NEW YORK - The media industry is clashing with YouTube over its proposal to offer anti-piracy tools only to companies that have distribution deals with the top online video-sharing service, media insiders said.

YouTube, owned by Google Inc., plans to introduce technology to help media companies identify pirated videos uploaded by users. But the tools are currently being offered as part of broader negotiations on licensing deals, they said.

The move contrasts with YouTube’s biggest rival, News Corp.’s, popular Internet social network, MySpace, which said Monday it would offer its own version of copyright protection services for free.

YouTube’s “proposition that they will only protect copyrighted content if there’s a business deal in place is unacceptable,” a spokesman for Viacom Inc., owner of MTV Networks and Comedy Central, said this week.

One media industry source likened YouTube’s policy to a “mafia shakedown.”

Earlier this month, Viacom demanded YouTube remove more than 100,000 Viacom video clips from the site after the two sides failed to reach a distribution agreement.

Viacom has become the poster child of dissent against YouTube, trying to prevent the site from turning into the Apple Inc. of online video.

Last week Mr Ponosov was convicted by a Russian judge on a charge of using pirated Microsoft software that was pre-installed in 12 computers he bought for his school in the remote Urals region. However, instead of a maximum five years prison term, he was let off without sentence because the judge deemed that the financial damage caused to Microsoft was insignificant.

The case of the principal of a remote provincial middle school had captured worldwide attention, not least because Russian President Vladimir Putin condemned the prosecution as ridiculous and Nobel Peace Prize winner Mikhail Gorbachev publicly appealed to Bill Gates in an open letter to intervene.

However, Microsoft, which is on a crusade to stamp out piracy in parts of Eastern Europe and Asia, stood firm and did not intervene. Piracy in all sectors of the economy is rife throughout Russia and the authorities are desperate to get it under control because of the Government’s desire for Russia to become a member of the World Trade Organization.

On the other hand, picking on a dedicated middle school principal who obviously bought the computers for his school without any intent on making a profit was obviously not a wise choice for the prosecutor. The persecuted principal instantly became a champion of the common folk throughout the nation and the case was televised.

DALLAS - A window owned by a man who says it was part of Lee Harvey Oswald’s sniper perch in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy is up for auction on eBay.

Caruth Byrd, whose father owned the Texas School Book Depository building in 1963, has set a starting price of $100,000 for what he describes as “perhaps the most famous window ever offered up for sale in the world.”

With the Record Industry Association of America having long contributed to the demise of file sharing protocols like Limewire, digital music downloaders have switched their focus to the popular open source realm of torrents. One of the most popular indexes is isoHunt, which lists nearly half a million torrents in its own database and another 33 million peers. Because of this popularity, it’s one of the first victims of the RIAA and MPAA’s attempt to shut down torrents. As a result, isoHunt is offline.

Not long ago, isoHunt founder Gary Fung appeared on Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) news source The National. In that interview, Fung explained how the BitTorrent world could become a legitimate distributor of all internet media.