SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 18 — As media companies struggle to reclaim control over their movies, television shows and music in a world of online file-sharing software, they have found an ally in software of another kind.

The new technological weapon is content-recognition software, which makes it possible to identify copyrighted material, even, for example, from blurry video clips.

The technology could address what the entertainment industry sees as one of its biggest problems — songs and videos being posted on the Web without permission.

Last week, Vance Ikezoye, the chief executive of Audible Magic in Los Gatos, Calif., demonstrated the technology by downloading a two-minute clip from YouTube and feeding it into his company’s new video-recognition system.

The clip — drained of color, with dialogue dubbed in Chinese — appeared to have been recorded with a camcorder in a dark movie theater before it was uploaded to the Web, so the image quality was poor.

Still, Mr. Ikezoye’s filtering software quickly identified it as the sword-training scene that begins 49 minutes and 37 seconds into the Miramax film “Kill Bill: Vol. 2.”

The entertainment industry is clamoring for Internet companies to adopt the technology for music files as well as for video clips. The social networking site MySpace, owned by the News Corporation, said last week that it would use Audible Magic’s system to identify copyrighted material on its pages. But not every Internet company is rushing to go along. The video-sharing site YouTube, which Google bought last year, is the major holdout so far.

Though YouTube’s co-founders said publicly that they would start using filtering technology by the end of last year, the site has yet to do so. And they have further angered some media companies by saying they would only use such technology to detect clips owned by companies that agree to broader licensing deals with YouTube.

The pressure is on. Executives at media companies like NBC and Viacom have criticized Google for the delay. Earlier this month, Viacom asked YouTube to remove 100,000 clips of its shows, like music videos from MTV and excerpts from Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show.”

In a statement, YouTube said that identifying which video clips had been uploaded without permission was a complex problem that required the cooperation of the copyright owners. “On YouTube, identifying copyrighted material cannot be a single automated process,” it said in the statement.

The systems being developed by companies like Audible Magic and Gracenote make use of vast databases that store digital representations of copyrighted songs, TV shows and movies.

When new files are uploaded to a Web site that is using the system, it checks the database for matches using a technique known as digital fingerprinting. Copyrighted material can then be blocked or posted, depending on whether it is licensed for use on the site.

“This is capable of helping the film and TV studios comprehensively protect their works,” Mr. Ikezoye said. “This could put the genie back in the bottle.”

Audio fingerprinting technologies have been used successfully for some time to detect copyrighted music on file-sharing networks and, to a smaller degree, to identify music tracks on social-networking Web sites like MySpace.

Systems that can identify video files hold even greater promise to improve relations between traditional media companies and Internet companies like YouTube. But the technology is not quite ready.

“Video is much more complex to analyze, and more information needs to be captured in the fingerprint,” said Bill Rosenblatt, president of GiantSteps Media Technology Strategies, a consulting firm based in New York. He noted that there were also more ways to fool the technology — for example, by cropping the image.

Screening for video is also more difficult because of the sheer volume of new material broadcast on television each day, all of which must be captured in the database.

And deploying any type of fingerprinting technology can carry a price. Users tend to leave filtered Web sites and migrate to more anything-goes online destinations.

Nevertheless, some file-sharing networks and smaller video sites like Guba.com and Grouper.com are already using more basic filters that monitor video soundtracks and music files, hoping to appease copyright holders and stay out of the courtroom.

Last week, they got some company: MySpace announced that it would expand on early filtering efforts and license Audible Magic’s audio and video fingerprinting technology. It will use the system to identify and obtain authorization for material from Universal Music, NBC Universal and Fox, three media companies that have wanted more control over their content on the site. The move ratchets up the pressure on YouTube, the largest video site on the Web.

Hollywood, long tormented by digital piracy, is growing excited about the possibilities of digital fingerprinting and filtering — in part because it is tired of having to ask YouTube and other sites to remove individual clips, only to find them posted again by other users.

“To the extent you can readily and easily identify one film or TV show from the next, it enables different licensing models and the opportunity to protect your content,” said Dean Garfield, executive vice president of the Motion Picture Association of America.

For now, however, audio fingerprinting is all that is widely available, and it can fall short in some situations, like when someone pairs a song with an unrelated piece of video.

For example, last December, one YouTube user uploaded scenes from the Warner Brothers movie “Superman Returns,” matched to the song “Superman,” by Five for Fighting of Columbia Records, a unit of Sony BMG Music.

With acoustic fingerprinting, Sony could authorize the use of the song and get a slice of the advertising revenue the clip generates, but Warner Brothers could not because the filter does not scrutinize video images.

Hoping to nurture the development of more advanced video fingerprinting, the film association asked technology companies last fall to submit video filtering systems for testing. Mr. Garfield of the association said 13 companies responded; their systems are now being evaluated.

