Video Sharing websites roundup

Fingerprint Tech Waits for a Grand Entrance

Video sites such as Microsoft’s (MSFT) Soapbox and MySpace already employ fingerprinting technology from provider Audible Magic, and Veoh has said it will implement fingerprinting this month. A Dailymotion spokesperson clarified that the site will continue to use Audible Magic for audio fingerprinting, but is adding in Ina for video fingerprinting. He emphasized that the initial Ina rollout on Dailymotion is only in France, though the company expects it to be implemented across all versions of its sites by 2008.

Facebook Finance Chief Yu Becomes a Director at Vobile

Facebook Inc. Chief Financial Officer Gideon Yu has joined the board of Vobile Inc., a closely held provider of so-called fingerprinting technology for identifying video content.
Mr. Yu, 36 years old, joined the online social-networking firm in July from YouTube, the video-sharing site owned by Google Inc.

One Anti-Piracy System to Rule Them All

Hollywood appears to have a preliminary winner in its bake-off of anti-piracy technologies.
For the last year, the film industry, through its Palo Alto-based R&D joint venture MovieLabs, has been testing a dozen so-called “digital fingerprinting” technologies. The technology purports to scan file sharing sites, Internet providers and peer-to-peer networks to identify copyrighted material.

“Fingerprinting Performance” (Leonard Kleinrock, 2007)

Yesterday in Los Angeles, people affiliated with the Motion Picture Association of America talked about the ongoing tests at a day-long anti-piracy workshop that the MPAA co-hosted with the University of California. In his introductory keynote at the event, UCLA professor and Internet pioneer Leonard Kleinrock showed a single slide that suggested that one of the anti-piracy filtering companies had outperformed the other 11, with the highest number of matches of infringing content and lowest number of false-positives. But professor Kleinrock and MPAA execs declined to name the participating companies or who had scored best on the test, saying that secrecy was a precondition for their participation in the tests.

Nevertheless, afterwards, executives from Santa Clara, Calif-based Vobile were crowing in the hallways of the Universal Hilton Hotel.
The two-year old company’s technology, called Video DNA, has apparently bested others from the Royal Philips Electronics, Thomson Software & Technology, and the highest profile digital fingerprinting company, the Los Gatos, Calif.-based Audible Magic, which has deals to filter video sharing sites like YouTube and Microsoft’s Soapbox.

Movie Labs stress-tested the anti-piracy systems by loading hundreds of hours of copyrighted video content into the databases of the various filters, and then by flooding them with thousands of video files, some distorted, darkened and cropped, to try to scuttle their ability to find matches.
In the next phase of the ongoing tests, MovieLabs will see if the systems can handle ever larger quantities of copyrighted works. Theoretically, adding more songs, TV shows and movies in their databases could slow down these systems—and the Internet video sites that use them— since it could take longer to find possible matches.
MovieLabs has been sharing tests results with its member movie studios since the summer. MovieLabs chief executive Steve Weinstein says the technology is ready for prime time. “In a year you’re going to see many Internet companies using it. This technology has shown its viability.”

Full story at The New York Times

Another article in LATIMES

Battling Piracy, BayTSP-Style

“On an average day, there are 16 million violations that we’re finding,” said BayTSP spokesman Jim Graham. Of that, one million violations a month receive takedown notices. “Not all clients want to send takedown notices,” said Graham. “A lot just want to see the data on what’s available out there.”

Here’s how BayTSP works. A client gives it a list of titles (movies, TV shows, etc.) to monitor. BayTSP’s automated hardware then sniffs around major P2P sites, IRC, Usenet groups, public FTP sites and web sites and reports back its findings.

For P2P sites, if a title is found and the client wants to have it removed, BayTSP automatically generates a takedown notice that records the individual’s IP address, date and time identified, and sends it off to the ISP. The ISP then forwards the notice to the individual. Some ISPs and universities are adopting the open source Automated Copyright Notice System to automate the process of notifying infringers.

But what does all this cost? Between $25,000 and $500,000 a month, depending on how many titles you are searching and what services you want performed.

Full story here

The Wall Street Journal did a profile a couple months back:
- BayTSP employs more than 20 video analysts
- Analyst salaries start at around $11 an hour
- Viacom pays more than $100,000 a month to BayTSP
- BayTSP error rate on Web videos is only around 0.1%

Branded and Video Advertising Key to Future

Online ad spending will expand 28.6% this year, according to eMarketer CEO Geoff Ramsey. Next year, digital ad spending will increase 32%--amounting to nearly $28.8 billion.

Web videos are watched by 72% of Web users--or 135 million people--every month.
Ad spending around them is set to hit $775 million this year, and $1.3 billion by next year.

Asterpix Says Forget Hypertext, Think Hypervideo

One of the great things about the Web is the ability to link to a Web page, or a part of a Web page, from anywhere. Asterpix, a San Jose, Calif.-based startup, wants to bring that same ease of use to the world of video. The company’s technology -– which it calls hypervideo — gives authors the ability to link directly to objects displayed inside video clips.

These so called hotspots track the “objects” linked throughout the entire video clip. So for instance, when explaining the Coverflow features of the iPhone, one can link directly to the relevant point in the video right from the blog post. Hotspots are designated with blinking circles; click on them in the video to access the author’s notes, tags and target links.

The service doesn’t require you to download separate software on the desktop. Simply sign up and embed the videos as you would from any video source such as YouTube, MetaCafe, or Blip. Asterpix adds a separate invisible layer on top of the video that contains all the metadata (aka relevant linking information). Then just go ahead and drop it in your blog or on your MySpace page.

Asterpix is less than a year old and is backed by New Enterprise Associates; so far it’s raised $4 million in one round of financing. CEO Nat Kausik, who in his past life created a handful of successful networking-related startups, told us that in order to gain traction, the company will initially adopt a widget strategy. He feels that MySpace and other social networks are going to be fertile ground for his service. He was also candid enough to say that the business model of this company is evolving.

Asterpix’s technology could have big implications for online video-related advertising as it would allow advertisers to embed hotspots around products of high commercial value. For instance, Le Bron James videos could link his shoes to Nike (NKE) stores, or Tiger Woods clips could help push golf clubs or even apparel.

“Every object is now clickable and searchable,” says Kausik. Google AdWords, for instance can drive traffic right to the relevant spot in a video clip, giving people a sense of what they are buying. “We hope this will help unlock the monetization of video.”

Among the existing players in this space, Eline Technologies of Vancouver, B.C., is doing brisk business with its VideoClix software. We also recently covered Delivery Agent. Others, such as Tandberg and Microsoft (MSFT), are working on their own hypervideo technologies — all in hope of unlocking the ad potential of online video.

$15 Million For VideoEgg

San Francisco-based VideoEgg has raised $15 million in additional funding in a Series D round from existing investors WPP, Maveron, and August Capital, and led by Focus Ventures.
The video distribution and advertising company in April said it had raised an undisclosed amount from WPP. That was on top of a $12 million round raised last September from Maveron, August Capital, and First Round Partners, and nearly $5 million from the latter two firms nine months before that — which means that VideoEgg, since it was founded in 2005, has raised more than $32 million.

P2P responsible for as much as 90 percent of all 'Net traffic

P2P traffic is dominating the Internet these days, according to a new survey from ipoque, a German traffic management and analysis firm. ipoque's "preliminary results" show that P2P applications account from anywhere between 50 percent and 90 percent of all Internet traffic. The final survey results are not yet available and will presented at the Emerging Technology Conference at MIT later this month.
Leading the way is BitTorrent, which has surpassed eDonkey as the P2P protocol of choice. During the last year, BitTorrent accounted for between 50 percent to 75 percent of all P2P traffic, with eDonkey coming in second at between 5 percent and 50 percent. The wide variance in the figures is due to local preference, according to ipoque: in some parts of the world, eDonkey still reigns supreme when it comes to P2P traffic.
ipoque's data appears at odds with that of Ellacoya Networks, a company that makes deep packet inspection gear. The company said in June (see below in this post) that P2P traffic accounts for just 37 percent of North American traffic, compared with 46 percent for HTTP traffic. Of that 46 percent, over a third consisted of streaming video, à la YouTube.
Despite the differences in how the traffic is broken out, ipoque and Ellacoya's data both illustrate the degree to which users' desire for video is affecting the Internet. It seems safe to assume that much of the P2P traffic reported by both firms is video. Combine that with the surge in traffic to YouTube and other video sites, as well as the official upcoming launch of Joost, and it paints a picture that some ISPs will find disturbing: demand for high-bandwidth applications like video is increasing. That's why ISPs are so interested in deep packet inspection and other traffic-shaping tools.

