The heat just got turned up a notch on Youtube CEO Chad Hurley. Not only did he and his underlings drag their asses on filtering software to block pirated video clips, News Corp beat them to the punch installing filter software on Myspace.com which only recently introduced their video feature.

Until MySpace's announcement yesterday of a pilot program to stop such clips from appearing on its site, both it and YouTube argued they had the right to let the content stay on their sites unless media companies made a formal request that it to be removed.

The move by MySpace to crack down on pirated material itself "lets media companies say, 'Look, it's your job to track down unauthorized material," said Josh Bernoff, an analyst with Forrester Research.

YOUTUBE TO FEEL HEAT FROM NEW MYSPACE FILTER [NYP]