UGC sites Top20 (update)

Brightcove Launching AfterMix - Pulls Ahead of YouTube?

First UGC site that lets users use copyrighted contents. How do they deal with revenue sharing? How do they track the use of pieces of video content? Would be good to know.

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The video platform Brightcove is trying to make moves into YouTube’s consumer-facing territory: as part of that venture, they’re expected to launch Aftermix (closed beta coming in a few weeks), a tool that lets users borrow professional video clips and incorporate them into into their own productions.

Aftermix also allows you to record clips directly from your webcam, making them instantly available for mixing. This is all done without a download, of course, and sound tracks, voice overs and timelines are all part of the package. The interface is all draggy-and-droppy (yes, those are the technical terms), and your finished video is published to Brightcove.
On the technology front at least, you could argue that Brightcove is moving ahead of YouTube - it’ll soon combine YouTube-like video sharing (albeit with a “channel” structure) with a remixing toolset that’s not too dissimilar to Jumpcut and Eyespot. The title is hyperbolic, of course, because Brightcove will never have the large community that forms YouTube’s greatest asset. But I’m sure we can expect YouTube to investigate remixing soon - it’s a natural next step.

Brightcove’s Jeremy Allaire, meanwhile, points out that Brightcove differentiates itself because of the way it’s working with commercial partners and professional content creators: these providers can create “Asset Bins” that include video, audio and photos, and make this media available to users for remixing. In other words: TV networks and music labels can make their content spread virally, while users get access to licensed content for their remixes.

YouTube’s emerging strategy, to pay revenue on pirated music

Google Inc.’s YouTube has announced a deal with Wind-up Entertainment, an independent label, to pay it a share of revenue from advertising beside pages carrying video with Wind-up’s songs in the background.

It is notable because it provides a glimpse at YouTube’s emerging strategy for compensating record labels, many of them pissed off at YouTube’s slowness to arrive at a solution for stopping piracy. Many users upload vidoes with copyrighted music playing the background. Now that Google can identify the songs with signature technology (yet to be fully announced), even the songs are pirated, this appears to be a workable resolution.

The deal covers more than 225 songs. Wind-up’s artists include Evanescence, Seether, Finger Eleven and Scott Stapp. The exact revenue share was undisclosed, so it is difficult to know how smart a deal this was for Wind-up.

Roo Group To Buy P2P Distribution Firm Wurld Media

Roo Group, the OTC-traded online video aggregator, distributor and tech providers, which recently got investment from News Corp, has signed an LOI to buy Wurld Media, the P2P distributor and operator of Peer Impact legal P2P service. The deal is expected to close in three months.

The deal terms: $10 million, to be paid in cash and ROO common stock at $4.39 per share. ROO will immediately advance $1.5 million to Wurld Media, and on the closing of the acquisition, ROO will pay $6.5 million dollars in stock or cash and will issue an additional $2 million in stock upon the achievement of milestones.

Established in 1999, NY-based Wurld Media specializes in the P2P distribution of music, movies, games and TV shows, but didn’t really gain much traction in the consumer market..its Peer Impact service has content from 20th Century Fox, WB, Universal, Sony, Warner, EMI, Atari, Activision, and others. These content providers are planned to continue post-deal.

Fair Use Amendment Introduced to the DMCA

There's been a big chill in the United States when it comes to technological progress that skirts the boundaries of copyright law. P2P and file-sharing developers know this all too well, as such development, with the exception of BitTorrent, has come to a virtual standstill. Thanks to the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act), the right of consumers to make backups of rightfully owned entertainment has become stifled.

For example, if a consumer wishes to make a backup copy of a legally purchased DVD, such a venture would not be possible (well, legally) because the DMCA prohibits individuals from circumventing copyright protection devices. 321 Studios, the company that created DVD X Copy, learned this lesson the hard way, and was sued into oblivion. Their software utilized a decrypting engine called DeCSS to make perfect backup copies, which is a classic example of breaching the DMCA.

More recently, there's been a steaming fair rights debate with the arrival of high definition video. Currently, there's virtually no way to make backup copies of one's high definition video collection, unless a - gasp - VCR is used. This lack of fair use support was one of the motivating factors behind the circumvention of AACS, the device used to "protect" high definition movies. In reaction to this stringent copy protection, Muslix64, the individual who pioneered the defeat of high definition protection, told Slyck.com, "I'm just an upset customer. My efforts can be called "fair use enforcement!"

There are also a few pioneers in the United States House of Representatives attempting to amend the DMCA in favor of the consumer. The Bill, named Freedom and Innovation Revitalizing U.S. Entrepreneurship Act of 2007 (H.R. 1201), or Fair Use Act for short, was introduced today by U.S. Representatives Rick Boucher (D-VA) and John Doolittle (R-CA.)

"The fair use doctrine is threatened today as never before. Historically, the nation's copyright laws have reflected a carefully calibrated balance between the rights of copyright owners and the rights of the users of copyrighted material. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act dramatically tilted the copyright balance toward complete copyright protection at the expense of the public's right to fair use," Boucher said. "The FAIR USE Act will assure that consumers who purchase digital media can enjoy a broad range of uses of the media for their own convenience in a way which does not infringe the copyright in the work," Boucher explained.

The Bill details several rights it hopes to give back to consumers, educators, and software/hardware designers. In an effort to pacify concerns of the entertainment industry (and to give the Bill a snowball's chance), the Bill does not contain "fair use defense to the act of circumvention." In other words, it doesn't establish a blanket safe harbor provision to all acts of circumvention.

Instead, the fair use provisions are narrow. The Bill seeks to amend the DMCA's circumvention provision by adding the following paragraph:"(F) The prohibition contained in subparagraph (A) shall not apply to a person by reason of that person’s engaging in a non-infringing use of any of the 6 classes of copyrighted works set forth in the determination of the 2 Librarian of Congress in Docket No. RM 2005-11, as published as a final rule by the Copyright Office, Library of 4 Congress, effective November 27, 2006..."If you read paragraph "A" of section 12-01 of the DMCA, it's fairly clear that no circumvention means no circumvention. "No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title."

This Bill would effectively negate the burden of paragraph "A" if the circumvention is within the scope of the six classes of copyrighted works referenced above. There is no mention of DVD or optical disc circumvention and the exemptions are very narrow - and antiquated - in scope. The only circumvention provisions related to DVDs allow for “…consumers to circumvent a lock on a DVD or other audiovisual work in order to skip past commercials at the beginning of it or to bypass personally objectionable content…”, but not backup the work.

The reasons for the such narrow provisions stem from previous attempts by Representatives Boucher and Doolittle to introduce much more aggressive fair use amendments. However because these previous attempts had a much wider circumvention scope, they were swiftly curtailed by the entertainment industry.

More relevantly, the Bill will also empower librarians to 'ensure that they can circumvent a digital lock to preserve or secure a copy of a work or replace a copy that is damaged, deteriorating, lost, or stolen."

Perhaps most welcome to software and hardware designers is the provision to codify the Sony Corp. v. Universal City Studios, Inc. ruling, otherwise known as the Betamax decision. “Subsection (b) would immunize these and other hardware companies, as well as entrepreneurs, from copyright infringement liability based on the design, manufacture or distribution of hardware devices (or components of those devices ) that are capable of a substantial, commercially significant non-infringing use.”

Additionally, the Bill seeks to limit "availability of statutory damages against individuals and firms who may be found to have engaged in contributory infringement, inducement of infringement, vicarious liability or other indirect infringement." In other words, the next time someone considers the creation of a new P2P network, they won’t have to worry so much about a potential $30 million judgment.

The Bill is a positive step forward, yet even if it were passed, it would not help those looking to make backup copies of their DVD collection. Like the DRM issue currently facing the authorized online music stores, this attempt is a small step forward in the effort to unlock the grip of the entertainment industry.

BitTorrent’s big day

BitTorrent, the San Francisco start-up that has long been considered a renegade by the movie industry, opened up a new movie store today with full backing by Hollywood studios.

The move is significant because the company’s founder, Bram Cohen created the Bittorrent protocol, a popular file-sharing program that used peoples’ computers to distribute movies across the Internet for free, and it became one of the most popular tools for pirates.

However, his company, also called BitTorrent, now aims to legalize the distribution process, and make money from it — after having put controls on the peer-to-peer technology, and augmenting its performance so that it can distribute niche content as well.

We already reported today’s announcement was coming. But now we have details:
Four major studios and about three dozen other publishers of video, games and software have lined up to endorse the new offering. They include 20th Century Fox, Lions Gate, MTV Networks, Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment and BitTorrent’s newest partner, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Inc.

