by Marisa Taylor, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s latest effort to call out what it considers violations of copyright and trademark law comes in the form of a mock-awards page, complete with “honorees,” called the Takedown Hall of Shame.
The tech-advocacy group highlights a handful of cases it calls “the most egregious examples of takedown abuse,” usually involving businesses or organizations that cry foul–or issue takedown notices–even when their copyrighted materials are used in accordance with fair-use laws.
by Andrew LaVallee, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
Blip.tv announced a slew of distribution deals with both new-media and old-media companies, including NBC and YouTube, that it hopes will expand the reach of its online programming.
by Michael Learmonth, Senior Editor, Advertising Age
Consider, for a moment, what would happen if the identities, geographies and surfing histories of a large number of Internet users suddenly became invisible.
by Nicholas Carlson, Blogger, Silicon Alley Insider
Walking into Gavin Purcell’s office at 30 Rockefeller Center the first thing you notice is his computer monitor. It’s a 52-inch flat screen mounted to the wall across from his desk. The desktop background is a picture of a Sega Light Phaser. Ladies and gentleman, the co-producer of NBC’s “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon”–debuting Monday–is a geek.
When NBC Universal and News Corp. created Hulu, they gave the video portal a valuable but short-term asset: exclusive rights to distribute NBC and Fox shows outside of the media giants’ own websites. Hulu.com has become the fourth-biggest online video distributor. But with exclusivity deal ending soon, Hulu will have to see if it can defend the audience and brand it has built.
NBC is supposed to give all its hit “Saturday Night Live” clips to its online joint venture, Hulu, not YouTube, right? Well, not always, apparently. Andy Samberg’s “J**z in My Pants” has racked up 6.7 million views on YouTube, and is the most-watched video of the past month.
NBC seems to be having a change of heart this week. The network recently wrapped up its streaming of the Olympics using Microsoft’s Silverlight technology. However, if you tuned in for this week’s NFL season opener, NBC was using Adobe’s Flash technology instead of Silverlight
If you haven’t read, ESPN has said that they will be aggressively bidding for the retransmission rights for the 2016 Olympics. Notice that I didn’t say TV rights. The battle for the Olympics rights will be in spreadsheet projections done by ESPN, NBC and probably DirecTV that will take into account what revenues can be [...]
For Internet television, the Beijing Olympics represent a milestone. NBC has created a site with an unprecedented 2,200 hours of live Webcasts of Olympic events. But the Olympics are also a powerful illustration of the current battle line between the big business of network television and the emerging medium of Web video. NBC’s broadcast and [...]
NBC actually showed Michael Phelps live on the East Coast last night as he shattered his own world record in the 400 individual medley. We watched–and, suddenly, the Olympics were as awesome as, well, the Olympics.
Sometimes you wonder how the folks at NBC Universal get anything accomplished, when they seem totally unable to accept responsibility for the market challenges they face and demand that everyone else fix NBC Universal’s business-model problems. Remember, NBC Universal has been the main supporter of the idea that ISPs should be responsible for stopping any unauthorized transfer of content. But why take chances on having just one outside party prop up your business model? Now, NBC Universal’s “chief digital officer,” George Kliavkoff, is saying that it should be Apple’s responsibility to stop unauthorized usage by building special antipiracy filters into iTunes.
I tend to be skeptical when people start screaming “net neutrality” when it’s not warranted, but here’s a situation where it may be worth asking a few questions. We’ve been wondering for some time why AT&T would agree to help NBC try to block the transfer of any unauthorized content on its network. It made very little sense at the time. AT&T (in its previous versions) had actually been one of the big proponents of the “safe harbor” clause in the DMCA that meant it didn’t need to police the content on its own network. So why would it suddenly, voluntarily, be saying it wants to spend time, money and energy in an impossible effort to police the content shared across its own network?
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