********************************

Ellacoya Networks, makers of deep packet inspection gear for carriers, has pulled together some statistics on one million broadband users in North America, and its findings show that HTTP traffic accounts for 46 percent of all broadband traffic. P2P applications now account for only 37 percent.

Chalk it up to YouTube and other Internet video sharing sites. The surge in HTTP traffic is largely a surge in the use of streaming media, mostly video.
Breaking down the HTTP traffic, Ellacoya says that only 45 percent is used to pull down traditional web pages with text and images. The rest is mostly made up of streaming video (36 percent) and streaming audio (five percent). YouTube alone has grown so big that it now accounts for 20 percent of all HTTP traffic, or more than half of all HTTP streaming video.
Looking over all the numbers, one of the most surprising result is the continued success of NNTP (newsgroups) traffic, which still accounts for nine percent of the total. Clearly, newsgroup discussions (and, ahem, binaries) are still big business.
The data may provide some ammunition for companies that favor traffic shaping on their networks. Between P2P, newsgroups, and streaming HTTP video traffic, the vast majority of Internet traffic is non-critical (i.e., no one's going to die or lose $20 million if they don't download a YouTube clip or a new song in under a minute). Networks that want to ensure priority transmission of VoIP calls, traditional HTTP web browsing, medical imaging, etc., have a strong incentive to throttle back that flood of non-critical traffic when the network is experiencing heavy loads. That could bring them into conflict with proponents of strict network neutrality, though, who don't want to see any sort of packet prioritization.

Thomson Acquires Distributor

Thomson SA has acquired SyncCast Corp., a wholesale distributor of online movies, music and other entertainment, as part of an effort to boost its own digital-services businesses. The price wasn't disclosed.
Through its Technicolor services division, Thomson is trying to win more business from studios and distribution companies as they increasingly move toward digitization of key processes such as creating masters and delivery.
Thomson, of France, has been building an end-to-end system to cut the time and steps required to prepare movies, television shows and other content for distribution. Using the company's new arrangement, preparing a movie for TV, for example -- including changing proportions to fit a TV screen, adjusting the resolution, and making the appropriate number of copies -- might take 25 hours, compared with 100 hours without the integrated digital processes it has put in place.
The new system, which officially begins today, "allows studios to distribute their content faster," says Chris Carey, chief technology officer at Technicolor. Acquiring SyncCast, Anaheim, Calif., which delivers content on behalf of online retailers such as Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox Live Video Marketplace, will help Technicolor bolster its offerings in consumer-targeted businesses.

Ad-Supported Music Service SpiralFrog’s Financials: Losses; Financing Needed; Plans

Ad-supported online music service SpiralFrog, one of 2006’s candidate’s for most-hyped new product, and still half-vaporware (it has launched a closed beta), has filed its detailed financial with SEC.

On the financial side, the company has already shelled millions to license materials from Universal Music Group, according insider reports. In the filing, the company warned that buy-in from other majors is hardly guaranteed. "In the event that we are unable to enter into agreements with most of the other major and independent record labels, it is unlikely that we will be able to attract and keep users to our site," the company stated. SpiralFrog did not mention heavy, upfront licensing costs frequently demanded by majors, though financial aspects remain daunting.

In the filing, the company disclosed losses of near $12 million over the two and one-half years, as well as significant costs ahead. "We anticipate that we will require up to approximately $18 million to fund our continued operations for the next twelve months," the group disclosed.

SEC Filing

ProSiebenSat Buys Remaining Stake In German Video Sharing Site MyVideo For $26 Million

ProSiebenSat.1 Media, Germany’s largest commercial TV broadcaster, has bought 70 percent of MyVideo.de, a German video sharing site that it already had a 30 percent stake in, thereby buying out the site completely. The 70 percent stake cost the company about $26 million...this follows the initial investment it did last year.

Video Funding: Dailymotion Gets $34M

PARIS -- Dailymotion SA has secured $34 million in venture-capital funding that will allow the French start-up to expand its video-sharing Web site as it competes against larger rival YouTube, owned by Google Inc.
The company's new funds come from venture-capital firms Advent Venture Partners LLP of London and AGF Private Equity of Paris, a division of Allianz AG. Dailymotion already had raised about $9.5 million in October from venture firms Atlas Venture and Paris-based Partech International.

In April, Dailymotion had 4.7 million unique video streamers in the U.S., while Metacafe had 3.7 million. By contrast, Google sites (including YouTube) had 131.9 million unique video streamers in May.

News Corp. and NBC Universal name joint venture

News Corp. and NBC Universal have revealed the name of their new online video venture — the so-called YouTube killer, which Google had already dubbed Clown Co., will officially be called “Hulu“.
“Hulu” will launch as a private beta in October 2007, however, interested users are able to sign-up for invitation from today.

Bi-Weekly wrap up, 16-31 August

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Online Video is Still Too Expensive

There are a number of ways to deliver digital video content, and delivering that content online is the most expensive of them all. How expensive? Dan Rayburn recently took a look at CDN pricing, and while it is on the downswing, it’s still pretty expensive. For example, a customer who buys 100 terabytes at $0.15 a gigabyte would have to pay around five dollars in bandwidth to serve 1000 views of a three minute video. That means they’d have to get at least five dollars in CPM (cost per thousand) advertising just to break even, and that doesn’t include storage costs.

Top 10 Video Search Engines

Here is a top 10 Video Search engines:

blinkx
clipblast!
dabble
everyzing
exalead
Fooooo
metacafe
pixsy
PureVideo
VidSea

Analyzing YouTube's Revenue Potential

Full article

So, Google's YouTube will finally sell video ads. How much revenue will they generate?

Let's run the numbers.

- YouTube is testing overlay ads that run along the bottom of videos. If viewers click on these ads, the videos they are watching will pause, and the ad will launch.
- YouTube will only run ads on videos from signed content partners (for now).
- In tests, approximately 75% of viewers presented with an ad chose to watch the whole ad.
- Google plans to begin by charging a $20 CPM.
Combining this information with Comscore's finding that YouTube streamed 1.7 billion videos in May, we can construct a basic range of revenue estimates.

ASSUMPTIONS
For our initial scenarios, we make the following assumptions:
- Google streams 2 billion videos a month (up modestly from the May numbers)
- A sub-set of this group are from content partners and will eventually have ads (we'll run a range of 10%-50%)
- A sub-set of this group will have ads that are actually watched (we'll run a range of 33%-75%.
- In tests, 75% of videos were watched, but this was likely heavily influenced by the curiosity factor. In the early banner ad days, banner click-through percentages were high, too).
- The ads will be highly targeted, full-motion video, and should therefore command a high CPM (we'll run a range of $10-$50).

RESULTS
We ran five scenarios, from Conservative to Aggressive (please see this page for details). In the Conservative scenario, YouTube generates about $8 million in revenue, less than 1/10th of one percent of Google's overall revenue ($16 billion). In the Aggressive scenario, the company generates about $450 million of revenue--enough to make a meaningful contribution, but barely.

FIVE YEARS FROM NOW
We also ran scenarios using a far higher number of monthly streams (range: 10 billion to 50 billion), a greater percentage of ad penetration within videos (range: 50% to 70%), and a similar percentage of ads watched as in the above scenarios (range: 33% to 60%). Here, the revenue is far more meaningful. In the Conservative scenario, YouTube generates $200 million of revenue: nice, but nothing to write home about. In the Aggressive scenario, however, the company generates $13 billion of revenue--closing in on Google's current revenue today.

BOTTOM LINE
In short, YouTube's revenue won't likely be material to Google for at least a year or two and possibly more. The impact on the bottom line, moreover, will probably be even less pronounced: Serving a video ad, even for Google, is far more expensive than serving a text link. At a $20 CPM, the gross margin on such ads will likely be well below Google's current margins.

Deezer: free and legal music on demand

Deezer (formerly BlogMusik) is a service born in France that lets you search for mp3 files on the web and listen to them in streaming mode for free. Dezeer announced that they came to an agreement with the SACEM, clearing the service of copyright infrigement accusations. The details of this agreement are not are not being disclosed, but other deals suggest it is based on a revenue sharing mode. Deezer’s business model is relying on advertising and affiliate revenue coming from the sales of songs on iTunes and Amazon.

RadioBlogClub, another popular french service was forced a few months ago to change hosting provider following a complaint sent by the same SACEM. The service was interupted a few days and opened again as fresh as new.