Perhaps not surprisingly, there is now a flurry of interest in digital fingerprinting in Silicon Valley. Sean Varah, an electronic-music researcher who once worked for Sony music’s venture capital group, founded the start-up MotionDSP in 2005 to develop technology to improve the quality of video images. But he changed the company’s direction last year after seeing an opportunity in the filtering business.

“The television and movie producers have learned a lesson from Napster,” he said, referring to the music-sharing service that first got the attention of media companies. “They are not going to wait and see what happens.”

Attributor, another start-up based in Redwood City, Calif., is taking a different approach to filtering. It is developing automated software that will travel the Internet looking for copyrighted text, audio and video.

Setting up filters for each and every Web site and peer-to-peer network “is not a long-term solution,” said Jim Brock, a former Yahoo executive and the chief executive of Attributor. Rights holders “need to have these kinds of solutions across the Internet,” he said.

Audible Magic, which is considered to be an early leader in the field, started out with a system to recognize songs played on the radio, so it could offer listeners an opportunity to buy the music online. The company later adapted that technology to create an audio fingerprinting system.

Mr. Ikezoye, a former Hewlett-Packard marketing executive, recently set out to expand into video recognition. Last year, he licensed an invention called Motional Media ID, created by David W. Stebbings, a former executive at the Recording Industry Association of America.

Neither Mr. Ikezoye nor Mr. Stebbings would offer details on Motional Media ID (which identified the “Kill Bill” clip), citing the newly competitive environment around digital fingerprinting. Mr. Ikezoye acknowledged that it did not work well for very short clips and said that he would probably have to buy or develop additional technology.

Deploying any type of fingerprinting filter can have both good and bad effects. Guba.com, a video-sharing site similar to YouTube, developed its own filtering system, which it calls Johnny. Having won the favor of the film industry, the company now has deals to sell Warner and Sony films on its site.

But when Guba began blocking many copyrighted clips last April, its popularity plunged.

“We took a huge hit,” said Eric Lambrecht, Guba’s chief technology officer. “We all know what people want to see, but we looked at it as a long-term business decision.”

Some experts believe wide adoption of the technology is inevitable.

“As technology companies mature, they are realizing that the rule of law is better than the anarchy in which they were formed,” said Paul Kocher, chief executive of Cryptography Research, a company that has studied the security of digital fingerprinting technology.

LONDON (Reuters) - Warner Music Group announced on Wednesday new deals with two leading mobile operators to deliver its mobile music content across the Middle East, North Africa and Europe.The New York-based group announced content deals with Egypt’s Orascom Telecom to deliver its catalog of mobile products such as ringtones and full track downloads in countries including Algeria, Bangladesh, Italy, Pakistan, Tunisia and Egypt.

Under the second deal, Warner will work with Norwegian telecom group Telenor to offer its content via nine of Telenor’s 13 mobile operators in countries such as Norway, Sweden, Ukraine and Hungary.

Music companies are constantly looking to increase revenues from legal digital downloads and mobile streams to make up for the loss of revenues from declining CD sales.

Warner has been among the more aggressive of music companies to court new customers on the Internet and mobile phones, becoming the first music company to negotiate a deal with the controversial video sharing site YouTube, now owned by Internet search leader Google Inc..

The latest announcements from Warner, the world’s fourth largest music company, follow previous mobile deals with groups in Japan, South Korea, Russia, China and Latin America.

A spokesman for the group said the deals would open Warner’s content up to 60 million of Orascom’s subscribers. As of the third quarter of 2006, Telenor’s total mobile customer base from the 13 operators was 105 million.

“(Orascom’s) scale, ambition and commitment to promoting legitimate, pan-regional mobile music services make them the ideal partner for us as we develop our presence in the Middle East and North Africa,” Warner Chairman and CEO, Edgar Bronfman Jr, said in a statement.

Alex Zubillaga, Executive Vice President of Digital Strategy at Warner, said the sheer scale and reach of Telenor’s mobile network would take Warner’s ability to deliver mobile content to a “whole new level”.

“This agreement highlights our commitment to responding to regional variations in the ways consumers access music and to developing digital music opportunities around the world,” he said.

By Kate Holton

For all the disquiet the Internet has fostered in the music business, almost every rock star and record executive is intrigued with the prospect of marketing to music fans directly instead of wrangling for exposure with radio programmers or retailers.But the expansion of the online marketplace, coupled with ever-worsening CD sales, is now all but forcing the music companies to tread on ground they once viewed as off limits.

Starting this week, Suretone Records, a label distributed by the Universal Music Group, plans to distribute video files featuring popular acts like Weezer and new bands like Drop Dead Gorgeous on file-sharing networks that the industry has long viewed as illicit bazaars for pirates.

Unlike the music audio and video files that major labels sell at services like iTunes, the video files will not be wrapped in protective software to limit copying, executives say. But they will also be incomplete: users who download them will see perhaps half the video and will be directed to the label’s own Web site to watch the complete version — and the advertising planned to run alongside.