It comes at a time when studios are signing deals with other companies too, including one between Viacom and rival start-up, Joost. The deals are likely to put pressure on Google’s YouTube. YouTube has dragged its heels on implementing a filtering technology to placate concerns studios have about pirated movies show up there. Reports emerged that YouTube will soon implement such technology, but the latest word is that there are “technical” difficulties. Meanwhile, YouTube’s popularity continues to surge. It has overtaken the combined traffic of all television network Web site, at 0.6 percent of all Internet traffic (compared to 0.5 percent enjoyed by 56 television cable and broadcast network sites), according to Hitwise.

BitTorrent’s digital media store promises to have about 3,000 new and classic movies. Go to the site now, and you’ll see everything from movies like “Little Miss Sunshine” to TV programming like “24″. New movies will sell for $3.99, classics will be $2.99, and tv shows, music videos and PC games will be priced at $1.99.

The content will play in Microsoft’s Windows Media Player 11 and be protected by Microsoft’s Digital Rights Management platform that will prevent the content from playing in more than one computer or to be shared elsewhere. It won’t be playable on an Apple computer or on an iPod. To watch the movies on TV, you’ll need Netgear’s Digital Entertainer and a high-definition television set.

Google in Content Deal With Media Companies

By LOUISE STORY

Google built an empire delivering advertisements across the Internet, and now it plans to distribute content from media companies just as aggressively.

Google is working with Dow Jones & Company, Condé Nast, Sony BMG Music Entertainment and other large content companies to syndicate their video content on other Web sites. The videos appear inside Google ad boxes on sites that are relevant to the content of the videos, and advertisements run during or after the content. Google shared the ad revenue with the video provider and with the sites that show the videos.

There are already video ad networks that make similar deals, and NBC Universal is attempting something similar. But the Google experiment could be more widespread since the company already has a vast reach on the Internet.

“Once upon a time, if you had some video content that you wanted to distribute, you could do it on three television stations in the days of the networks, then 100 in the days of cable,” said Kim Malone, director of online sales and operations for Google AdSense. “Now, thanks to this program, you can do it on literally millions of channels on the Internet.”

On the financial news site StreetInsider.com, for example, videos from The Wall Street Journal, a Dow Jones property, are running within ads on the site. In one, Emily Friedlander, a Wall Street Journal reporter, narrates a video feature on the TKTS booth in Times Square; Sam Schechner of The Journal speaks about marriage in TV shows; and Jonathan Welsh visits a motorcycle show.

After the three videos, a commercial from Pantene Pro-V, a hair conditioner, appears. In that case, Google shares the ad revenue with StreetInsider.com and Dow Jones.

The videos and the accompanying ads can also be found on articles on YoungMoney.com, AdVersus.com and SeatGuru.com, among other sites. A ski resort show created by LX.TV, a broadband network, is being shown with ads on skiing blogs.

The ads are part of Google’s larger initiative to gain traction with consumer goods companies who spend billions on brand advertising. Founded as a text-based search company, Google’s early advertisers were smaller companies and advertisers who bought ads to generate direct sales rather than to build brand recognition.

Large brand advertisers still spend the bulk of their money on television advertising, but Google sees potential for them to spend more online through the use of video ads.

But Google’s broad plan to bundle media content with ads depends on participation from media companies. On the one hand, Google’s network will bring more visibility of their content across the Internet, where attention is fragmented online between thousands of sites. On the other hand, media companies like to be a destination in their own right, so that they can sell ads on their sites.

“We want people to come directly to our site, but that’s part of why we’re doing this,” said Sarah Chubb, president of CondéNet, the digital arm of Condé Nast. “To see if we can find people that we haven’t found in other ways.”

Media companies also want to keep control over their relationships with advertisers. Google sells ads in its network for Condé Nast videos, but in a similar content-ad test with MTV Networks last fall, MTV sold the ads (sharing the revenue with Google).

Adam Cahan, executive vice president of strategy and business development for MTV Networks, said that his networks want to make sure that when their content is distributed on the Web, that it links to their sites.

“In the same way that Harry Potter book sales grow from a Harry Potter movie, you would not give the movie away to support the book sales,” Mr. Cahan said. “There is a balance between promotion and consumption that is up to the original content producer to manage.”

Software Exploited by Pirates Goes to Work for Hollywood

By BRAD STONE, NewYorkTimes

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 25 — Hollywood studios are going into business with one of their biggest tormentors: the peer-to-peer pioneer BitTorrent.

On Monday, the company, whose technology unleashed a wave of illegal file-sharing on the Internet, plans to unveil the BitTorrent Entertainment Network on its Web site, BitTorrent.com. The digital media store will offer around 3,000 new and classic movies and thousands more television shows, as well as a thousand PC games and music videos each, all legally available for purchase.

The programming comes from studios, including Twentieth Century Fox, Paramount and Warner Brothers, that previously announced their intention to work with BitTorrent. There is also a new partner: the 83-year-old Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which will take part by making 100 films available on the site from its 4,000-movie library. "Somebody once said you have to embrace your enemy,” said Doug Lee, executive vice president of MGM’s new-media division. “We like the idea that they have millions of users worldwide. That is potentially fertile, legitimate ground for us.”

The BitTorrent store will work slightly differently than rival digital media offerings like the iTunes Store of Apple and the Xbox Live service of Microsoft. BitTorrent will commingle free downloads of users’ own video uploads with sales of professional fare. And while it will sell digital copies of shows like “24” and “Bones” for $1.99 an episode, it will only rent movies. Once the films are on the PC, they expire within 30 days of their purchase or 24 hours after the buyer begins to watch them.

New releases like “Superman Returns” cost $3.99, while classics like “Reservoir Dogs” cost $2.99. The studio’s content plays in Microsoft’s Windows Media Player 11. It is secured by Microsoft’s antipiracy software, which blocks users from watching rented movies on more than one PC or sending them to others over the Internet.

Ashwin Navin, BitTorrent’s co-founder and chief operating officer, said the company had secured the right to permit users to buy outright digital copies of films, but the studios wanted to charge prices that would be too high for most consumers. “We don’t think the current prices are a smart thing to show any user,” he said. “We want to allocate services with very digestible price points.”

BitTorrent, which is based in San Francisco and has 45 employees, will face significant challenges as it tries to carve out some space in the emerging digital downloading landscape. Apple is the largest presence among the legitimate Internet media stores. ITunes, which has sold more than a billion dollars worth of digital music, sells movies from Walt Disney and Paramount and programs from all the major TV networks.

Other entrants in the nascent field include Walmart.com, MovieLink.com (owned by four of the studios) and Amazon Unbox, which recently announced a way for TiVo users to download movies to their television instead of watching them on smaller PC screens.
Michael McGuire, a vice president at the research firm Gartner, said BitTorrent and its rivals all face the same challenge: “They must get consumers to look at this as a better and more reliable way to watch a movie than renting a DVD.”

There is also the illegal economy in pirated video content, whose size dwarfs that of the legal online media stores. The Motion Picture Association of America has said that a million movies are illegally acquired every day using BitTorrent technology. The software is open source, so versions of it, as well as Web sites offering pirated movies, are maintained by companies not affiliated with BitTorrent.

Bram Cohen, BitTorrent’s co-founder and chief executive and the inventor of the technology, said the new store would offer a compelling alternative to the illegal ecosystem. “I think what consumers want is a good experience,” he said, “and the first part of that is making the content they want available legitimately.”

But he added that the antipiracy software that will protect files in the new store, which the studios insist on including, will make the experience more cumbersome for users. “We are not happy with the user interface implications” of digital rights management, or D.R.M., Mr. Cohen said. “It’s an unfortunate thing. We would really like to strip it all away.”

BitTorrent’s store will have some advantages over legal rivals’. Its peer-to-peer technology introduced by Mr. Cohen in 2001 works by taking pieces of large files from nearby computer users who have that file, permitting speedy downloads.

In a test of the new BitTorrent store, downloading the film “X-Men 3” took two hours with a broadband Internet connection. Downloading the same movie from Walmart.com took three hours. And BitTorrent downloads should theoretically become faster as more people sign up, since digital copies will originate from nearby computers whose owners have bought the movie, instead of from a central server.

The company, which has received close to $30 million in venture capital, ultimately wants to use its media store to demonstrate how the underlying technology is effective at moving large files around the Internet. The it wants to sell the technology to other media stores and to the studios themselves.

The studios hope the new BitTorrent will put a dent in the illegal trading of their content. Thomas Lesinski, president of Paramount Pictures Digital Entertainment, said he hoped the store would win over young people accustomed to free fare. “We look at this as a first step in the peer-to-peer world, to try to steer people toward legitimate content,” he said.

BitTorrent executives say they are not able to prevent illegal downloads in the larger file-sharing world. But they cite internal studies that say 34 percent of BitTorrent users would pay for content if a comprehensive, legal service was available.

That group clearly does not include Aaron, a 36-year-old San Francisco programmer who does not want his full name used because he and his wife regularly use BitTorrent to download songs, movies and TV shows illegally.