Activated Content Licenses Microsoft Technology to Enhance Audio Watermarking Efforts

REDMOND, Wash., and SEATTLE — Aug. 15, 2007 — Microsoft Corp. today announced that it is licensing the audio watermarking technology developed by its Redmond, Wash., research lab to Activated Content Corp., a leading digital technology and application services company in the audio watermarking market, based in Seattle.
Microsoft® audio watermarking technology consists of digital audio software tools that will allow Activated Content to insert nonsecure data into and extract it from audio files, tools that the company can use to offer additional services to the users of the audio file.
Activated Content is a leader in digital audio watermarking with its patented technology it has developed over the years. It launched the industry’s first comprehensive and practical watermarking solution for encoding identifiable, robust, inaudible and unique codes into digital audio.
Activated Content’s technology has already been deployed by major and independent record labels, recording studios, mastering studios, duplication houses, cable television channels and online content distribution services worldwide.
The agreement enables Activated Content to increase its value proposition to customers by offering interoperability. It will also now be available to both traditional content owners and those creating UGC.

Mediadefender Moves into P2P Marketing

You’re trying to download the latest Madonna album, only to find the pop queen calling you…a thief? Welcome to the odd and oftentimes annoying war against piracy. The entertainment industry has been hiring companies to pollute P2P networks with phony files for years, and now some of these very same companies are going into marketing. Instead of sabotaging file transfers, they offer their own media for download, and instead of corrupted files, suddenly it’s all about branding.
Santa Monica, Calif.-based Mediadefender has been at the center of this shift. The subsidiary of ARTISTdirect is known and hated in the file-sharing world for its anti-piracy work, but has recently gotten a lot of press for an upcoming campaign involving ad-supported MP3 downloads. Mediadefender has been experimenting with P2P marketing for a number of years now, and they’ve learned a few lessons along the way. VP Jonathan Lee agreed to share some of them with me.
Mediadefender has thousands servers in co-location facilities around the globe; the decision to put them to use for marketing has been brewing for some time, Lee tells me. With such an abundance of resources, he notes, “What else can you do with it?”
Distributing actual content was an obvious idea, but for the longest time the entertainment industry wasn’t ready to utilize P2P. Companies felt they would undermine their position in legal conflicts if they distributed their own files through these networks. But all of this changed when the Supreme Court ruled against Grokster in the summer of 2005. “After the ruling those gloves came off,” says Lee.
And with that, the learning curve began. “We’re throwing things at the wall and see what sticks,” he explains. Early attempts to do advertising on P2P networks involved what Lee describes as a “bait and switch”. Files were mislabeled in order to get people to watch ads or load Web pages. “Obviously there are tremendous problems with that,” he acknowledges. Most brands just don’t like to frustrate their customers –- except, of course, porn companies, which still use this technique heavily to spam P2P networks.
Another strategy involved sending people to iTunes and similar download stores to make them buy legitimate copies of the content they were looking for with Limewire and other clients. “That really hasn’t worked so well,” admits Lee. Same goes for the idea of mixing ads with search results in order to get people to buy concert tickets and ring tones. He believes that people are just too suspicious to click on anything that remotely looks like an ad in a P2P network, which is why they tend to ignore them.
So what does work? “Things you can’t buy online,” says Lee. It turns out that P2P is actually really good for branding. Mediadefender had a lot of success with a campaign for a soft drink maker that offered people videos they actually wanted to watch. Music works well, and so does goofy stuff. Funny commercials –- the stuff that people re-post on YouTube and then forward to their friends — are a big hit on P2P networks as well.
Does this mean people should just abandon their annoying anti-piracy tactics and instead post some goofy clips on P2P networks? “You are already dealing with your anti-piracy issues if you are doing promotion,” admits Lee. He doesn’t think that the anti-piracy part of his work will go away anytime soon, though.
In fact, Mediadefender is still making most of its money by polluting P2P networks with spoof files, which is why the company will remain be one of the most hated enterprises in the file-sharing world for the foreseeable future. Jonathan Lee doesn’t seem to mind, and he doesn’t think it impacts their marketing business at all. Successful P2P marketing campaigns always looks very viral, he tells me, and the focus really isn’t on his company. “If it is good content, then it’s gonna carry itself.“

Analysts Paid $11 Per Hour To Stop Internet Copyright Infringement

Some computer programs such as Audible Magic (used by YouTube and MySpace), Advestigo, Gracenote, MotionDSP, Philips, and iPharro try to distinguish if the video is copyrighted by compared video fingerprints of copyrighted material with the uploaded content and checking for a match.
However, these computer programs aren’t foolproof and when a video is in the “grey area” it is hard for these programs to identify if the video is breaking any copyright laws.
A company called BayTSP has decided to go the old fashioned root and employ video analysts at $11 an hour to find illegally uploaded content.
BayTSP most important client is Viacom. Viacom pay BayTSP $100,000 every month for the service and the takedown requests have resulted in 230,000 videos being removed from YouTube for Viacom.
Is this the best way to tackle video copyright violations online?

Bolt is dead

Video sharing site Bolt has filed for bankruptcy and ceased operations.

Bolt.com was sued by Universal Music in October 2006 and owes Universal $10 million from that suit; the funds from the GoFish acquisition were to have been used to settle the $10 million with Universal.

Bi-Weekly wrap up, 1-15 August

* Veoh Seeks Court Protection From Universal Music Copyright Suits
San Diego - Video-sharing site Veoh Networks announced on Thursday that it has filed a pre-emptive legal action against Universal Music Group, asking a judge to declare that its service does not violate copyrights.
* NBCU/News Corp. Web Video Venture Gets $100 Million From Equity Firm
San Francisco - The online video distribution joint venture between News Corp. and NBC Universal ("New Site," for now) has received a $100 million investment from private equity firm Providence Equity Partners, in exchange for a 10% stake, The New York Times reported, citing people with knowledge of the deal.
* File-Sharing Firm Lime Wire Debuts Digital Music Store
New York - Lime Wire, the company that distributes the LimeWire peer-to-peer file-sharing application, has announced plans to open a digital music store.
* Video Transcoding Firm RipCode Raises $10.5 Million
Dallas - RipCode, a developer of video transcoding technology, announced on Tuesday that it has raised $10.5 million in its second round of financing, led by ATA Ventures.
* SpiralFrog Debuts Beta of Ad-Supported, Free Music Download Service
New York - SpiralFrog, an ad-supported free music download service, has quietly launched an invite-only beta test of its service, CNET News.com reported.
* German Prosecutors Stop Identifying File Sharers on Behalf of RIAA
Offenburg, Germany - The Local Court (AG) in Offenburg has prohibited a local public prosecutor's office from obtaining the personal data from an ISP that match the IP addresses of alleged P2P network users citing citing "obvious disproportionateness”.
* Japanese Firms Demand YouTube Remove Copyrighted Videos
Tokyo - After a second meeting with executives in Tokyo with YouTube and Google this week, a group of Japanese rights holders again demanded that their copyrighted material be removed from YouTube, the Associated Press reported.
* HandHeld Entertainment Acquires eBaum's World for $17.5 Million
San Francisco - HandHeld Entertainment, a maker of portable media players and operator of entertainment websites, announced on Thursday that it will acquire eBaum's World, an entertainment site that offers user-generated videos, games, jokes, photos and other content, for $17.5 million. The site generated $5.2 million in revenue and $1.6 in net income before taxes in 2006, and has an average of 10 million unique visitors per month. HandHeld had already bought another video site, Putfile.
* Video-Sharing Site GoFish Terminates Acquisition of Bolt Media (details in the previous post)
New York, N.Y. - GoFish, a San Francisco-based video sharing site, on Thursday called off its planned $30 million acquisition of New York-based Bolt Media, after Bolt was unable to finalize a settlement in a copyright infringement lawsuit.
* EMI Shareholders Accept $4.8 Billion Buyout Offer from Terra Firma
London - Major record label EMI Group announced that its shareholders have approved a $4.8 billion buyout offer from private equity group Terra Firma.
* Apple's Wozniak Among Backers of Internet Video Start-up Hotswap
New York - Hotswap.com, an Internet video start-up founded by three former University of California grad students, has raised an undisclosed sum of funding from backers including Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and Clear Channel co-founder Red McCombs, Reuters reported.

Video: Google finds more MP3s than Limewire

God bless user-generated service journalism. This video, by a 21-year-old student named Jimmy Ruska, explains how to use Google to quickly and efficiently find music files. The video has been viewed over 400,000 times since it was posted in April.

French court slaps poor man's YouTube ; Dailymotion guilty of copyright infringement

France's answer to YouTube has been found guilty of copyright infringement. A French high court has ruled against the Paris-based video-sharing site Dailymotion, holding it liable for a copyrighted film posted by its users. Earlier this summer, after a high-profile suit from a man called The Buttock, the same court laid down a similar ruling against MySpace, but its latest order goes a few steps further.

