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

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.

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.

ScanScout Backed By $2 Million In Funding; Launching Tool That Monitors Video Topics For Advertisers

ScanScout, a Cambridge, MA-based startup that has developed a tool that lets online video publishers target the topic of a video, has received $2 million in angel investments.

Two former MIT classmates, ScanScout’s president Waikit Lau and CTO Steven Lee, developed the technology, which launches publicly next month. ScanScout monitors the content’s spoken text, audio and images and then select related advertisements that run just below the video screen.

Investors include First Round Capital, Mike Philips, founder of Atlanta-based SpeechWorks, Chris Dixon; founder of Boston’s SiteAdvisor, Ron Conway; and the William Morris Agency.

Microsoft's outreach memo

Company's letter offers anti-piracy aid
By BEN FRITZ, Variety

Looking to strengthen ties with Hollywood as it delves deeper into online video, Microsoft on Tuesday sent a memo to top execs at all the major media congloms offering to work closely with them to combat piracy, but not to implement the kind of filtering technology Viacom is demanding on YouTube.

Confidential memo obtained by Daily Variety was sent by Microsoft to media toppers such as News Corp.’s Peter Chernin, NBCU’s Jeff Zucker and Disney’s Bob Iger as well as heads of the major labels. It outlines the tech giant's approach to Soapbox, its newly launched viral video service on MSN that is going up against YouTube, MySpace Video and others.

In the letter, media and entertainment VP Blair Westlake said Microsoft is developing "what we believe content owners want and need: industry-leading notice and takedown ... practices, including tools that enable our content partners to more easily find content that is rightfully theirs and give us prompt notice so we can respond even more efficiently and expeditiously."

There's no mention of filtering technology that prevents users from uploading copyrighted content.
.../...
Sources at Microsoft said the company doesn't yet consider any filtering technologies on the market to be effective enough for itself and users. "Filtering is a complex issue and not a magic bullet," one person at the company said. "We believe this approach actually provides content owners more control than if Microsoft attempted to monitor content itself."

Many critics have complained filtering technology isn't precise and sometimes screens out content that is similar to other copyrighted material or is legally used, such as short clips for parody.

However, takedown requests by big media companies aren't perfect either. When Viacom told YouTube to pull more than 100,000 clips featuring its content, some users complained their personal videos were inaccurately named by the conglom and removed in the process.

Soapbox, which is still in a public beta trial run and has a miniscule amount of content and visitors compared with YouTube, already has numerous copyrighted clips from "South Park," "High School Musical," "American Idol" and other TV shows, films and musicvideos.

Staying on Hollywood's good side is a priority for Microsoft, which distributes studio movies and TV shows on its Xbox Live service and licenses its Windows Media DRM to virtually every music and video download store except iTunes.

Though most congloms have indicated they would prefer to see their copyrighted content filtered out, a person at one major studio indicated they're pleased to see Microsoft proactively reaching out, noting it's a preferable approach compared with many other online video operators.

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.

Hum along, and Midomi recognizes your song

Midomi, a new company in Silicon Valley (Sunnyvale), has just launched an impressive musical search service.
If you hum, or sing a song, Midomi will likely recognize what you’re singing. So if you get a song in your head, and you don’t know what it is, go to Midomi. It will show you the most likely results, based on the signatures of songs it has in its database, and lets you go to a store to buy them.
That’s just the beginning. Midomi lets you see the people who have hummed the same songs, showing you those who sang most similar to you. It lets you chat with those people through a message box. It also lets you store your tune in its database for others to hear.
Midomi blows away Nayio Media, the San Mateo company that launched a humming search last month. If Nayio recognizes your tune, it cross-references with Napster’s library of songs. But the trouble is the recognition part. We tried humming “Morning has Broken,” but the song wasn’t represented on the first page of results. On Midomi, it was the first result, even when we hummed. Midomi gets better when you use words.
It was launched by two engineering PhDs from Stanford, Keyvan Mohajer (who studied music recognition), and Majid Emami, along with Stanford science grads James Hom and Michal Grabowski. The technology is self-built, called MMARS, or multi-modal adaptive recognition system. Midomi looks at pitch variation, like Nayio does, but it goes deeper, looking at tempo variation, phonetic content and location of pauses. If you hum a wrong note, it will often find ways to override it, by filtering it with other close signatures in its system. It isn’t perfect. While it recognized me humming “I Just Called to Say I Love you” immediately, it failed to do it on a later try when I hummed it quickly, without care. But once I added the words to my tune, it picked it up even when I sang quickly.
It gives you a studio, too, where you can pick out songs to sing — to help, it lets you play a 30-second track and see the lyrics — and lets you tag them, so that they are stored in the database. See a tour of the Midomi service here.
For copyright reasons, Midomi won’t let you upload your own songs, though that may change in the future. We did encounter a few bugs. Some sample tracks (it has licensed two million 30-second clips) didn’t play correctly (the audio didn’t come through). And one major caution: When we tried to download a software required before you can buy the songs, Midomi shut down the entire browser without warning. We still haven’t been able to download that software. We’ll update once Midomi fixes this.
The company’s goal is to become world’s most comprehensive database, Mohajer tells VentureBeat.
The Midomi service is their first product. They’ve formed a company called Melodis, and they want to move into other areas, such as speech recognition that will beat existing players like Nuance or Tellme. They’ve already implemented text recognition in Midomi. If type a search term “Ooops Britni Spirs,” it will recognize you are searching for the song by Britney Spears. Midomi also wants make the service easy to use for mobile devices.
The company has 15 employees in Sunnyvale, and another dozen developers in Eastern Europe and India. It has raised “multiple millions” from Global Catalyst Partners, and angel funding from Amidzad and former Googler, Aydin Senkut.

