malware sites and warn them before allowing the browsers to connect.

Source: Infosecurity

As with any offering you publish on your site, you want to make sure you can reach the widest possible audience and provide accessibility for those who need it. Hosting your own media server can be taxing on your system load, but there are some solutions that make it easy. I mentioned one open source solution in a previous post.

Another option is to sign up for remote video hosting. This could be as simple as a YouTube channel, which offers closed captioning and other accessibility features, or something more customized that requires monthly payments. At any rate, you will need to embed the videos on your site, and you will want to make sure the solution you choose will not slow it down. Some sites that have many embedded Flash videos, for example, run very slowly and take a long time to load, particularly on netbooks and other mobile devices. When HTML5 video becomes standard, it may be a better choice to consider.

Even though there is a huge market for music videos, would a site developed on the name be able to compete with the likes of YouTube and MTV? Why would someone visit a site just to watch music videos when they can go to YouTube and watch any kind of video?

MusicVideos.com has great long-term potential, but I think domain investors often forget about short-term factors when making purchases. My guess is as long as YouTube is around, this name has little hope of generating much revenue.

Photo | duchesssa

Answer: FFmpeg is a suite of tools that provide users with video manipulation, editing, streaming, and recording capabilities on numerous platforms and multiple formats. As the name indicates, it supports a number of mpeg compression formats as well as other open and proprietary video codecs.

In order to have better than average video conversion and streaming on a website, you need a webhost that has FFmpeg installed on your server, accessible from web scripts, and ready to use. Since the advent of YouTube, many hosts have started offering dedicate FFmpeg server packages completely separate from their shared hosting accounts.

This allows the video conversion, streaming, and other tasks to use as much of the CPU and RAM that it needs to complete the tasks quickly and thoroughly. Normally, such servers will also include other related tools and libraries to support as many codecs and options as possible. Those may include but are not limited to Myplayer, xvidcore, Ogg (Theora and Vorbis), and LAME (MP3 Encoder).

With high-speed connections and millions of pages to visit, I think too many people take the Internet for granted. We can see as much of the web as we care to from our chairs, but rarely do we see the systems that power it all. The engineers who design these server facilities and the people who work tirelessly to run them deserve more credit.

The site mimicked not only the YouTube name, but also the format and style of the site. Google, the legal owner of the YouTube trademark, filed a complaint with the National Arbitration Forum. The youtubeislam.com site owners did not respond to the complaint, and the arbitrator ruled in favor of Google, following the same UDRP criteria that is normally used.

Many people complained that Google had unfairly targeted the site and that the dispute was somehow politically motivated. They took their complaint to ICANN, which responded on their blog, explaining that they do not have authority over domain disputes. While ICANN does have limited oversight over domain registrars, domain disputes are handled by third party organizations, the blog post reiterated.

Source: ICANN
Photo: Flickr

The new video site, aptly called The Video Bay, will rely on HTML 5 video technology. It is currently in “beta extreme” and only hosts a handful of videos. Users wishing to view the videos will need versions of the latest web browsers, such as Firefox 3.5, that support the new video embedding. Once installed, a user can view the videos without the need for third-party plugins, such as Adobe Flash Player.

A Swedish court ruled that the Founders of The Pirate Bay were guilty of copyright violation, fined them $3.6 million dollars and sentenced them to a year in prison. The case is currently under appeal. In response to this, The Pirate Bay, which is still up and running, created a privacy service that allows subscribers to share files anonymously through security encryption.

Source: Information Week
Photo: Flickr

With this new website, the EFF gives users the ability to see changes in policies via a real-time feed, including side-by-side comparisons of the agreements with the changes highlighted.

‘Terms of Service’ policies on websites define how Internet businesses interact with you and use your personal information,” the EFF said in a statement. “But most web users don’t read these policies–or understand that the terms are constantly changing.”

Usually, a website will send mass emails to their users whenever a policy change takes effect, but most users do not bother to read the often complicated and lengthy documents. Earlier this year, Facebook made a change to its policy that allowed it to use deleted user content whenever and for as long as it wanted. When users protested, the company backed down from the change. The EFF hopes to put other major Internet services under the same scrutiny to ensure user rights are protected.

Source: CNET
Photo: Flickr

The study found that Americans viewed 16.8 billion hours of online video in April. That is 1,916 years, or two millenniums, worth. This marked a 16% increase from the previous month.

YouTube had the largest market share out of any video site. It accounted for nearly 40% of total viewership. Trailing far behind was FOX with 3%, Hulu with 2.4%, and Yahoo with 2.1%.

The 152 million web users tracked viewed an average of 111 videos per person. The average duration of each video was 3.5 minutes. Nearly 80% of American Internet users watch video online.

The study makes no mention of how many of these users were Rick-rolled, however.