Sex 'homegrown' is flooded with video sharing sites

It seems that porn websites and chat-room sexual harassment are still not rich enough to satisfy the curiosity of Internet users. The trend of posting amateur video clips online with objectionable content and violence continues to cause many people to worry.

MySpace, YouTube, Yahoo, Google and MSN now allow people to collect interesting clips or write scripts, film themselves and post on their video sharing site. YouTube just appeared last December but attracted more than 20 million visitors in May and every day it has 50,000 new clips. This phenomenon is gradually considered a new form of entertainment, but it is also becoming a challenge that cannot be ignored on the Internet.

Carol Kiesman, a teacher in Houlton (USA), signed up for her 14-year-old daughter to join the Zoey's Room virtual club so she can chat online with other girls. After that, Kiesman could not believe his eyes when he discovered her son and his 10-year-old brother and some fourth-year students watched videos naked and tortured animals. " Such content can be entertaining for adults, not for 13- and 14-year-olds ," Kiesman said.

"Homemade" videos are creating a strange craze in the virtual world and its spread rate is so fast that even managers of Yahoo or YouTube cannot cover it all. After only a few minutes, a certain "work" of a member could be enjoyed by thousands of people. Besides the "clean" video clips of family, sports, animal love . it is the ludicrous content of some characters who want to attract attention or those who want to show off their bodies me

" We often have to shake our heads at such clips, but there's a similar scene on TV, " said Ellen Harris, who lives in Palo Alto, California. She believes the "homegrown" video is an opportunity for people to maximize their creativity even though Harris still advises her 13-year-old sister to avoid MySpace.

Many people complain that Google Video is too easy to accept almost every kind of video clip. A spokesman for the search service said they were looking for ways to reduce criticism. But it seems that what parents think is not appropriate, both YouTube, MySpace, Yahoo and Google evaluate them as "acceptable".

MySpace and YouTube are reshaping video clips and only allowing members over 18 to access them. However, anyone can easily overcome this barrier by misrepresenting their age.

Yahoo last month introduced a "safe search" feature, allowing parents to block "adult-only" videos. But the company admitted that the mechanism was not perfect and wanted to apply image recognition technology to classify members.

TN