Last month, the President of the High Court of the First Instance of Paris - whose title reads much better in French - issued a "summary order" that classified MySpace as a publisher, arguing that the so-called social-networker is more than just a hosting service and should be held liable for infringing content posted to its site. Well-known French comedian The Buttock - whose title reads about the same in French - sued MySpace after several of his films turned up on its pages. Issued by a separate arm of the court, the new Dailymotion order carries a little more weight - and poses a greater threat to other sharing services. After a film called Joyeux Noel popped up on the site, Dailymotion was sued by the film's producers, and on July 13, a separate arm of the High Court held the site liable for copyright infringement - without calling it a publisher.

In its "proceeding on the merits" - a ruling backed by more legal rigor than a quick-and-dirty summary order - the court ruled that Dailymotion is liable simply because it was aware that the film was on its server.

As the court noted, Dailymotion did not take the film down even after it received a letter of complaint from the producers. The court ordered the site to pay the film's producers 23,000 euros in damages and fork over a 1500 euro fine for each day the movie stays online - though Dailymotion can appeal.

GoFish will not acquire Bolt - copyright infringements too risky

On August 1, 2007, GoFish Corporation (“GoFish”) terminated the Agreement and Plan of Merger, dated as of February 11, 2007, as amended, by and among GoFish, BM Acquisition Corp. Inc., Bolt, Inc. and John Davis.

As previously disclosed, under the Merger Agreement, a condition to the obligation of GoFish and the Merger Subsidiary to consummate the merger was that Bolt shall have entered into a definitive settlement of the pending copyright infringement lawsuit filed by UMG Recordings, Inc. and definitive settlement agreements covering substantially comparable potential claims, if any, by Sony, BMG Entertainment, Warner Music Group, and EMI Recorded Music and the major publishers that provide for initial cash payments not exceeding an aggregate of $1,000,000 and for additional cash payments to be made no sooner than July 1, 2008 not exceeding an aggregate of $3,000,000 and 2.5 million shares of GoFish common stock, exclusive of any advertising credits or other in kind consideration. The foregoing condition had not been satisfied on or prior to the Termination Date under the Merger Agreement and, as a result, GoFish elected to terminate the Merger Agreement. No termination or other fee was incurred as a result of such termination.

Take a behind-the-scenes tour of BayTSP

Take a behind-the-scenes tour of BayTSP, where employees spend their days watching online videos in search of pirated television shows and movies.

Anti-Piracy Gang Launches their own Video Download Site to Trap People

Media Defender, a notorious anti piracy gang working for the MPAA, RIAA and several independent media production companies, just launched their very own video upload service called “miivi.com”. The sole purpose of the site is to trap people into uploading copyrighted material, and bust them for doing so.

Miivi claims to offer hight speed downloads of blockbuster movies hereby luring people into downloading copyrighted content.

EMI Licenses Snocap

EMI Music has now licensed its catalog DRM-free to Snocap, a move that quickly shuttles the label onto the pages of MySpace. Snocap carries a critical partnership with MySpace that enables artists to position downloads on their profile pages, and offers a revenue between all parties. The latest deal follows an earlier arrangement involving Warner Music Group, though EMI is the first major to lend DRM-free content to the alliance.

The Snocap deal follows an earlier DRM-free deal involving the iTunes Store. Like that arrangement, Snocap MyStores will sell EMI tracks at an elevated price point of $1.30. The tracks will also be encoded as higher-quality files, according to information supplied by the companies. That is part of a larger EMI philosophy that consumers are willing to pay more for higher-quality MP3s, though it remains unclear if the proposition is resonating. After positioning its DRM-free catalog on iTunes in late May, EMI has not offered substantive data on the collaboration.

TorrentSpy begins weeding out copyright content

TorrentSpy, the torrent-file search engine accused by Hollywood of aiding copyright violators, plans to remove links from its search results to pirated content using a new filtering system.

FileRights is an automated filtering system created by some of TorrentSpy's founders. The technology uses "hash" values to automatically remove links to infringing works from search engines that subscribe to the service.

In an interview, Rothken acknowledged that using hash marks to identify copyright content is not foolproof. If a file is altered then the system may not recognize it.

Filtering doesn't necessarily mean an end to the hostilities between Hollywood and the torrent search engines. In 2001, file-sharing system, Napster, launched a filtering system that failed to thwart illegal file sharing enough to satisfy the music industry or the courts.

FileRights works like most video filters. Copyright owners handover information about their films or TV shows and the system detects any files containing unauthorized copies. Links to those files are automatically removed.

Any copyright owner, Web site or search engine is welcome to subscribe to the service for free, according to the company's statement. According to Rothken, one of TorrentSpy's competitors, IsoHunt, has agreed to use the filtering system as well.

Zudeo launches as high-definition video sharing site

File-sharing company Azureus have launched a new video sharing website that it hopes will become the high-def equivalent of YouTube.

Using BitTorrent to make the downloading of large files much more manageable, the Zudeo (beta) web site looks set to promise 'better than DVD' quality films, up to high definition quality.

The Palo Alto, US, based service has already done deals with 12 TV, film and media companies, with full details being announced in a couple of weeks' time. As with most video sharing sites, any clips which infringe upon copyright and are flagged up by the owner will be removed.

There's no exact details as to exactly how high def these offerings are - full 1080p would seem to be pushing it at present.

The whole system is supposed to hold together because, as a user downloads a file on a BitTorrent network, they're also simultaneously uploading bits of that file to other users. However, that only decentralises bandwidth costs, not download times.

Videos will come in either H.264 or VC-1 format. DVD quality videos may also be available for live streaming for anyone with a fast enough connection: 300Kbps minimum according to the company.

SafeNet Launches Piracy-Monitoring Service

SafeNet Launches MediaSentry Business Intelligence Service for Audience Measurement and Piracy Monitoring on Global Peer-to-Peer Networks
World's First Service to Offer Content Owners and Digital Promotion Companies Direct Measurement Capabilities on Industry's Most Prolific File-Sharing Networks

Digital Hollywood Spring, Santa Monica, Calif.,– June 11, 2007 - SafeNet Inc., a global leader in information security, announced the launch of its MediaSentry Business Intelligence (BI) services portfolio which features world's first direct measurement of user activity across the most heavily trafficked peer-to-peer (P2P) networks globally.

The BI Direct Measurement service represents a significant opportunity for content owners and online advertisers to achieve an unprecedented level of visibility into P2P networks that have historically proven difficult to measure and understand.

By leveraging a combination of SafeNet's proven techniques for identifying and tracking content online and the unique analysis tools and reporting capabilities offered with BI Direct Measurement, customers will now be able to monitor, track, and understand user behavior and consumption on global P2P networks.

This insight into global consumer demand across one of the world's largest bases of content seekers can be used by content owners and online advertisers alike to understand emerging markets and measure consumer response to new distribution techniques, marketing initiatives and advertising campaigns.

"As the media industry identifies and begins to embrace a variety of new and innovative methods for turning next-generation consumers into captive audiences there is a desire to dedicate a larger portion of overall investment to online channels," said Analyst, Digital Media Practice, Frost & Sullivan, Zippy Aima. "Success reaching these new and evolving consumer segments requires a comprehensive and accurate understanding of what is truly happening on peer-to-peer networks. Until now, this type of data has been minimal at best."

Unlike other measurement services which employ a traditional sampling approach whereby data is captured in snapshots over specific time intervals, BI Direct Measurement continually captures all download activity for a chosen piece of digital content in real-time. Thus, visibility into how and when content is propagating globally across networks increases exponentially.

According to Vice-President, Global Outsourcing, SafeNet Infotech, Deepak Prasad, "Valuable download metrics including total quantity of files available, time of day, geography, version, download duration and success rates enable content owners to further assess consumer interest and content demand as well as quantify the impact of digital piracy."

"With more than 12 million users at any given time, peer-to-peer networks represent a tremendous business opportunity," said Vice President, MediaSentry Services, SafeNet, John Desmond. "Our goal is to provide the insight customers need to effectively protect their most valued digital assets while also finding ways to turn these growing communities into lucrative marketing, advertising, and distribution channels. BI Direct Measurement delivers this insight thus enabling our customers to develop forward-thinking distribution strategies which offer consumers attractive and compelling alternatives to pirated materials online."