After testing a prelaunch version of the legal BitTorrent store, he said it would not persuade him to abandon the limitless selection of content and freedom he enjoys on free BitTorrent sites.
“The sad thing is, it’s not about the money,” he said. “I’m not interested in renting a movie. I want to own it. I want total portability. I want to give a copy to my brother. Digital convergence is supposed to make things like this easier, but D.R.M. is making them harder.”

Zudeo to Re-launch with New Name

Azureus beat Bram Cohen’s Bittorrent venture1 to the punch when they soft-launched a Torrent-powered content platform in December. Zudeo.com features film trailers next to semi-professional HD content and has since seen 1 million visitors. All these folks will soon have to learn a new moniker, because Azureus is about to pull a Venice Project on us.

I met with Azureus CEO Gilles BianRosa this week, and he revealed that the platform won’t be called Zudeo anymore once it officially launches with commercial content in March. “It has a really cool name that I can’t reveal right now.” he told me with a smirk. BianRosa did however share some details about pricing, protocol enhancements and the reasons why they don’t want to be another YouTube.

Azureus has been making announcements about new content deals every few weeks now, with the BBC and Starz being some of the bigger names. Altogether they have about 20 deals in place. The company concentrated on TV studios as opposed to Hollywood because of availability and pricing issues. BianRosa told me that he doesn’t want to sell movie downloads that can be bought on DVD for less at Wal-Mart, but concentrate on inexpensive, yet hard to find shows. “We will have Starbucks coffee type pricing for all of our content,” he said.

All of the for-sale content, that is. The rebranded Zudeo.com will still feature lots of free promotional and user-generated content. Azureus wants to give serious bedroom producers an opportunity to distribute longer movies with a better resolution than YouTube-like sites. The platform will offer topical channels to promote and organize content, which is supposed to make it more attractive to commercial content owners and advertisers as well. “Clearly we don’t see ourselves as the next YouTube,” says BianRosa.

BianRosa wants to offer independent producers revenue sharing at some point - a process that he compares more to eBay than to catalogue licensing. Publishers eventually will be able to choose for each work whether they want to distribute it for free, for sale or have it be advertising-supported. DRM will also be optional.

Obviously the mere existence of DRM will outrage many traditional P2P users – some of which have been Azureus’ most loyal base. The client has been downloaded around 140 million times because of its multi-platform, open source approach, and BianRosa wants to keep it that way. The company is working on some progressive streaming enhancements of the BitTorrent protocol that will only be available to Azureus users initially, but he hopes to eventually get other vendors on board for this as well.

Of course all of this might not be enough to appease the most critical voices in the P2P community. BianRosa shrugs this off as something inevitable: “We’ll get bad press on Slashdot because it’s not geek enough, but I’m not too worried about that.”

Google to start filtering YouTube videos

By Elise Ackerman; Mercury News

Google is set to start filtering videos and other content on YouTube for copyrighted materials, taking a key step in helping the online video-sharing site comply with one of the biggest complaints it faces -- rampant piracy.

The Mercury News has learned that Google will use technology from Los Gatos-based Audible Magic. That company's software was mentioned in the U.S. Supreme Court's Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios vs. Grokster ruling as evidence that file-sharing services could keep pirated files off their networks.

Yet Google's move may simply drive YouTube's audience to other sites, where copyright violations are even more egregious. While YouTube imposes a 10-minute limit on uploaded clips, sites like Dailymotion.com in France or Peekvids.com in Denmark screen full-length movies and pirated TV episodes.

YouTube is ``definitely going to lose popularity,'' said Jesse Drew, acting director of the technocultural studies program at University of California-Davis. ``These things become popular because they are underground and free and accessible.''

YouTube had agreed in September to begin filtering videos, but implementation of a filtering system was delayed while Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt tried to hammer out licensing deals with major studios.

Some copyright holders complained that Google appeared to be using the filtering technology as leverage in negotiations. Earlier this month, Viacom demanded that YouTube remove more than 100,000 videos, including clips of shows like ``SpongeBob Squarepants,'' posted on its site. NBC Universal and News Corp. also have requested that YouTube take down clips.

Last week, for instance, Richard Cotton, general counsel of NBC Universal, wrote Google a five-page letter demanding that Google use all available means to address copyright infringement on YouTube.

Users of Audible Magic's technology have included iMesh, a peer-to-peer music-sharing site, the PlayLouder MSP music service, and Grouper, a video-sharing site owned by Sony. MySpace recently announced a pilot program to use Audible Magic to prevent unauthorized videos from being posted by its users.

Neither YouTube nor Audible Magic would comment on the deal, which has not been publicly announced. The Mercury News spoke with two sources familiar with the deal who were not cleared to comment officially about it.

In an interview with Reuters on Wednesday, Google's Schmidt said filtering technology was one of the company's ``highest priorities.''
``It is going to roll out very soon,'' Schmidt said.

In an interview with the Mercury News last week, Vance Ikezoye, chief executive of Audible Magic, said it takes ``a few days at most'' for a site to begin filtering.

The system works by comparing the audio fingerprint of a video to a large database of copyrighted material. Founded in 1999, Audible Magic originally was focused on the problem of monitoring radio broadcasts. It purchased the technology for audio fingerprinting from Muscle Fish, a Berkeley software company that Audible Magic acquired in 2000.

One potential snag in implementing the company's technology at YouTube is that the database of audio for movies and television shows is incomplete. ``We have to have access to all the television and film content to be able to fingerprint,'' Ikezoye said.

``It isn't that complicated of a process,'' he added. ``It could be done in months.''
Meanwhile, Audible Magic is also working on a way to compare video images themselves. Ikezoye said that service should be ready later in the year.

Video fingerprinting has lagged audio fingerprinting because video files are far bigger and more complex than audio files, said Jim Hollingsworth, senior vice president of sales and marketing for Gracenote, a competitor to Audible Magic that is helping MySpace identify copyrighted music.

But being able to do so would fill some gaps in the audio-fingerprinting process. In the absence of video fingerprints, for instance, a TV show that is dubbed with a homemade soundtrack would not be flagged by a filter.

Still, representatives of entertainment companies said existing technology can go a long way to preventing copyright infringement and they want Google to implement it.

The news that Google was ready to start filtering, however, was greeted with skepticism. ```YouTube and Google have been promising filtering tools for many, many months, while the damage to copyright owners continues,'' a spokesman for Viacom said.

There is no YouTube Filter; It’s AudibleMagic

After months of intense and very public debate, closely tied to the Google acquisition, YouTube is reported to have licensed copyright filtering technology from AudibleMagic. The San Jose Mercury News cites two unnamed sources as saying that Google will soon unveil filtering technology for YouTube from the leading third party filtering provider, Audible Magic.

What does this mean? It means that the months of assurances that YouTube had copyright filtering technology in development and about to be implemented were either a ruse to buy time or a failed effort that has collapsed under pressure today.

Ten days ago it was announced that MySpace has licensed AudibleMagic’s filtering technology for copyright protection. The huge question that everyone asked was - what does this mean for YouTube? While reactions ranged from waiting with baited breath for a mystery technology to accusations of mafia like behavior on YouTube’s part - the truth may be something far more mundane. YouTube was arguably never a technology company in the first place.

Google and YouTube spokespeople have made repeated statements about the imminence of content filtering but did not respond to the Merc’s report.

VideoEgg Hits 3 Million Uploads

VideoEgg and its content delivery network Akamai Technologies have announced this morning that the two companies have passed 3 million video uploads together. Akami provides the webcam capture and video uploading service for users of some AOL sites, Bebo, hi5, Piczo, myYearbook, Dogster, Tagged and others.

VideoEgg says it’s now serving 15 to 20 million video streams each day. US users consume about 230 million video streams per day, according to ComScore. You might remember that YouTube announced that it hit 100 million streams a day back in July. It’s bandwidth costs were already believed to be well more than $1 million per month by that time.

VideoEgg’s ad network, rolled out late last year and dubbed The Eggnetwork, claims to be the largest ad network for social media sites and it is undoubtedly substantial. The company’s elegant and unobtrusive banner ads are a model that the rest of the industry is likely to follow.
The combination of white labeling video services for users and offering an ad network for B2B customers is a strategy that appears to be paying off uniquely well for VideoEgg. It’s frequently discussed as a shining light in the video startup space that’s grown blurry post GooTube.

VideoEgg has received funding from August Capital, First Round Capital and Maveron. The company was launched about 18 months ago by a team of Yale classmates whose decision to move to Silicon Valley was widely discussed as an example of the area’s continuing importance in the industry.