SpiralFrog Floats Another Day, New Appointment Announced

SpiralFrog has been pronounced dead by numerous sources, though signs of life emerged on Wednesday. The company did not return an inquiry from Digital Music News on Tuesday, though a press representative did offer an executive announcement the next day. According to the release, the company has now placed Jordan Levin onto its board of directors. Levin is the former CEO of the now-shuttered WB television network, and is being billed as the "youngest CEO in broadcast television history". The move follows reports of several high-level exits, including chief executive Robin Kent and various executives and board members. The report circulated throughout the industry, raising serious questions about the ad-supported digital music model.
The announcement of a new board member signals some life at the company, an important move given the earlier assessment. Joe Mohen, chairman and founder of SpiralFrog, noted that Levin will bring critical expertise to the youth-focused venture. "Jordan Levin is recognized for his deeply nuanced understanding of young adults," Mohen said. "His media buying relationships led to groundbreaking deals with blue-chip advertisers creating innovative, brand-integrated programs and new programming alliances." Meanwhile, the release pointed to the launch of the "advertising-supported service in early 2007," though major questions surround that timetable. The situation remains fluid, and the onus is now on SpiralFrog to prove that funeral predictions were premature.

SpiralFrog Lily Pad Enters Troubled Waters

SpiralFrog, the as-yet-unreleased, ad-supported music service, is now reportedly in serious trouble. According to multiple sources, the once-celebrated destination has recently entered a very difficult juncture. "SpiralFrog looks dead," one executive close to the company flatly told Digital Music News on Tuesday. Another, a major label executive, pointed to a similar verdict while referencing "specific model flaws". The news surfaced at a late hour, making it difficult for SpiralFrog to return an inquiry, though a published report in CNet also validates the claim. The article pointed to the departure of chief executive Robin Kent, as well the exit of "members of his executive team and three board directors". The article cited sources "connected to the company."
The development follows a SpiralFrog media frenzy over the summer. The energy stemmed from the idea of ad-supported digital music, viewed as a possible solution to the challenges faced by the recording industry. In late August, the fever pitch peaked following a licensing deal with Universal Music Group, easily the largest of the four majors. That attracted other content holders, including EMI Music Publishing, though SpiralFrog was reportedly paying sizable licensing fees to attract major content holders. The tough fate of SpiralFrog takes some of the steam out of the emerging, ad-supported sector, though others - including Qtrax, Napster, and Baidu - are actively pushing the possibilities.

Kiptronic Takes $4M for Ad Platform

Kiptronic, a San Francisco-based startup that coordinates dynamic ad insertion for audio and video podcasts, will announce today or tomorrow that it has raised $4 million in venture capital funding. The Series A round was led by Blueprint Ventures and Prism VentureWorks, and included existing angel investors.
While we’ve been especially bullish on the potential for advertising in streamed video, Kiptronic plays in the world of downloads. We can see ads for downloads becoming especially useful as larger media companies put their stuff online (please don’t make us pay for podcasts!), but that’s not to say such companies will turn to a low-profile startup.
So far, Kiptronic has pieced together an sizable network of podcasts, reporting 3,000 to 4,000 podcasts on the platform accounting for 47 million total show downloads in the fourth quarter of 2006. .../...

Metacafe uses a video search 'footprint'

Unlike YouTube, MetaCafe the 2nd largest independent UGC website (Israeli based Video sharing site with a reported $200 to $300 million valorisation), claims to filter content thanks to:

• a video search “footprint” that eliminates duplicates & improves relevancy
• 100,000 reviewers filter out inappropriate or uninteresting content.