About MediaSentry Business Intelligence Direct Measurement

The combination of SafeNet's global footprint and technical expertise in investigation services resulted in the development of the World's most powerful and accurate measurements available for assessing file-sharing activity. From this, content owners gain significant visibility into consumer demand and file-sharing patterns on one of the fastest growing distribution channels today – peer-to-peer networks. The portfolio of MediaSentry Business Intelligence solutions provides content owners with the essential tools and information they need to:

• Quantify the scope and financial impact of digital piracy
• Monitor leaks and first releases of premium content online
• Track piracy propagation throughout the content's lifecycle
• Understand user behavior and assess global trends on file-sharing networks
• Evaluate the effectiveness of specific anti-piracy campaigns and initiatives
• Perform drill down data analysis by country, title and network
• Make informed decisions around future distribution strategies

The state of our video ID tools (by Steve Chen, YouTube co-founder)

Recent speculation and stories like this Wall Street Journal article or this Reuters report on YouTube's use of video identification tools made us think it would be useful to clarify what we’re doing. We’ve been developing improved content identification for months, and we’re confident that in the not-too-distant future, we’ll unveil an innovative solution that will work for users and content creators alike. This is one of the most technologically complicated tasks that we have ever undertaken. But YouTube has always been committed to developing sustainable and scalable tools that work for all content owners.

Even though we haven’t given too many details, we’ve been hard at work. Earlier this year we implemented audio fingerprinting technology from Audible Magic, to help identify the audio content of music partners like Warner Music, Sony BMG, and Universal. Today we're experimenting with video identification tools, and will share with you a few core principles driving our technology development, past and present.

We are beginning tests on an automated system to identify and match specific videos. The technology extracts key visual aspects of uploaded videos and compares that information against reference material provided by copyright holders. Achieving the accuracy to drive automated policy decisions is difficult, and requires a highly tuned system. Once accuracy is achieved, the challenge becomes speed and scale to support the millions of people who use YouTube every day. We are working with some of the major media companies to test what we have developed. We’re excited about the progress so far, and we’re dedicated to making these tests successful, but as always with cutting-edge technologies, there’s no guarantee of success.

Now, when it comes to spotting pornography and graphic violence, and other content prohibited by our terms of use, nothing beats our community flagging. Once a user flags a video, we immediately review it and remove it if we find a violation. But our community can’t identify infringing content. We all know pornography and violence when we see them. But copyright status can only be determined by the copyright holder. That is because almost anyone who creates an original video has the copyright for that work, and such a wide range of copyright holders' preferences vary widely.

Some copyright holders want control over every use of their creation. Many professional artists and media companies post their latest videos without telling us, while some home video-makers don't want their stuff online. Some legal departments take down a video one day and the marketing department puts it up the next. Which is their right, but our community can’t predict those things, and neither can we. The same is true for technology. No matter how good our video identification technology gets, it will never be able to read copyright-holders’ minds.

If a content owner identifies material that she doesn’t want on YouTube, she can request its removal with the click of a mouse. If particular users repeatedly infringe copyrights, we terminate their accounts. We have long made a practice of creating a unique "hash" of every video removed for alleged copyright infringement and blocking re-uploads of the hash. We educate users on what is and isn’t permissible under the law. Our upcoming video identification system will be our latest way of empowering copyright holders, going above and beyond legal requirements.

We’ll continue our focus on delivering a great user experience. YouTube's no-fuss upload lets video artists collapse the gap between the creative moment and its worldwide publication. It helps our hundreds of media partners - as well as marketers and advertisers - spread their hottest work while it's still hot. And it enables presidential candidates participating in our YouChoose 2008 program to engage in a direct, open dialogue with voters, bringing transparency, access and authenticity to the political process. We’re carefully designing our new identification technologies to not impede those free and fast forms of expression.

In conclusion, a content management system has to have technology that provides high quality matching and detection, but it also has to apply business rules in ways that support the business objectives of partners while providing high quality user experiences. With the introduction of our video identification tools, YouTube will continue to be the leader in online video, and the premier destination for watching and sharing original videos worldwide. Now, back to work…

Veoh Raises $26M in Series C Funding

Veoh has raised another $26 million in Series C funding, granting the video sharing company more money raised than any other video-sharing site. The round was led by Goldman Sachs, and Pete Perrone has joined Veoh’s board. Also included in this latest round are existing shareholders Spark Capital and Shelter Capital Partners.

While Veoh doesn’t gain as much traffic as MetaCafe, YouTube or DailyMotion, it still remains the company that has gained the most in venture capital. Veoh is a good application and has had a long standing when it comes to the surge of video-sharing sites. In 2005, Veoh raised $2.75 million in a Series A round, and got an additional $12.5 million in its second round of funding last year.

Unlike its larger counterpart YouTube, Veoh has dealt with the problem of finding copyrighted content on the site, which no doubt fares well when Veoh seeks out large amounts of funding. With the ante raised, other video-sharing sites may be able to raise more funding for their own services as well.

Bebo Taps Audible Magic, Crafts Filtered Strategy

San Francisco-based social networking upstart Bebo has recently brokered a content protection deal involving Audible Magic. The deal taps Audible-powered content identification and digital fingerprinting solutions to remove unauthorized content from the destination.
"With Audible Magic we ensure that artists and the labels that represent them are the only ones who decide which songs they give away for free and which not," said Michael Birch, chief executive and founder at Bebo.

The move comes alongside steady growth in music-related properties at Bebo. According to recent estimates, Bebo houses approximately 500,000 artists, a quickly-growing tally.

Bebo, which currently counts roughly 33 million users, is most popular in the UK, Ireland and New Zealand, though it is also frequented in the US, Canada and Australia.

AT&T to police the Internet

Though details are vague, the LA Times reports that AT&T is joining forces with Hollywood and the recording industry in a concerted effort to begin more aggressive policing of its network in order to prevent users from sharing pirated content, such as films and music.

This is a sea-change for a major Internet provider, where there exists a tradition of remaining hands-off towards content passed over the network. James W. Cicconi, an AT&T senior vice president explained the change on policy, saying that as AT&T has begun selling pay-television services, the company’s interests have become more closely aligned with Hollywood.

Last week, about 20 technology executives from Viacom Inc., its Paramount movie studio and other Hollywood companies met at AT&T headquarters to start devising a technology that would stem piracy but not violate privacy laws or Internet freedoms espoused by the Federal Communications Commission.

Startups can fix the Internet’s copyright woes, but nobody wants to pay for it.

The battle between Viacom and YouTube was supposed to be Sean Varah’s big break.

The media conglomerate in March filed a $1-billion lawsuit against the video-sharing site, claiming YouTube was dragging its feet by failing to curb the spread of unauthorized copyrighted content across its network. That same day, Mr. Varah released video filtering software that he was certain would solve everyone’s problems.

But in the months since, Mr. Varah, founder and CEO of MotionDSP, has had no takers; he has come to realize that what was once viewed as a huge potential market—video filtering—has become the technology that nobody wants to pay for. MotionDSP, and other filtering companies like it, are now scrambling to come up with different business models. “I could build this copyright thing, but so far, I haven’t seen anyone who’s going to write me a large enough check for it,” he says.

Mr. Varah’s San Mateo, California-based company, which had initially developed motion enhancement software to improve cell phone video quality, churned out its new filtering tools in just a few months in response to what looked to be huge demand for the technology.

But MotionDSP and others have found that video-hosting sites have little incentive to pay for something that isn’t going to reap returns, and media companies are reluctant to fund the filtering themselves. Investors are shying away, too. “It’s just a little early to figure out how people are going to make money from these tools,” says Neil Sequeira of General Catalyst Partners.

That’s bad news for the dozen or more companies that were hoping to cash in with their tools that can identify copyrighted video content and remove it from a web site.

Video filtering technology works by creating digital codes that act like a video’s fingerprint. But matching one video fingerprint to another can be cumbersome because companies must amass enormous databases of original content for comparison against material illicitly uploaded on the sites.

Once unauthorized material is detected, it is usually removed from the web site. That, says Ty Roberts, CTO of Los Gatos, California-based Gracenote, explains the lack of incentive for implementing the technology. “It’s really hard to get people to pay a lot of money for something that doesn’t help them make more money,” he says.

That realization is forcing companies like Gracenote, which also identifies music tracks for record companies, to seek out other revenue models. Gracenote is turning its basic video identification software into a recommendation system for movie and TV fans.

Even market leader Audible Magic, also based in Los Gatos, is barely making money from video filtering. The eight-year-old company has snapped up the lion’s share of contracts, but it has acknowledged that each deal is worth no more than $1 million annually—an amount that rivals say shows the market remains far too small. Audible Magic hopes to turn its fingerprinting business into a service that calculates and delivers royalty payments that video sites owe media companies.