Study: AMR PC/TV Internet Video Forecast Tops $5.8 Billion by 2011

Video Streaming, Increasingly Ad-Supported, is Booming; but Downloads Will Be Biggest Revenue Generator for Content Owners,
According to New Adams Media Research Study
By BusinessWire

CARMEL, Calif., BUSINESS WIRE -- By 2011, advertiser spending on Internet video streams to PCs and TVs will approach $1.7 billion, but movie and TV downloads will generate consumer spending of $4.1 billion, according to Adams Media Research's new strategic analysis, Video on the Internet: Ad-Supported Streaming and Download-to-Own.

"The Internet is going to revolutionize the business of video distribution," said AMR president Tom Adams, "But in all the excitement about product launches by Wal-Mart, Amazon and Apple, people are getting giddy about how fast it will happen. We felt it was time to develop a rational set of projections, analyzing the ad-supported and download-to-own markets for both movies and TV shows in light of what the industry has learned in the past three decades of video distribution shifts."

AMR's analysis points to a period of experimentation 2007-2009, during which the ad-supported model will predominate. But as significant numbers of homes connect their TVs to the Internet, consumer spending on downloaded movies and TV shows should expand rapidly and exceed ad spending substantially by 2011

Suretone taps P2P

Suretone Records is tapping P2P networks to distribute clips of music videos from artists such as Weezer, and taking a decidedly different approach by dropping any insistence of DRM technology.

However, the videos won't be complete. The video clips are positioned more as "teasers" to generate interest and awareness of the video clips, which fans can download and view for free. They will then be redirected to the label's Web site if they want to view the full video -- where Suretone will stream music videos for free along with advertising.

ArtistDirect's MediaDefender unit will take on the task of distributing the videos on the various P2P networks, and will have a dedicated channel on its own site.

YouTube clarifies anti-piracy position

YouTube’s in the hotseat this week over its dealings with the media industry and its anti-piracy strategy.
YouTube sent us a response to a story that we published on Friday on media companies clashing over its policies. The statement clarifies its position on how it has worked with media companies to root out piracy, and why porn is just plain easier to spot and delete than TV show clips like Jon Stewart.

YouTube’s statement:

YouTube already has substantial copyright protection tools and policies in place. From the start, we’ve led the industry in developing a content verification tool to help copyright owners locate their content on our site and send us DMCA notices with the click of a mouse. We also take a unique “hash” of every video removed for copyright infringement and block re-upload of that exact video file prospectively. And we impose a 10-minute limit on videos to prevent the upload of full-length commercial programming in all standard accounts (which comprise more than 99% of our accounts). As a company that respects the rights of copyright holders, we expect to continue to take the lead in providing state of the art DMCA tools and processes for all copyright holders.

We have also made private commitments with a handful of business partners to implement audio fingerprinting technology. We are currently working with some of our record label partners to test and fine tune the audio fingerprinting tools that address their unique needs. Audio fingerprinting technology is very complex and requires deep partner collaboration. By way of example, were we to fingerprint an MTV music video at the request of Viacom and block all “matches” to that fingerprint, we will necessarily block videos containing music content licensed to us by our music label partners as well as videos containing “fair uses” of that music. While we are focused on working with content owners to iron out these sorts of complexities and develop increasingly effective tools, our existing audio fingerprinting tools were not designed for and are not currently suited or scaled for mass public distribution.

Pornography is much easier to detect than copyright infringement because anyone can spot it just by looking at it. Thus, we rely on our community of users to flag pornography if they see it on site, and we remove it promptly once flagged and reviewed by our staff. Thanks to the vigilance of our users, inappropriate content is usually flagged and removed within minutes of upload. In contrast, no one (not our users nor our staff) can determine just by looking at a video whether its use infringes copyright except the copyright owner itself. Only the copyright owner knows whether any particular video was uploaded without authorization. Copyright owners of all sorts regularly upload their content to YouTube to promote it and generate buzz, and often do so without our knowledge or any sort of official collaboration.

New Weapon in Web War Over Piracy

Vance Ikezoye, the chief executive of Audible Magic, which has developed software to identify video clips on the Web. The system could help media companies as they try to enforce copyrights.

February 19, 2007
By BRAD STONE and MIGUEL HELFT

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 18 — As media companies struggle to reclaim control over their movies, television shows and music in a world of online file-sharing software, they have found an ally in software of another kind.

The new technological weapon is content-recognition software, which makes it possible to identify copyrighted material, even, for example, from blurry video clips. The technology could address what the entertainment industry sees as one of its biggest problems — songs and videos being posted on the Web without permission.

Last week, Vance Ikezoye, the chief executive of Audible Magic in Los Gatos, Calif., demonstrated the technology by downloading a two-minute clip from YouTube and feeding it into his company’s new video-recognition system.

The clip — drained of color, with dialogue dubbed in Chinese — appeared to have been recorded with a camcorder in a dark movie theater before it was uploaded to the Web, so the image quality was poor.

Still, Mr. Ikezoye’s filtering software quickly identified it as the sword-training scene that begins 49 minutes and 37 seconds into the Miramax film “Kill Bill: Vol. 2.”

The entertainment industry is clamoring for Internet companies to adopt the technology for music files as well as for video clips. The social networking site MySpace, owned by the News Corporation, said last week that it would use Audible Magic’s system to identify copyrighted material on its pages. But not every Internet company is rushing to go along. The video-sharing site YouTube, which Google bought last year, is the major holdout so far.

Though YouTube’s co-founders said publicly that they would start using filtering technology by the end of last year, the site has yet to do so. And they have further angered some media companies by saying they would only use such technology to detect clips owned by companies that agree to broader licensing deals with YouTube.

The pressure is on. Executives at media companies like NBC and Viacom have criticized Google for the delay. Earlier this month, Viacom asked YouTube to remove 100,000 clips of its shows, like music videos from MTV and excerpts from Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show.”
In a statement, YouTube said that identifying which video clips had been uploaded without permission was a complex problem that required the cooperation of the copyright owners. “On YouTube, identifying copyrighted material cannot be a single automated process,” it said in the statement.

The systems being developed by companies like Audible Magic and Gracenote make use of vast databases that store digital representations of copyrighted songs, TV shows and movies. When new files are uploaded to a Web site that is using the system, it checks the database for matches using a technique known as digital fingerprinting. Copyrighted material can then be blocked or posted, depending on whether it is licensed for use on the site.

“This is capable of helping the film and TV studios comprehensively protect their works,” Mr. Ikezoye said. “This could put the genie back in the bottle.”

Audio fingerprinting technologies have been used successfully for some time to detect copyrighted music on file-sharing networks and, to a smaller degree, to identify music tracks on social-networking Web sites like MySpace.

Systems that can identify video files hold even greater promise to improve relations between traditional media companies and Internet companies like YouTube. But the technology is not quite ready.

“Video is much more complex to analyze, and more information needs to be captured in the fingerprint,” said Bill Rosenblatt, president of GiantSteps Media Technology Strategies, a consulting firm based in New York. He noted that there were also more ways to fool the technology — for example, by cropping the image.

Screening for video is also more difficult because of the sheer volume of new material broadcast on television each day, all of which must be captured in the database.

And deploying any type of fingerprinting technology can carry a price. Users tend to leave filtered Web sites and migrate to more anything-goes online destinations.

Nevertheless, some file-sharing networks and smaller video sites like Guba.com and Grouper.com are already using more basic filters that monitor video soundtracks and music files, hoping to appease copyright holders and stay out of the courtroom.

Last week, they got some company: MySpace announced that it would expand on early filtering efforts and license Audible Magic’s audio and video fingerprinting technology. It will use the system to identify and obtain authorization for material from Universal Music, NBC Universal and Fox, three media companies that have wanted more control over their content on the site. The move ratchets up the pressure on YouTube, the largest video site on the Web.

Hollywood, long tormented by digital piracy, is growing excited about the possibilities of digital fingerprinting and filtering — in part because it is tired of having to ask YouTube and other sites to remove individual clips, only to find them posted again by other users.

“To the extent you can readily and easily identify one film or TV show from the next, it enables different licensing models and the opportunity to protect your content,” said Dean Garfield, executive vice president of the Motion Picture Association of America.

For now, however, audio fingerprinting is all that is widely available, and it can fall short in some situations, like when someone pairs a song with an unrelated piece of video.

For example, last December, one YouTube user uploaded scenes from the Warner Brothers movie “Superman Returns,” matched to the song “Superman,” by Five for Fighting of Columbia Records, a unit of Sony BMG Music.

With acoustic fingerprinting, Sony could authorize the use of the song and get a slice of the advertising revenue the clip generates, but Warner Brothers could not because the filter does not scrutinize video images.

Hoping to nurture the development of more advanced video fingerprinting, the film association asked technology companies last fall to submit video filtering systems for testing. Mr. Garfield of the association said 13 companies responded; their systems are now being evaluated.

