It is now being widely reported that recent new rules in China are restricting the broadcast of online videos to state-run sites. The privately owned Chinese video-streaming site population is growing and this could prove to be detrimental to their operations.

The new regulations decree that online videos can only be streamed or broadcast by state-owned/state-controlled companies according to WSJ.com. Sites that have online-content licenses in China are supposed to censor sites themselves before any complaints are filed by propaganda officials. Many video sites say that there is biggest problem is not propaganda, but pornography the report continues.

Besides figuring out exactly how to enforce these new regulations in the domestic market, there is also the question of the foreign market such as YouTube, which is popular in China. A spokesman for YouTube said to WSJ.com, “We believe that the Chinese government fully recognizes the enormous value of online video, and will not enforce regulations in a way that could deprive the Chinese people of its benefits and potential for business and economic development, education and culture, communication and entertainment.”

Also a concern is the threat online videos have to the control of the Communist Party over information said the report. The regulations say “Those who provide Internet video services should insist on serving the people, serve socialism…and abide by the moral code of socialism.”

Members of the Network Advertising Initiative, a trade association representing companies in the online behavioral advertising marketplace, today announced a 2008 initiative designed to update key attributes of the NAI Principles code of conduct that has governed members of the trade association since 2000.

“Online behavioral advertising continues to provide significant benefits to internet users by supporting an amazing array of free content and services,” said Trevor Hughes, Executive Director of the NAI. “At the same time, NAI members believe that revisions to the NAI Principles are appropriate in response to the explosive growth of the field, and changes to technology, business models, and practices in the marketplace.”

In addition to addressing the elements of the suggested “self-regulatory principles” released recently by the Federal Trade Commission, the NAI will target discussion on specific attributes of their 2000 Principles program, including:

– Scope & enforcement
– Sensitive consumer characteristics
– Choice-enabling technologies
– Consumer education
– Standards for use of personally identifiable information
– Membership outreach

Input from stakeholders will be sought on proposed amendments in the early months of 2008.

CEO of Strategic News Service, an online newsletter that predicts the success of communications companies, Mark Anderson was recently quoted in the Telegraph to say that websites offering free products in exchange for targeting users with advertising will fail at a 9:1 ratio.

He continued to say that the tolerance for intrusion and capitalization of personal information for advertising has gone down. Anderson stated in an interview on BBC World Service to “Note the very humble pie apology from the founder of Facebook – terrified that in fact he might lose his entire franchise because he made a mistake with a new advertising product called Beacon.”

Although one of the latest trends in online advertising is investing in social networks, Anderson thinks that “There are more names than money so far. There are many more Web2.0 companies out there than will ever survive. We’ll see a lot of those companies failing this year.” The failure is coming from the reliance on advertising and a universal acceptance of it. There is a tipping point to everything, and for Web2.0 firms the time just may have come for theirs.

Jimmy Wales has received no shortage of praise and criticism for his latest controversial project Wikia Search. Traditionally Wiki sites have been free and not advertising supported, however the upcoming release of wikia search may betray that tradition.

Wikia Search relies on a community to enhance search listings and activities, bringing the human element to results. If a community member deems a search result to be more relevant than another it will have a direct impact to placement.

The community method of refinement isn’t new, but is a direct challenge to yahoo, google and other search sites that rely on computers to make those editorial decisions.

The future launch is expected in early January.

Security researchers report that Google’s Orkut was the target of what appeared to be a relatively benign worm that experts say illustrates the ability of hackers to drop code into social-media sites.

Orkut has millions of registered users, some 700,000 of which were affected by the worm over a period of 24 hours.

The exploit was contained in a JavaScript file, aptly named “virus.js.” When Orkut users received e-mail about a new scrapbook entry and clicked through to the site, the browser downloaded and executed the embedded virus.js file automatically — without the need for any user intervention.

Sanitizing Rich Media

The malware seemed to do at least two things — send messages to friends to perpetuate itself and add the infected account to an Orkut community “Infectados pelo Vírus do Orkut,” which was created by the script author, according to McAfee.

“This clearly illustrates the issue with allowing rich content on social/professional networking sites, and not sanitizing it enough,” said Vinay Mahadik, a member of the McAfee Avert Labs team. “The ability to add Flash/JavaScript content to Orkut scraps was only recently introduced.”

Google did not return calls seeking comment, but apparently the company has remedied the problem. As of Thursday, Symantec reported, the virus.js script is no longer available on the site and it seems as if there have been adequate checks implemented by Orkut to validate content when posting a scrapbook entry.

Social Worms Rising

“Worms in social networks are certainly not a new concept. We’ve seen it in the past,” said Oliver Friedrichs, director of Symantec’s Security Response. Friedrichs noted that MySpace was affected by a worm early last year that allowed an attacker to add over one million people to the author’s profile.

Worms are becoming increasingly popular across social-network sites, he said. The good news is that these types of worms are not typically malicious, he explained, while the bad news is that users can’t do much to protect themselves other than stay off of social networks altogether.

“This is a little more difficult to protect against in that the social-networking site itself needs to take steps to prevent this,” Friedrichs said. “This is generally a shortcoming on the site itself rather than what consumers can do.”