But not everyone views video filtering as a dead-end street.
Redwood City, California-based Attributor, which charges media companies for crawling the web to identify copyrighted material, in December snagged $10 million from Sigma Partners, Selby Venture Partners, and other VCs. “We think that there are between 5,000 and 8,000 content owners who will pay for this, plus the top 10 video hosting sites, and then the 1,500 behind them,” says Attributor investor Marco DeMiroz of Selby Venture Partners. “There are several billions of dollars of opportunity in this.” Mr. Varah, and others like him, surely wouldn’t mind filtering out some of that.

RedHerring

Google Hiring Shows Video Key to Growth

The $1.6 billion buyout of YouTube was a good indicator that Google, the Mountain View, Calif.-based search giant had serious designs on the online video business. Its recent moves, including a partnership with Apple, are signs that it will keep investing. More anecdotal proof that the $10 billion-a-year company is betting the farm on video, take a quick look at their job listings.

At present Google has about 2,800 open positions right now, and a large percentage is related to video. There are numerous postings for online video ads, video content analysis/search, and TV initiatives. The television-related positions show the company is beginning to look at convergence very seriously. Television-related positions are based in London.

Yahoo is no slouch either, and has been aggressively hiring video related personnel, according to UBS analyst Ben Schachter, who recently published a report analyzing the hiring trends at the two Internet giants.

Azureus Facing Lawsuit in France

Azureus, Shareaza and Morpheus are being sued by the music industry group Société des Producteurs de Phonogrammes en France (SPPF) under the new provisions of copyright law passed by the French Parliament last year, according to French blog Ratatium (English translation).

The software creators could face criminal penalties including up to three years in prison and a €300,000 fine if the case is successfully prosecuted in French courts.

Morpheus has declined in popularity since being successfully sued already, and Shareaza is entirely non-commercial. But Azureus is leveraging the popular BitTorrent client for its Vuze network which delivers authorized downloads of video and audio. Though that fact could potentially be used in its defense as proof that the software is not exclusively for illegitimate distribution.

The new copyright provisions, abbreviated to DADVSI, is similar to the DMCA in that the intention was to update laws in order to address issues surrounding digital technology, as well as bring France in line with the European Union Copyright Directive (EUCD) and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) treaty.

Amendments to the DADVSI, sponsored by then Minister of the Interior and now current President Nicolas Sarkozy and dubbed “The Vivendi Amendments,” added the criminal penalties of imprisonment and fines for makers of software that are meant to transmit copyrighted material illegally. Though the suit could become a forum for DADVSI detractors to challenge the constitutionality of these provisions.

So the SPPF can expect the full support of Sarkozy and his UMP party in their suit. As an indication of the change in the climate surrounding copyright in France, during a recent hunt for Sopranos video I discovered even the somewhat notorious Dailymotion appears to be getting more thorough in policing their site for unauthorized clips (and may soon be competing with YouTube for Francophonic users).

YouTube to test video ID system

Top online video service YouTube will soon test a new video identification technology with two of the world's largest media companies, Time Warner and Walt Disney.

The technology, developed by engineers at YouTube-owner Google, will help content owners such as movie and TV studios identify videos uploaded to the site without the copyright owner's permission, YouTube legal, marketing and strategy executives said in an interview on Monday.

The so-called video fingerprinting tools will be available for testing in about a month, a YouTube executive said.

Initially, YouTube said last year such tools would be made available to test by the end of 2006. But executives have said the reliable identification of content was a complex task that required it to develop its own technology tools.

Chris Maxcy, YouTube partner development director, said other media companies planned to test the technology, but he declined to name the other parties.

These tools will be made available to all content owners later this year.

Full article.

Does Digital Fingerprinting Work?: An Investigative Report

Audio and visual fingerprinting of copyrighted video is seen as the best way to combat infringement, but in NewTeeVee’s testing this week across multiple sites, it did not work. We were surprised to be able to upload multiple times the exact same copyrighted file, even after we explicitly told the hosting site and the fingerprinting provider about it and they took it down.

Microsoft recently took its Soapbox user-contributed video site out of the public eye until it could implement filtering technology from Audible Magic. Last Friday, it relaunched, supposedly armed and ready to fend off copyrighted content. So we asked our intrepid reporter Craig Rubens to test how the system worked by uploading a Daily Show clip.

Surprise, surprise, the clip went up like a charm. We called Microsoft to ask what was going on. You should talk to Audible Magic, they said; our system is only as good as their index. We called Audible Magic, who essentially blamed Microsoft, for only implementing the audio version of its software. The reps then set off to nail down statements from their companies, a process that took most of the week.

Only sometime last night did the clip finally get taken off Soapbox, replaced with a copyright violation notice. To see if the system had been corrected we uploaded it again today, and again it appeared about 40 minutes later. At this point, if all went as it was supposed to, the video should have been automatically added to the index of banned clips, and then rejected when we uploaded a duplicate. But again, we had no problem.

Concerns about whether digital fingerprinting is ready for action have persisted, and market leader YouTube has hesitated to deploy its “Claim Your Content” system while it is being perfected. However, confidence in fingerprinting has moved past the optimism stage. “This technology works,” says MPAA Vice-President Dean Garfield, as reported by BusinessWeek.
Audible Magic has bagged most every high profile deal in video filtering: MySpace, Dailymotion, Break.com, and GoFish/Bolt.

The Audible Magic representative insinuated the company’s technology was deployed in fuller form on MySpace — which recently launched its “Take Down Stay Down” and filtering system using AM’s system — so we also tried uploading the clip there. Interestingly, that also posed no problem.

Here are the official statements Microsoft and Audible Magic sent yesterday after days of deliberation and phone calls about the issue.

“We are continuing to work with Audible Magic to fine tune our implementation of their proactive automatic filtering services to best meet the needs of our content partners. The fact that a clip of any unauthorized copyright material slipped through is unfortunate, but that’s why we also provide rich notice and takedown tools to content owners to automate and expedite the process of identifying and removing unauthorized content. We are committed to working in partnership with the industry to continue to evolve our technologies and solutions for customers and partners.” — Rob Bennett, general manager for Entertainment and Video Services at MSN

“Audible Magic’s technology has the ability to identify content such as ‘The Daily Show’ clip in question. We are working closely with Microsoft to customize our solution in order to meet the business needs of their Soapbox service.” — Vance Ikezoye, founder and CEO of Audible Magic

Though all these systems, as advertised, depend largely on identifying content once in order to block it future times, we made no bones about identifying our uploads as Daily Show clips. We also had no problem uploading the exact same file after we had informed the proper people about it and they had taken it down.


full article here

Pirate-Proofing Hollywood

Video fingerprinting could remove a lot of the guesswork for moviemakers.

Right now, tinseltown is all agog over Johnny Depp's latest, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. But a different piracy saga may have a more lasting impact on the industry. By the end of May, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) will report to its member studios the results of tests of a dozen computerized video-fingerprinting systems. This technology is designed to identify pirated movies wherever they exist on the Internet, automating a job that is now done by staffers who look for infringing clips with their own eyes.

Fingerprinting systems could be a crucial link in the battle to control video content on the Net. Most studios and TV networks have come to terms with the idea that they need to make shows available on the Net. However, tensions over whether they get paid for clips recently led Viacom to slap Google Inc.'s video site YouTube with a $1 billion copyright-infringement lawsuit. The MPAA is expected to report that the technology, after years of testing, is now ready for prime time. Says MPAA Vice-President Dean Garfield: "This technology works."

But that doesn't guarantee video Web sites will agree to deploy it. Many of the Web giants, including MySpace.com (owned by media giant News Corp. ), Microsoft, and Yahoo!, have said they plan to do so. But others--particularly YouTube--are moving more slowly, say sources in the industry. One reason is it's still not clear who will pay for video search. The systems must be deployed both by the studios, which create a database of film "fingerprints" or markers, and by the video sites, which run user-uploaded videos through software to find matches.

TIPS FOR CLIPS

The hunt for viable video-fingerprinting technology is akin to an episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. In recent years, many video sites have done deals with Audible Magic Corp. in hopes of using its music-search technology to spot pirated films and TV shows by analyzing sound tracks. But what if they've been dubbed into Chinese or Italian? Also, hackers have plenty of ways to disguise pirated video. To throw off studio screeners, they may change the name of a clip or start with a few seconds of a home movie. Many older fingerprinting technologies can be duped by tilting the image slightly so that the bits are harder to recognize.

But screening companies are making progress. Two-year-old Vobile Inc. in Santa Clara, Calif., did well in the MPAA tests, with technology that extracts what it calls "video DNA" from a movie. Executives won't say what that DNA is but say it lets them spot even a few seconds of a fingerprinted film. In a demonstration, CEO Yangbin Wang shows how the software identified a fuzzy scene of Walt Disney Co.'s The Jungle Book shot at an angle with a camcorder.