Perhaps not surprisingly, there is now a flurry of interest in digital fingerprinting in Silicon Valley. Sean Varah, an electronic-music researcher who once worked for Sony music’s venture capital group, founded the start-up MotionDSP in 2005 to develop technology to improve the quality of video images. But he changed the company’s direction last year after seeing an opportunity in the filtering business.

“The television and movie producers have learned a lesson from Napster,” he said, referring to the music-sharing service that first got the attention of media companies. “They are not going to wait and see what happens.”

Attributor, another start-up based in Redwood City, Calif., is taking a different approach to filtering. It is developing automated software that will travel the Internet looking for copyrighted text, audio and video.

Setting up filters for each and every Web site and peer-to-peer network “is not a long-term solution,” said Jim Brock, a former Yahoo executive and the chief executive of Attributor. Rights holders “need to have these kinds of solutions across the Internet,” he said.

Audible Magic, which is considered to be an early leader in the field, started out with a system to recognize songs played on the radio, so it could offer listeners an opportunity to buy the music online. The company later adapted that technology to create an audio fingerprinting system.

Mr. Ikezoye, a former Hewlett-Packard marketing executive, recently set out to expand into video recognition. Last year, he licensed an invention called Motional Media ID, created by David W. Stebbings, a former executive at the Recording Industry Association of America.
Neither Mr. Ikezoye nor Mr. Stebbings would offer details on Motional Media ID (which identified the “Kill Bill” clip), citing the newly competitive environment around digital fingerprinting. Mr. Ikezoye acknowledged that it did not work well for very short clips and said that he would probably have to buy or develop additional technology.

Deploying any type of fingerprinting filter can have both good and bad effects. Guba.com, a video-sharing site similar to YouTube, developed its own filtering system, which it calls Johnny. Having won the favor of the film industry, the company now has deals to sell Warner and Sony films on its site.

But when Guba began blocking many copyrighted clips last April, its popularity plunged.
“We took a huge hit,” said Eric Lambrecht, Guba’s chief technology officer. “We all know what people want to see, but we looked at it as a long-term business decision.”

Some experts believe wide adoption of the technology is inevitable.
“As technology companies mature, they are realizing that the rule of law is better than the anarchy in which they were formed,” said Paul Kocher, chief executive of Cryptography Research, a company that has studied the security of digital fingerprinting technology.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/19/technology/19video.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Antena 3 lanza su canal internacional por Internet

Antena 3 lanza por Internet Antena 3 Internacional, un nuevo canal en directo que recoge toda la producción propia de la cadena. Ahora será accesible para cualquier persona desde cualquier lugar del mundo a través del portal de la cadena www.antena3.com, que tiene un millón y medio de usuarios únicos, con más de cinco millones de visitas y 30 millones de páginas al mes.

Una nueva apuesta por la televisión en la red que se suma en IPTV a su canal de noticias 24 horas. También, desde septiembre, emite on line y en directo los partidos de los martes de la Champions League que ofrece por televisión.

Este canal IPTV incluye los mejores programas y series de producción propia, junto a una selección de los mayores éxitos de lo canales digitales ANTENA.NEOX y ANTENA.NOVA. El canal es fruto de la demanda de numerosas personas que desde dentro y fuera de España han solicitado poder ver los contenidos de ANTENA 3.

Como oferta de lanzamiento el canal se podrá ver de forma totalmente gratuita durante la primera semana. Luego, al igual que en A3Noticias 24, para acceder a la emisión de este nuevo canal, el usuario podrá suscribirse durante un mes al precio de 6 euros, o elegir la posibilidad de suscribirse sólo por 24 horas al precio de 1,20 euros. Para ello ANTENA 3 cuenta con 'Click and Buy', la plataforma líder en Europa en pasarelas de pago, que garantiza al usuario toda la confidencialidad y seguridad en sus transacciones. Esta pasarela está siendo ya utilizada por ANTENA 3 en la emisión on line de los partidos de la Champions League que emite en abierto.

Este nuevo proyecto de IPTV enriquece la oferta audiovisual del grupo en emisión continua por Internet y se suma a la programación radiofónica 24 horas de Onda Cero y Europa FM, así como a los últimos lanzamientos en la red como la comunidad virtual 'Tercera Avenida' que cuenta con 210.000 registrados, o el canal antena3consumo, que en colaboración con la OCU, ofrece los mejores simuladores del mercado para que el usuario pueda elegir la oferta más barata e interesante en telefonía fija, móvil y ADSL, o saber los costes de cambiar de entidad financiera su crédito hipotecario.

La SGAE insiste en que los proveedores de red paguen derechos de autor

LíderDigital.com, 19/02/2007

El director de los Servicios Jurídicos de la SGAE, Pablo Hernández, afirmó que las descargas de películas a través de Internet constituyen "piratería", ya que esta transacción no cuenta con la autorización del autor.

Hernández, que intervino en el I Encuentro de Creadores Audiovisuales que se ha celebrado en Córdoba, explicó que en las descargas en la Red no interviene ningún "soporte físico", por lo que se trata de "tráfico electrónico".

Así, dijo que esta práctica, que se realiza a través de programas de intercambio de archivos entre particulares (P2P), es distinta de las copias privadas en soportes como el CD o el DVD, que sí están autorizadas y pagan un canon por derechos de autor.

Según Hernández, "el 80% de las descargas que se hacen en Internet son de contenidos protegidos", por lo que, para regular esta "nueva realidad", sería necesaria una modificación de la Ley de Comercio Electrónico, que es a su vez una trasposición de una directiva europea.

Afirmó que las descargas son una práctica ilícita tanto por parte de quien las saca a la Red como de quien las recibe (pese a los argumentos de quienes opinan lo contrario), si bien reconoció que "perseguir a los particulares que se bajan películas en sus hogares es imposible". Hasta la fecha, en España sólo ha habido 'advertencias' a los usuarios.

En este sentido, Hernández abogó por que sean los operadores de telecomunicación los que asuman el pago por los derechos de autor de los contenidos que explotan a través de la banda ancha, una aspiración que ya se puso sobre la mesa hace cuatro años, aunque de momento nunca ha prosperado.

A su juicio, son estas empresas "las que se están beneficiando por las películas y los productos explotados a través de nuevos espacios de explotación y almacenamiento" como Internet y el disco duro de los ordenadores, señalaba "ElMundo.es".

Vidmeter Tracker: Track Videos on MySpace, YouTube, Metacafe

Vidmeter is one of the few video aggregators that seems to have some staying power: the site brings together the most popular clips from all the top video sites and puts them into a Top 100 list. Tonight, Vidmeter is leveraging that same stat tracking technology, and providing it to video creators to track their own videos.

Vidmeter Tracker, which launched a few hours ago, asks you to input the URLs where your video is posted. It’ll then grab the stats for that clip on all the popular sites: hi5, iFilm, YouTube, Google Video, Metacafe and many more. The tracker updates its stats several times a day, and provides an RSS feed and email updates: the stats include views, comments and traffic graphs.

In the video aggregator space, Vidmeter’s rivals include Vdiddy and VideoBomb. In the tracking space, however, it’s hard to think of many alternatives - surely that will change as the ad networks move into the video space.

Hollywood Weighs Copyright Protections

Forces in Music Industry Close In
On Filmmakers Amid Online Piracy
By SARAH MCBRIDE
February 16, 2007

Apple Inc. Chief Executive Steve Jobs's recent open letter urging that digital music be distributed free of copyright protections was aimed at the recording industry. But it made waves in another key constituency Mr. Jobs does business with: movie makers.

Executives at Hollywood studios believe it is only a matter of time before the debate over removing copyright protections spreads to movies from music. Until now, the studios have steadfastly asserted that copy protections -- known as digital rights management -- are essential to preventing piracy of films.



The studios are increasingly engaged in internal debate over the right course for the future. According to people familiar with the matter, the studios' technology executives and engineers have been calling for Hollywood to at least re-examine the issue. They are meeting with stiff resistance, especially from the "home entertainment" units that distribute films on DVD -- and are adamant about the need for digital rights management.

Nonetheless, the same forces pressuring the music industry to consider removing such coding are closing in on Hollywood. Pirated copies of movies circulate freely online, without any restrictions on how they are traded or copied. While the damage hasn't been nearly as great as in the music industry, many fear it will grow worse in the near future.

Consequently, the studios "need to experiment a little bit" on digital rights management, says Sameer Mithal, who heads the content and media practice at Business Edge, a consultancy in East Brunswick, N.J. Without more give and take, "they'll be in much the same position as the music business," he says, referring to declining music sales, which the industry blames on piracy. "And that's the situation they need to avoid at all costs."

Hollywood starts from a different position from the music companies. Unlike most compact discs, DVDs come with restrictions that prevent consumers from easily copying movies -- although ways around the restrictions are well-known. Even the next-generation discs known as Blu-ray and HD DVD have flaws in their copyright protections, although they are much harder to crack. Legal online copies of movies come wrapped in digital rights management.

