Wednesday, October 29, 2008

New MTV Video Site's Censorship -- Bleeping out Names of File-Sharing Software

MTV has just launched a new online video site. While I won't go through the trouble of mocking the site (or the TV network) for its irrelevance (please visit this slashdot thread for plenty of that), it is worth noting that it does have one feature that other video sites do not: in-video censorship! As this observant slashdot commenter says:

I was perusing this yesterday, and came across the Weird Al video "Don't Download This Song". One line in the original song goes:
o/~ Like Morpheus or Grokster or Limewire or KaZaA o/~

But the version on the new MTV site goes:
o/~ Like *beep* or *beep* or *beep* or *beep* o/~

Does anyone know if it was aired on MTV/VH1 this way, or is this unique to the web version?

MTV: http://www.mtvmusic.com/video/?id=108884 [mtvmusic.com]
Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yz-grdpKVqg [youtube.com]

Update
More coverage: Slashdot Techdirt

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