Instead of just using the fingerprinting technology to prevent access to pirated material, the film studios say they want to strike deals that would squeeze dollars out of clips. They suggest someone who tries to download a pirated episode of a hot show like Lost could be asked to pay $2.99. Or a site might let viewers watch the car-chase scene in Bullitt free of charge, so long as they put up with a Chrysler ad. Ad revenues would be shared by the site and the copyright- holding studio.

Google has said it is working on its own video-fingerprinting technology but hasn't announced a timetable for deployment. In the meantime, YouTube has limited technology to keep offending clips from popping back up once they've been identified. And its 10-minute limit on clips prevents the loading of whole shows. "We're always working on whatever we can think of to help copyright holders protect their rights," says Glenn Brown, a Google lawyer.

But studio executives and suppliers of fingerprinting systems complain that the search giant is singularly resistant to negotiations. Google has a partnership with Audible Magic, but industry insiders say that company's technology for fingerprinting music is not yet up to the task of identifying video.

Or, as some industry officials suggest, the hurdle may not be technological at all. Google may not have decided yet how much of the online box office it wants to share with Hollywood.

Audible Magic’s copyright filtering technology not working

Audible Magic, the Los Gatos company that protects music and other content publishers from piracy by scanning files posted around the Web, is having problems.

NewTeeVee tested the so-called finger-printing technology across multiple sites, including Microsoft’s video site, and even enlisted that company’s help when it didn’t work. But time and again, despite posting a copyrighted file to Microsoft’s site, it wasn’t flagged, and the file was posted for free viewing.

This is notable because Audible Magic’s technology has been adopted by a wide range of players, including YouTube (at least, YouTube has announced it will use the technology; it isn’t clear whether it has started), Daily Motion, EyeSpot and Grouper. Having such technology in place is also used by video sites as a defense against copyright violation suits, which is relevant because Google was sued recently by Viacom for such violation.

Audible has several competitors, including Advestigo, Attributor, Auditude, Gracenote and Vobile.

Audible Magic, of Los Gatos raised $3 million in funding six years ago from Florida Silicon Partners and individuals, including Jeffrey Pfeffer, a Stanford professor. At the time, that was its third round of funding. Another investor is Tierra Del Oro, also of Florida, run by Addison Fischer, chairman of SmartDisk (Audible is listed as a portfolio company). The company declined comment when we tried to confirm details of the company’s financing two months ago.

French sports groups join suit against YouTube

France's top soccer league and its national tennis organization are the latest to join legal action against video-sharing site YouTube.

The Federation Francaise de Tennis and Ligue de Football Professionnel, as well as New York-based Cherry Lane Music Publishing, have joined a class action lawsuit that accuses YouTube and parent company Google of copyright violations, according to Louis Solomon, one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs in the suit.

The suit was initially filed last month on behalf of the lead plaintiffs in the case: Bourne, a music publishing company and the Premier League, England's most prestigious soccer league.

Another executive shakeup at Revver

Video-sharing site Revver said Thursday that CEO Steven Starr has stepped down, in the company's second executive shakeup in the past six months.

One of the sector's pioneers in sharing revenue with videographers, Revver said in a statement that Kevin Wells, the company's chief operating officer takes over for Starr, who will now serve as Revver's chairman.

Revver competes in a crowded video-sharing market by billing itself as a friend to artists. But what many performers prize most is an audience. Revver's has never come close to the size of YouTube's, the sector's frontrunner.

In the last few months, privately held Revver has seen the departure of much of its staff. Under Starr, the Los Angeles-based company also launched an effort to sign content-licensing deals with Hollywood studios but abruptly abandoned the plan after only a few months, according to former employees.

In December, Revver saw cofounders Ian Clarke and Oliver Luckett leave, as well as David Tenzer, a veteran Hollywood agent hired to help find licensing deals.

Attributor Chosen to Protect AP Content

Attributor Corporation, the media company that offers transparency and accountability for online publishers, announced it will be providing monitoring and analysis for Associated Press content on the web.

It’s fingerprinting technology will be used for Associated Press copy, and will identify and document its display wherever it appears on the Internet. This is in effort to protect AP content and safeguard property rights, enabling new licensing and distribution models. With the added protection, the AP will grow its distribution efforts for spreading content across the web. The Attributor platform will continuously monitor the Internet and perform comparison and analysis against AP content to create a customized view of content usage, which includes a way to better track the compliance of applicable licensing and legal agreements.

This deal will initially cover AP text, and will later include other media formats for testing. Attributor will also be used with the organizations that exchange or distribute editorial content or information through the AP, and the two companies plan to explore potential editorial, licensing and advertising applications based on the Attributor platform as well. This is a petty big deal for a startup that offered up its services for digital fingerprinting across all media types late last year. Audible Magic is another company with fingerprinting technology, which is being used by Daily Motion, Eyespot, Grouper, MySpace, YouTube and Viacom.

GooTube strikes deal with EMI, after label shuns DRM with Apple

EMI Music, the world’s third largest music label company, said it has reached a deal with Google and its YouTube property to allow YouTube users to exploit EMI music while creating videos.

The move follows Apple’s move yesterday to start selling EMI songs without copy protection (digital rights management, or DRM) through its iTunes store.

Warner to put ad-supported video archive online

Warner Music, the world's fourth-largest music group, is putting its archive of music video online and making it available for free to fans.

Revenue will be driven by advertising but music fans will be able to download the videos for an additional fee and Warner will also examine syndicating the content to a third party. The deal includes plans to develop subscription-based services and a version to be used on mobile platforms.

World's largest MP3 store launches

PayPlay has just launched "the world's largest MP3 download store" -- a store selling more than 1.3 million indie music tracks, with a search engine that allows you to search for your fave artists and get similar indie artists in the catalog. Previous to this PayPlay sold only DRM-crippled WMAs for $0.77, the MP3s sell for $0.88.

MovieLabs Challenge

Motion Pictures Laboratories, Inc. (MovieLabs) is a non-profit startup based in Palo Alto funded by the six major Hollywood studios to advance research in areas the movie industry regards as critical.

It’s announced an open challenge offering grant money to people who submit proposed solutions to a number of problems the industry feels need to be addressed.

Promising proposals will receive grants anywhere from $25,000 to $100,000 to continue research. Like CableLabs and DARPA, the only goal is to fund research — they won’t be in the business of bringing the solutions to market, and any successful invention will be the property of the inventor, Weinstein assured.

While there’s no mention of digital rights management on the MovieLabs site, the focus is primarily on anti-piracy efforts, including defeating and detecting camcorders in theaters and identifying copyrighted material , even if it’s been transformed (such as mashups or transcoding into alternate formats).

CBS Acquires Social Music Network Last.fm for $280 Million

CBS Corporation announced on Wednesday that it has acquired U.K.-based social music network Last.fm, for $280 million in cash.

Last.fm, which was founded in 2002 and now counts more than 15 million users in over 200 countries, monitors what songs a user is listening to in iTunes or other applications, and then automatically creates a personalized streaming radio station based on recommendations from fellow users with similar tastes.

Sony/ATV Acquires Viacom's Famous Music for $370 Million

Sony/ATV Music Publishing announced on Wednesday that it has agreed to acquire Viacom's music publishing arm, Famous Music, for about $370 million.

EMI to Release Entire Catalog DRM-free on Amazon.com

Building on last month's news, EMI has announced today a new partnership with Amazon.com, where again the music label's entire catalog will be released DRM-free (to be launched "later this year".)

Similar to the proposed availability on iTunes, the tracks will be of higher quality than the typical $0.99 track. And unlike iTunes, the tracks will be sold in MP3 format, assuring the files are playable and transportable to just about any device imaginable.

France wants to track file sharers

The French Council of State decided last week that record companies can automatically track P2P users that share more than 50 files within 24 hours and keep their records for further legal proceedings.
The decision comes as a blow to the French National Commission for Data protection and the Liberties who ruled in the fall of 2005 that automatic surveillance of P2P networks violates local privacy laws.

AOL To Launch YouTube Competitor in June

New York, NY - AOL is set to bring user-generated video upload service UnCut out of beta and officially launch it in June. The new service will be implemented on many of AOL's platforms including AIM and the new social network service, Fred McIntyre, AOL's chief online video executive told Beet.TV.

Popular Video Sharing Website Implements VideoDNA™ from Vobile

Vobile, a leading provider of video content identification and management products and services, announced today a landmark deployment of its VideoDNA™ content identification and management system with Pomoho.com, one of the largest and most popular video sharing websites in China.

With the integration of Vobile's VideoDNA™ system, Pomoho's online infrastructure now includes effective copyright infringement control and targeted video advertising. The improved Pomoho platform offers an enhanced user experience and enables new revenue streams for content rights holders.