While most people simply want to listen to a song over and over, movie watchers want different things. Some want to see it only once; some want to have a copy forever; some want to watch it in different places. Digital rights management is what makes the tailored purchase possible.
Many movie executives agree that physical DVDs still need copy protection, but some are starting to discuss whether the heavy-duty digital rights management now on electronic copies is the right route. While movies sold on Apple's iTunes can be played on as many as five computers and an unlimited number of iPods, most online movie stores offer far less flexibility.
"Consumers can find ways to get our content anytime they want to," says a Hollywood technology executive. "They get it from a friend, [or] the Internet. By putting on an onerous DRM, it's making an honest person want to go to the illegitimate side."

The studios also are cautious because they have high hopes for selling movies digitally. Many executives believe online distribution will boost the rental category, which was vibrant in VHS days but flagged when consumers switched to buying inexpensive DVDs rather than renting them. A movie purchased online for single-use viewing, or for multiple viewings in a 48-hour period, costs considerably less than a movie purchased to keep. Without digital rights management on the cheaper movie, consumers would essentially be on an honor system to delete it after one viewing or whatever terms they had agreed to.

"Most people won't break the rules if it's made clear what is OK and what isn't," says Chris Cookson, chief technology officer at Warner Bros. "Without DRM, it becomes very difficult" to lay out the boundaries for consumers.

A hot topic: how DRM should deal with consumers who upgrade their computers or video players. Some studios favor finding a way to let consumers move their previously purchased movie from device to device. Others believe each upgrade represents a sales opportunity for the same content that was on the older device.

Studios already are tweaking digital rights management to see if allowing more flexibility boosts sales. Last year, several studios decided to let customers of CinemaNow Inc., an online movie service, burn one copy of various titles onto DVD. General Electric Co.'s Universal Pictures was the first to make a new release, "The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift," available for DVD burning. A person familiar with the situation said it didn't boost sales as much as expected.
Rival Movielink -- owned by a consortium of studios -- lets consumers burn one copy of each electronic movie purchased onto computer-readable DVDs, with an eye to soon extending the program to DVDs that will play in standard DVD players. Movielink Chief Executive Jim Ramo says he believes the program is popular among heavy users who don't want to clutter hard-drive space with movies.

Mr. Mithal of Business Edge says the studios should go one step further: allowing consumers unlimited burns with an electronic copy. He says that wouldn't exacerbate streetside pirated DVD sales -- because pirates are likely to have the movie by the time it comes out on DVD anyway, via copies made illegally with camcorders in movie theaters.

YouTube anti-piracy software policy draws fire

By Kenneth Li

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

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

The move contrasts with YouTube's biggest rival, News Corp.'s (NYSE:NWSA - news), popular Internet social network, MySpace, which said on Monday it would offer its own version of copyright protection services for free.

YouTube's "proposition that they will only protect copyrighted content if there's a business deal in place is unacceptable," a spokesman for Viacom Inc. (NYSE:VIAB - news), owner of MTV Networks and Comedy Central, said this week.

One media industry source likened YouTube's policy to a "mafia shakedown."
Earlier this month, Viacom demanded YouTube remove more than 100,000 Viacom video clips from the site after the two sides failed to reach a distribution agreement.
Viacom has become the poster child of dissent against YouTube, trying to prevent the site from turning into the Apple Inc. (Nasdaq:AAPL - news) of online video.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs is credited with saving the music industry by simplifying the process of buying and playing digital music with the iTunes online store, but the company's chokehold on the industry is now resented by record companies.

In a prepared statement, YouTube said the process of identifying copyrighted material is not an automated process and required the cooperation of media company partners.
For instance, a clip of a TV show owned by one company might contain music produced by another, making the process of identifying ownership difficult.

"These matters are very complicated and we are working with our partners to identify and solve these problems," YouTube said in an e-mailed statement.
Indeed, even Viacom admits to the difficulties of locating copyrighted content. About 60 to 70 videos out of the 100,000 it demanded to be removed were not owned by Viacom.

NEGOTIATING TACTIC?

Despite the public vitriol between YouTube and the media industry, some industry experts dismiss the spats as little more than saber rattling ahead of eventual deals.
Media companies -- torn over how best to court younger viewers who split their leisure time between watching TV, surfing the Internet and playing video games -- are attempting to make their programming more widely available, especially on popular services such as YouTube.

"The debates are about negotiations more than anything else -- who's going to pay whom and how much," said Saul Berman, IBM's (NYSE:IBM - news) global media and entertainment strategy leader.
Some legal experts said YouTube has no obligation to invest heavily in leading-edge technology only to give it away.
"There's no reason for me to spend a lot of money on a ... solution and give it away for free," said Gregory Rutchik, founding partner of San Francisco-based piracy litigation firm The Arts & Technology Law Group.

Forrester Research analyst James McQuivey agreed, adding that media companies might feel they are being blackmailed into signing distribution deals with YouTube.
"If YouTube can sweeten the pot and come back with a better offer, I think the concerns of the blackmail naturally vanish," McQuivey said.

Zudeo’s Legal P2P Hit 1m Uniques in January

The new “all legal” P2P service from Azeurus called Zudeo announced this morning that they saw more than 1 million unique visitors last month in the service’s first full month online. The announcement provides great evidence that P2P is a viable avenue for legal distribution of online video.

We covered the company’s content deal with the BBC in December and the company said at launch that its goal was to offer content from 20 major TV and film studios. Parent company Azureus reports more than 140 million downloads in 100 countries of its BitTorrent platform in 100 countries. The company has raised $12 million in funding from Redpoint Ventures and BV Capital.

Today’s Zudeo announcement will provide an interesting reference point for the eventual launch of Joost. Both companies will bring offer online distribution of commercially produced, high quality video content and may compete for eyeballs with low-quality user generated content.

Metacafe presentation (Nov '06)

See the Metacafe presentation.

Interesting: Video search “footprint” eliminates duplicates & improves relevancy (slides 9&10)

Mobile must keep up warns Warner chief

15 Feb 2007
GSM NEWS

Video is no longer a secondary marketing expense for the music industry but a primary profit centre, thanks to the likes of Google, YouTube and Brightcove, Warner Music Group chairman and CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr said yesterday.

Big Media piles on YouTube — for Now

Following Viacom’s public rebuke of YouTube, other big media players have joined in the slap-fest, in methods either very public (like this tirade from NBC’s Jeff Zucker) or in an aside, like a subtle dig delivered by Disney exec Preston Padden at a small telecom conference earlier this week.

Like any good lobbying front, there is a consistent theme in the complaints: If YouTube can filter out porn, then it can sure as hell filter out our copyrighted material. In fact, Disney’s Padden said just that, without the expletive, in a presentation Sunday at the Silicon Flatirons conference in Boulder, Colo.

“Somehow, YouTube has figured out a way to keep porn off [its site],” Padden said. But a short bit later, in an impromptu interview, he admitted that “other people at Disney” were talking to YouTube about possible ways to work together. Behind all the bluster, it’s probably a safe bet the other big media players are too. Because as we’ve said before, when it comes to online video traffic there’s YouTube and not much else, at least for now.

And yes, we’re aware that Viacom has talked about beefing up its own online offerings, but forgive me if we aren’t quite ready to call old media providers a force to be reckoned with. It’s got to be maddening to the network honchos when something designed by a small group of techno-nerds becomes as popular as YouTube. But how many times have we heard about how big media is going to dominate the Internet with their killer brands and content? And who among them will be brave enough to cut across network lines and offer real user content, or content from other big players? As the reportedly stalled negotiations seem to show, it ain’t as easy to build a YouTube killer as you might think.

That’s why even one of the big old lions, Sumner Redstone, is also saying publicly he’s ready to deal. Here he tells the Hollywood Reporter’s Germany bureau that content pulled down can easily be put back up if the price is right:
If YouTube would come along and offer us a deal that is commensurate with the value of the programming that we spend so many millions and so much time to create, we would certainly look at that.

So we guess it’s not really about the filtering after all. Just about where the money filters down to. And since Google is now taking steps to find more money in YouTube, maybe all will be well before long.

Universal Music Sues Grouper and Bolt.com, YouTube Escapes (old news)

Digging the story about Bolt, I found this old related article.
Would Grouper be next?
**********

The story everyone expected to see this week was a major media company suing YouTube over copyright. Well, Universal Music has indeed sued some video-sharing companies today, but thanks to a deal struck with YouTube last week, the market leader escaped unharmed. Instead it’s two smaller players - Bolt.com and Grouper - that face the wrath of Universal’s lawyers and a possible $150,000 in damages for every infringement.