The plan represents one of the latest signs that, after years of suing individual users and file-swapping services, the recording industry is recognizing that it might have to loosen its control to attract the giant audience found in largely unregulated corners of the Internet.

And there is new reason for urgency. The music business has been buckling beneath the pressure of widespread piracy and plunging sales. Album sales declined 5 percent last year, and the scarcity of hits after the holidays has put the industry on a course to fall behind even last year’s lackluster performance.

Sales for the year so far are down more than 15 percent, according to Nielsen SoundScan data. That has brought a profit warning from one music corporation, the EMI Group, and prompted dire forecasts industrywide.

Digital sales are increasing, but not nearly enough to offset the drop. As a result, many executives are searching for other ways to reach the people who are trafficking in music and other media files in free file-sharing networks and on social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook.

But how far the industry should go to appeal to them is now the subject of intense debate.

One big issue is whether the four music conglomerates that dominate the industry should drop copy protection software, known as digital rights management, from the music files they license for sale online.

The industry has already been dabbling in unprotected content, allowing the sale of songs from artists like Norah Jones, Jessica Simpson and Jesse McCartney on Yahoo and other sites.

An array of online music retailers has called for doing away with the software completely. Steven P. Jobs, the chief executive of Apple, whose iTunes music store is the most powerful of the those retailers, recently added his voice to the chorus, arguing that digital rights management has not halted piracy and that the industry’s main format, the compact disc, carries unprotected files.

EMI has discussed the idea of distributing unprotected music files with certain retailers, but there is little indication that the four companies, which control more than 70 percent of the world’s music sales, will be willing to offer much of their catalogs without such software anytime soon.

Still, there are indications that the record labels are re-examining their practices. RCA Records, for example, plans to advance its promotional campaign for Avril Lavigne’s new album with the first in a series of short manga — Japanese comic-book episodes — in a storyline featuring the singer.

The video clips, which run two to three minutes each, are expected to be released in unprotected form as free podcasts on iTunes, among other outlets. Fans will also be able to use special software, probably offered on a label’s Web site, to take snippets of the episodes and rearrange them, executives said.

Terry McBride, a longtime talent manager who represents Ms. Lavigne and other performers, said the campaign was a rare instance of a major label’s agreeing to an uncontrolled release, and that he fully expected fans to post the clips on file-sharing networks. “This becomes public property,” he said. “We’re not going to tell the consumer how to consume.”

But Mr. McBride predicted that sharing the files would promote the album and set the stage for other ventures, including the sale of higher-quality versions of the video clips, or possibly advertising to go along with them. In any event, he added, the more CD sales suffer, the more pressure will build on record labels to rethink the rules of distribution and to drop limits on copying digital music.

“At the end of the day the whole object should be, let’s fix the problem,” said Jordan Schur, who set up the Suretone label last year as a joint venture with Universal after leaving another Universal label, Geffen Records. “We know people are stealing music. We’re not going to sit in judgment of them and say, ‘Well, they’re bad.’ ”

The label’s files are being distributed online in an arrangement with ArtistDirect’s MediaDefender unit, which is better known as a contractor hired by labels to place fake, or decoy, versions of songs or other media files on file-sharing networks to thwart would-be pirates.

Before the Suretone video deal, the company had also begun planting fake files containing promotional messages for advertisers like Coca-Cola. ArtistDirect separately runs one of the most popular music Web sites on the Internet, ArtistDirect.com, and plans to have a channel there devoted to Suretone’s video clips.

Record labels are not shifting their view toward file-sharing across the board. Executives at Geffen recently found themselves at odds with the rap star Snoop Dogg, for example, after he started selling songs in unprotected form on his MySpace page, in a partnership with a San Francisco-area rap entrepreneur. Snoop Dogg also offered to sell other performers’ songs on his page for a fee, a complete “push and promote” package costing $1,500.

The offer was removed last week after The New York Times inquired whether it conformed to MySpace’s terms and conditions, which generally prohibit users from selling space on their pages to outsiders.

A number of independent artists offer their songs on MySpace. The reggae act Shaggy charges 99 cents a song, for example, and the band Barenaked Ladies charges 83 cents.

by: JEFF LEEDS

Napster reported financial results for its fiscal third quarter ended December 31, 2006.

Net revenue for the third quarter of fiscal 2007 was a record $28.4 million, up 21% from $23.5 million in the third quarter of fiscal 2006. Net revenue for the third quarter of fiscal 2007 includes $2.4 million of nonrecurring revenue, including prepaid card breakage, with no associated cost of revenue. Net loss for the third quarter of fiscal 2007 was $9.5 million, or $0.22 per basic and diluted share, compared to net loss of $17.0 million, or $0.40 per basic and diluted share, in the third quarter of fiscal 2006.