China's Pomoho.com offers three million video titles in its online library, including user generated and professionally created video clips, and attracts two million unique viewers each day. It is ranked among the top three most popular video sharing websites in China, according to a recent study by the Internet Society of China.

The VideoDNA™ content identification and management system analyzes each and every video clip uploaded to Pomoho before it becomes available to Pomoho's user community, and applies appropriate business rules according to rights holders' specifications.

As video spam surges and consumer frustration increases, VideoDNA™ also improves consumers' online experience. Additionally, targeted video advertising brings new revenue to rights holders, large or small.

"Pomoho represents the first large-scale deployment of VideoDNA™ content identification technology, which analyzes video content itself frame-by-frame instead of matching the sound track, as many other systems do," stated Yangbin Wang, founder and CEO of Vobile.

Video search company, Blinkx, blows bubble with IPO

Blinkx the San Francisco video search engine, has taken us into new bubble territory, going public on the London Alternative Investment Market (AIM) and being valued at $355 million.
It raised about $50 million.

Its IPO is perfectly timed, because it hits all the hype buttons: Blinkx is search, it is video, and best of all, it is online advertising — an industry where the merger activity is at its most frantic levels since Cisco, Nortel and Lucent binged on billion-dollar infrastructure companies at the height of the last bubble.

Blinkx’s technology takes a video’s content — the spoken words within them - and translates it into searchable text, which is something different from what most sites do. Pluggd and others translation services are making headway in this area. It is powering video search for a Lycos, Looksmart and a division AOL.

Blinkx, meanwhile, tell they’re in this for the long haul, and they think they can make money by serving targeted advertisements.

EMI recommends $6.3 bln offer from Terra Firma

LONDON (Reuters) - EMI announced on Monday terms of a recommended cash offer for the company from Maltby, a newly incorporated company from Terra Firma, for 265 pence per share, giving it an enterprise value of 3.2 billion pounds ($6.30 billion).

VideoEgg Names Adam Klein President

VIDEOEGG, which runs a video ad network over more than 70 online communities, named digital media veteran Adam Klein as president. Klein was most recently executive vice president of strategy and business development at EMI Music. Previously, he was an advisor to the chairman at MTV Networks, and before that president and COO of Ask Jeeves.

Canal Plus goes to court over clips

Company claims $1.5 million damages in suit.

PARIS -- Canal Plus will take legal action against French-based video clip hosting service Kewego for alleged copyright violations -- the first litigation of its kind in France.

The network believes Kewego has done too little to prevent the inclusion of Canal Plus content in the form of viral videos on its site despite repeated requests to take appropriate action since November.
A Canal Plus spokesman cited the positive steps taken by Google and Kewego's French competitor, DailyMotion, in developing tools that prevent posting of the network's content without prior permission.

MySpace Launches “Take Down Stay Down”

Another move to stop media companies from suing MySpace: they’re launching “Take Down, Stay Down” today, which prevents videos being uploaded again if they’ve already been removed at the request of a copyright holder. The service is available to all content owners.

The technology, you can probably guess, is powered by Audible Magic - a content protection service that’s signing virtually all the video sites as they dodge lawsuits left and right. The tool joins other copyright protection tech on MySpace, like audio fingerprinting of tracks on MySpace music, video filtering and an automated take down system.

Eight Months in GooTube’s Brain

Below, a look inside YouTube’s decision-making process over the last eight months. Click on the thumbnail below for the full image.

Video-Sharing Web Site to Combat Piracy With Digital-Fingerprinting Technology

France's Dailymotion SA says it will begin blocking users from putting pirated clips on its video-sharing site by using so-called fingerprinting technology from Audible Magic Corp.

The move represents an effort by closely-held Dailymotion, a popular site accessed by users around the world, to distance itself from the uploading and viewing of clips from TV shows and movies without their copyright holders' permission.

Politicos take on YouTube, video's future

WASHINGTON--It was an atypical start for a Capitol Hill hearing--arguably the first time a politician ever paused his opening remarks to grab a digital video camera and capture the scene around him for a few seconds.

"I thought we could have the first ever YouTube video of a committee hearing from the chairman's perspective," Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) said as he aimed the palm-sized silver gadget at a table lined with video tech executives, including YouTube CEO Chad Hurley, billionaire investor and HDNet founder Mark Cuban, and the CEOs of Slingbox and TiVo.

Other witnesses included the creator of the hit television series Everybody Loves Raymond and executives from the Disney and ESPN networks and Qualcomm's MediaFlO unit, which recently rolled out live TV capabilities for mobile phones.

The purpose of the morning meeting was to explore the future of video.
But it quickly became apparent that the hearing wasn't just a playful show-and-tell for the companies represented, as some politicians proceeded to put YouTube in the hot seat over its copyright policies.

full article here

Internet TV company, Joost, raises $45M

Internet TV company Joost has raised $45 million in a whopper round of venture financing, giving it a significant war-chest to spend just as its product hits the market.

Lead investors were Sequoia Capital and Index Ventures. CBS Corporation, Viacom and the foundation of Chinese billionaire Li Ka-shing also participated.

Despite being relatively untested, Joost has gained publicity because it was started by Skype co-founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström. It has signed deals with several companies, including Viacom, CBS and Time Warner, to carry their content.

YouTube’s New Caste System

YouTube’s eagerly anticipated system for rightsholders to discover and flag unauthorized uploads of their material, “Claim Your Content,” has gotten bit closer to reality.

“It’s entering the testing phase,” YouTube co-founder Steve Chen told BusinessWeek’s Spencer Ante in an extended interview for BusinessWeek’s Blogspotting.

What seems to be happening is YouTube content creators are being divided into camps. Based on how I understand Claim Your Content might work — namely, that it won’t pro-actively screen and block infringing content — it’s doubtful YouTube will ever open up its new revenue-sharing program or “Claim Your Content” to all users, so if your home-produced video goes viral unexpectedly, don’t expect to cash in and defend your turf against copiers.

VideoEgg Raises Additional $3.5 Million Funding

VideoEgg, the San Francisco-based online video tools provider, which powers the video on sites like Bebo, hi5, Dogster, Piczo, Flixster and Tagged.com, has raised $3.48 million in additional third round funding from an undisclosed investor based in Luxembourg.

Last year the company announced $12 million in third round. Word on the street is that this company is soaring.

Eyespot Chooses Audible Magic for Media Protection

Eyespot, the online community for video mashups, has partnered with Audible Magic to offer copyrighted music content to be available to users for remixing.

Eyespot is hoping that this deal, with the digital protection of Audible Magic, will entice media companies to offer up their content for Eyespot users. This of course is an attempt to create a middle ground for users and media companies, circumventing the kind of woes that YouTube has racked up. Using Audible Magic’s content recognition solution with the Eyespot platform allows music to be legally available for remixing. As music scoring is very popular with the Eyespot community, this partnership with Audible Magic protects everyone involved, especially the record holders, who get to decide what songs will be available for mixing. This is good for promotional material as well.

Eyespot will also be giving administrative moderation tools to copyright holders, to filter out any inappropriate media before mashups are available to the larger community for sharing and embedding. This should alleviate some of the issues many big brand companies have had in the past with contests that put their name on the line by opening it up to the UGC crowd. Eyespot already has several media partners including Paramount Pictures, the NBA, and Jive Records, among others.

Audible Magic has become a popular choice for several companies as their anti-piracy services protect copyright holders in the face of massive media sharing. Some of their clients include MySpace, Grouper and Viacom. Audible Magic’s corporate partners include EMI, Sony/BMG and Warner Music Group, among others.

Google responds to Viacom lawsuit

"Viacom's complaint in this action challenges the careful balance established by Congress when it enacted the Digital Millenium Copyright Act," Google's response begins. "The DMCA balances the rights of copyright holders and the need to protect the Internet as an important new form of communication. By seeking to make carriers and hosting providers liable for Internet communications, Viacom's complaint threatens the way hundreds of millions of people legitimately exchange information, news, entertainment and political and artistic expression. Google and YouTube respect the importance of intellectual property rights, and not only comply with their safe harbor obligations under the DMCA, but go well above and beyond what the law requires."

Google's response denies all allegations made by Viacom in the original complaint. Google requests a jury trial.

Specifically, in response to Viacom's allegation that Google and YouTube promote direct copyright infringement via public performance, Google cites the safe harbor provisions of the DMCA. In response to Viacom's allegation that Google is making unauthorized copies of protected works, Google cites fair use. Google also cites the substantial non-infringing uses of YouTube.

Google's response is available for download here.