Universal says that thousands of videos are being shared without permission, which would put the total figure owed in the hundreds of millions. According to Reuters, the charge is “copying, reformatting, distributing and creating derivative works from Universal’s musicians”. As it happens, the $150,000 figure is pretty standard in these cases: it’s the amount that News Corp, NBC Universal and Viacom could sue YouTube for if the site doesn’t offer them a decent cut of the revenue. A Universal spokesperson is quoted as saying “Grouper and Bolt… cannot reasonably expect to build their business on the backs of our content and the hard work of our artists and songwriters without permission and without compensating the content creators”.
The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court, Central District of California, late today.

It’s very strange that Bolt.com and Grouper in particular were called out, while Metacafe, MySpace Video, Guba, vSocial, Veoh and big players like Google Video have so far avoided any issues - none of these sites encourage the sharing of copyrighted content and all of them take it down when alerted, but the uploading of infringing material is inevitable when you run a decently-sized video sharing service. Grouper operates a P2P network which might be somewhat shady, but Bolt works just like YouTube and the other video-sharing services. It’s not even a particularly high-profile site. Universal, however, are comparing the services to Kazaa and Napster, which will seriously worry the parties involved. We can only assume that Universal at least approached the sites about the issue, or that they’ve been considering their options for a long time. Perhaps they spoke to a number of companies and YouTube were more willing to co-operate - we simply don’t know right now.

This lawsuit is almost certainly going to set the precedent for future legal action involving video sharing sites - everybody will be following the story closely.

E-mail warnings deter Canadians from illegal file sharing

Thursday, February 15, 2007
CBC News

The entertainment and software industries have found an effective tool to deter some Canadians from downloading TV programs, movies, music and software. And it doesn't involve going to court.

A number of industry groups, mostly based in the United States, are relying on e-mail to get the message out that peer-to-peer file sharing is illegal. Thousands of the e-mails are being sent to Canadian users each month under a program known as "notice and notice."
Major Canadian internet service providers including Rogers, Bell and Telus have voluntarily agreed to distribute the notices to their customers on behalf of the industry associations. Telus forwards an average of 4,000 notices every month.

Stephen Harrington received a notice late last year after downloading a computer game from a bit torrent file-sharing site. (Bit torrent sites are used to share larger files, such as movies.)
Harrington wanted to play the game with his friends, liked it, and purchased it a few days later.
"Actually, I almost deleted it. But I read through and was quite surprised. But I was initially concerned," Harrington said.

The entertainment industry has long expressed frustration with Canada, and its unwillingness to modernize copyright laws.
"Canada's copyright laws regarding uploading and downloading are unclear, and that does present a number of challenges in curbing internet piracy," said Neil MacBride, a vice-president with the Business Software Alliance, a Washington D.C.-based industry association that fights software piracy.

The Business Software Alliance sent out about 60,000 "notice and notice" e-mails to Canadian internet users in 2006. "They've been most effective," MacBride said.

'Stop this infringing activity'

"If you're somebody who's [downloading] and you receive word that you're essentially using somebody else's property without their permission, it seems to have the desired effect — namely, people take it seriously and alter their behaviour accordingly."

The notices contain terse legal language: "This unauthorized copying and distribution constitutes copyright infringement under applicable national laws and international treaties. We urge you to take immediate action to stop this infringing activity and inform us of the results of your actions," reads one of the e-mails, sent by NBC Universal to Canadian internet users who were suspected of downloading a NBC television show.

Canadian users are tracked by IP address when content is downloaded from the internet.
"It doesn't have any significant legal weight in the sense that it doesn't mean they're facing a lawsuit immediately or even the claims of infringement have been proven," said leading internet law expert Michael Geist of the University of Ottawa.

But Geist said the "notice and notice" program has been successful in scaring people to stop downloading.
"I think they've proven surprisingly effective and in fact indications are that when subscribers receive these, a significant proportion will take down the offending content if, in fact, it is infringing," he said.

Harrington says he has not downloaded material using peer-to-peer sites since he received his e-mail notice, forwarded by his ISP, Rogers Communications. But he is concerned about privacy: What information are the ISPs passing along to the industry groups?
"The ISPs are the only ones who know what individuals are doing what, so they're trying to push that thin blue line and get to individual privacy that way," he said.

No privacy issues, ISPs say

Both Rogers and Telus maintain they do not pass any personal information, such as user name or address, to any of the groups initiating the notice e-mails.

"We protect the rights of our customers and the privacy of our customers and the information about our customers quite vigorously and we do not pass the information about our customers on to third parties," said Michael Lee, chief strategy officer for Rogers Communications.
The notice program in effect in Canada is essentially a tool to alert users that they are downloading what the industry groups see as copyrighted material. Even though tens of thousands of e-mails have been distributed over the last few years, no one has been prosecuted for copyright violation as a result of the notices.

"Notice and notice" differs from the "notice and take-down" program that's in place in the United States. There, when an industry group notices an alleged copyright violation, an e-mail similar to the ones being sent to Canadian users is forwarded to the American ISP. In most cases, the ISPs are forced to immediately take down the content or face penalties.
"I think notice-in-notice is a great alternative that really respects privacy and free speech much more than notice and take-down," said Ren Bucholz of the internet advocacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Google Shifting Resources to YouTube Monetization

Google is having quite a bit of trouble on the business side figuring out how to monetize YouTube and make it legit. Now it appears to be following up on the technology side, sending Shashi Seth, formerly product lead on search, to YouTube. His assignment? Monetization products.

A tipster calls Seth “Google’s best product manager.” He confirms the switch via email: “Yes, I moved to YouTube on Feb 1st to head their monetization efforts. That’s all I can tell you for now.” Google CEO Eric Schmidt addressed video advertising at the company’s most recent earnings call, saying the company was looking to get more creative than pre-rolls. The week before that, Chad Hurley made waves by saying YouTube hoped to figure out a way to pay its creators.

Study: P2P effect on legal music sales "not statistically distinguishable from zero"

A new study in the Journal of Political Economy by Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Koleman Strumpf has found that illegal music downloads have had no noticeable effects on the sale of music, contrary to the claims of the recording industry.

Entitled "The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales: An Empirical Analysis," the study matched an extensive sample of music downloads to American music sales data in order to search for causality between illicit downloading and album sales. Analyzing data from the final four months of 2002, the researchers estimated that P2P affected no more than 0.7% of sales in that timeframe.

The study compared the logs of two OpenNAP P2P servers with sales data from Nielsen SoundScan, tracking the effects of 1.75 million songs downloads on 680 different albums sold during that same period. The study then took a surprising twist. Popular music will often have both high downloads and high sales figures, so what the researchers wanted was a way to test for effects on albums sales when file-sharing activity was increased on account of something other than US song popularity. Does the occasionally increased availability of music from Germany affect US sales?

The study looked at time periods when German students were on holiday after demonstrating that P2P use increases at these times. German users collectively are the #2 P2P suppliers, providing "about one out of every six U.S. downloads," according to the study. Yet the effects on American sales were not large enough to be statistically significant. Using this and several other methods, the study's authors could find no meaningful causality. The availability and even increased downloads of music on P2P networks did not correlate to a negative effect on music sales.

"Using detailed records of transfers of digital music files, we find that file sharing has had no statistically significant effect on purchases of the average album in our sample," the study reports. "Even our most negative point estimate implies that a one-standard-deviation increase in file sharing reduces an album's weekly sales by a mere 368 copies, an effect that is too small to be statistically distinguishable from zero."

The study reports that 803 million CDs were sold in 2002, which was a decrease of about 80 million from the previous year. The RIAA has blamed the majority of the decrease on piracy, and has maintained that argument in recent years as music sales have faltered. Yet according to the study, the impact from file sharing could not have been more than 6 million albums total in 2002, leaving 74 million unsold CDs without an excuse for sitting on shelves.

So what's the problem with music? The study echoes many of the observations you've read here at Ars. First, because the recording industry focuses on units shipped rather than sold, the decline can be attributed in part to reduced inventory. Gone are the days when Best Buy and others wanted a ton of unsold stock sitting around, so they order less CDs. The study also highlighted the growth in DVD sales during that same period as a possible explanation for why customers weren't opening their wallets: they were busy buying DVDs.

European Music Execs Dissatisfied With DRM

European music executives believe dropping digital rights management (DRM) restrictions from digital music would drive song sales, according to a new Jupiter Research survey. Major record labels, however, remain unconvinced.

Hackers have been attacking DRM for years, quite successfully for the most part. Just this week, they cracked the Blu-ray Disc protection codes. But recently industry leaders have joined them, calling for an end to DRM, at least for music. Last week, Apple CEO Steve Jobs challenged record labels to offer music for sale without DRM, noting that "DRMs haven't worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy."

Last year at the Music 2.0 conference in Los Angeles, Yahoo Music chief Dave Goldberg said much the same thing. He reiterated his opposition to DRM this week in an article published by Silicon Valley Watcher. (Coincidentally, he resigned today.) Other tech executives have added their voices to the call to unlock digital music.

Jupiter's European Music Executive Survey, 2007 reveals that most of the music industry respondents -- a group composed of employees of major and independent record labels, industry and rights groups, digital stories, and services and technology providers -- feel the same way.

Among the executives surveyed, 62% agreed that dropping DRM would drive adoption of digital music and 54% said that DRM was overly restrictive. Presented with the statement "DRM is essential for online music," 56% of respondents disagreed.

Only 11% of those surveyed believe that DRM-free music would threaten revenues.
While consumers tend to resent DRM because it forces restrictions on upon them and treats them as criminals, Jupiter's report says that much of the music industry's dissatisfaction with the technology comes from dissatisfaction with Apple's dominance of the digital music download market.

It's worth noting that Apple's FairPlay DRM is far more effective at preventing competitors from making devices that interoperate with the iPod and iTunes -- thanks to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act -- than it is in preventing iTunes customers from copying songs they've bought online.

In the music market at least, DRM's days may be numbered. British music company EMI has been experimenting with distributing unprotected digital downloads and is reportedly reviewing its position on content protection technology for CDs.

James McQuivey, principal analyst at Forrester Research, predicts that 2007 will be the year that one of the major music companies breaks ranks and gives up on DRM. Once that happens, he says, the rest will feel they have to follow.

When that day arrives, it may not be the end of the world. "There's no evidence that a DRM-free world is more injurious than the one in which we already live," says McQuivey. "There's no evidence it's going to suddenly ignite a new firestorm of piracy and anarchy."

RIAA Offers ISPs Pre-Lawsuit Settlement Option

The RIAA has now extended a new deal to ISPs, one that would allow subscribers to quickly resolve lawsuits. A copy of a letter to a specific access provider, obtained Digital Music News, offers ISPs the ability to extend pre-lawsuit discounts to targeted subscribers. "An early notification will give your customer the opportunity to settle any claims before a suit is filed against them at a reduced rate (discounts of $1000 or more)," the letter states. The early settlement offer would allow the RIAA to avoid a John Doe lawsuit, a complicated process that allows ISPs to initially protect the identity of its accused users. In order to qualify for the program, ISPs must agree to keep user logs for 180 days. "This timeframe is necessary to allow sufficient time to pursue the Doe lawsuit and subpoena if settlement discussions are not fruitful."

In the letter, the RIAA also raises a number of procedural problems. The list includes misidentified users, and the dissemination of incorrect contact information by ISPs themselves. Meanwhile, the overture received a strong rebuke from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a longtime enemy of the organization. "Before the RIAA has even verified that the user is correctly identified, it wants ISPs to send along a note saying the user might be sued and can already settle potential claims," said EFF attorney Cindy Cohn. "At the same time, the RIAA scolds ISPs for giving information to their customers that could help provide sound legal counsel."

RIAA ISP Letter (PDF)

MSN Soapbox Launches

MSN Soapbox, Microsoft’s new video site that confusingly takes the MSN name, launches in public beta today. We covered it back in September during the private beta, and there’s really not much to add: it’s weak, and about a year too late. They have innovated on the interface a little, putting a large Flash player at the top right, but generally we’re unimpressed.

Azureus Expands Zudeo

There's a tale of two BitTorrents emerging in the online distribution community. On one side is the BitTorrent, Inc. camp and the other is Azureus. Although outwardly very different, the two are both aiming to become successful distribution points for authorized media.Azurues' platform mechanism is an application called Zudeo, released in December of 2006.

It's had a successful introduction so far, with non-copyrighted content being so far the most popular content. The application, based on Azureus 3.0, has an extensive catalog of various trailers, clips, creative commons and home brew material - with an emphasis on high definition content. The community is also encouraged to distribute home brew material for distribution via BitTorrent.Not to be outdone, BitTorrent, Inc. has ramped up its authorized distribution platform as well. Like Azureus, it has an extensive catalog of material. However, it includes a considerable amount of mainstream media, thanks to its position as a movie-industry friendly distribution avenue.

Yet this doesn't mean Azureus is being left out in the cold - quite the opposite. What Azureus lacks in movie-industry interaction it makes up for in sheer popularity. Some estimates place this client at the zenith of the BitTorrent food chain, and it appears that eager distribution companies are ready to take the online plunge.

In a press release announced today, Starz Media has agreed to release a "broad range" of media via Zudeo. Keeping with the Zudeo tradition, the content will be released in high definition video. This is the second major distributor to employ the Azureus platform after the BBC signed up late last year.

“Through this partnership with Azureus, we hope to reach the millions of genre fans online and build upon the avid audience interested in our video titles and series,” said Marc DeBevoise, senior vice president, business development and strategy, Starz Media. “We’re excited about Azureus’ high resolution format and its potential."

Although very different from BitTorrent, Inc., there are some similarities. According to Starz Media, the content released on Zudeo will be released in the Windows Media DRM environment. In addition, GeoFiltering will be applied and enforced by identifying the billing zip code and IP address. So the content won't be free, at least not now.

Veoh Relaunches Powerful Video Sharing Service

P2P and web video sharing service Veoh will relaunch Tuesday with some important new features and a new look. Cynics looking for interesting video sites post-GooTube will find Veoh of real interest. The company has Michael Eisner on its Board, content deals with companies like Us Magazine and United Talent Agency and most important - some very good looking technology.
Starting this week, all users of Veoh will be offered video recommendations using an algorithm developed by Ted Dunning, developer of MusicMatch (now Yahoo!Music). Pro users can charge viewers to rent or own DVD quality videos downloaded through the P2P Veoh player. Pro users can have their videos automatically cross-posted to YouTube, Google Video and MySpace Video and automatically transcoded to QuickTime for iPod viewing.

Pro users will receive reports on the number of views and comments their videos have recieved across YouTube, Google Video and MySpace Video. This is likely to become a popular service; the viral video trackers at VidMeter will launch a similar service across 13 sites next week.
Other new features will include a very nice multi-video embeddable player. The functionality isn’t as flexible as a number of other companies’ offerings but it looks great. Users can display their favorites or other channels they’ve subscribed to.

Perhaps the biggest part of the relaunch will be the P2P Veoh Player. It will support full length downloads from Veoh, torrents, video sites around the web and any RSS feeds. A new browser bookmarklet will let you download videos from any site. The company highlights YouTube, Metacafe and others - presumably there’s some transcoding going on. The Veoh player can also be connected to your TV and controlled by remote. It’s like Joost for User Generated Content as well as select content partners.

All in all, it’s a very impressive relaunch. Presuming that users are willing to download the P2P application to their desktops, Veoh could end up seeing very wide use. If it does well in ease of use (and it looks like it does) it could fit the bill as a top-notch one-stop video service.

MySpace to Implement Copyrighted Video Filtering

MySpace announced this morning that it is offering free indexing to any content producers who want to block users from uploading their copyrighted videos. The site has been offering audio filtering and limited video filtering since late last year. The biggest question on the table is whether and when YouTube will do the same, as it promised to do when it was acquired by Google. Other questions include those around fair use of content.

MySpace has licenced the filtering technology from Audible Magic , an acoustic fingerprinting company that acquired a video filtering technology called Motional Media ID™ in November. Motional Media was invented by David W. Stebbings, a Senior VP for Technology at the RIAA from 1995 through 2000.

The company’s technology is said to recognize unique signature vectors in seconds. Sources close to another company, MotionDSP tell us that company will soon announce a similar product that track unique patterns of motion in video footage.

The primary technical challenges faced by these companies are scaling and variable video formats and qualities. Audible Magic’s audio filtering is said to be remarkably effective - post-lawsuit implementation at P2P network iMesh , for example is reportedly free of false positives. “We haven’t seen any false positives, and we’re seeing a recognition rate of over 99 percent,” iMesh’s founder told MSNBC last year. That was the audio program, though, not the video filter.

The political cost of trying to tame the wild west, though, is still unclear. The debate over what constitutes fair use, for example, could become largely moot if one side of the debate can lock its position down with a technology filter. Critique, satire and sampling could someday survive only with the permission of the party being satirized. That would not be good.

Ultimately though it’s unsurprising that big content owners want to control their content and existing business model instead of exploring models that are radical, new and in theory less profitable. I find it unfortunate that the enforcement of a false scarcity of content is the direction things are moving. The theory is that law and order yields investment and will ultimately mean more available content.

How popular is copyrighted content online? Conventional wisdom is that it’s what drove YouTube’s growth - but a quick look at the viral videos with the most views (via Vidmeter ) and the most inbound blog links (via Viral Video Chart ) shows that original content is getting plenty of attention. That’s good to see.