It looks like Apple’s deal with Disney is filtering down the corporate chain. Steve Rubel reports that WABC-TV in New York (iTunes link) and WLS-TV in Chicago (iTunes link), both owned and operated by Disney’s ABC, are vidcasting (video podcasting) their local news programs for distribution via iTunes. Unlike the other Disney TV programs made available for iTunes and iPod, such as “Desperate Housewives,” “Lost” and “That’s So Raven,” the local newscasts are free to play or download.
Declan McCullagh reports that the U.S. Sentencing Commission (huh?) adopted on Wednesday new guidelines that increase the prison sentences for P2P copyright violations by 40%. The changes also allow judges to “estimate” the number of files shared for purposes of determining the appropriate fine and sentence — the punishments are tied to the amount of files shared.
The new sentencing adjustments came from a law signed by President Bush in April, the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act. That law, supported by the motion picture and record companies, It imposes fines of up to $250,000 and prison terms of up to three years, regardless of whether any downloading of a prerelease work took place.
Another change in the guidelines: simply having a copyrighted file in a shared folder on a PC constitutes “uploading” or illegal distribution of the file.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 12:10 PM | Print | Comments (0)
The ongoing push by the U.N. to take over Internet “governance” from the U.S., and the independent body managed by the U.S., ICANN, is grabbing headlines and heating up the political rhetoric. But what, precisely, is this fight all about?
Thankfully Andy Orem has come along to explain in detail what Internet governance is, how ICANN fits in, and what problems the U.N. and affiliated countries and organizations seek to solve. According to Orem, what it boils down to, aside from general anti-American sentiment, is poor management by ICANN on a number of technical issues having to do with domain names. Specifically, ICANN has some important duties with regard to technical robustness, technical security and managing the creation of domain names in various languages, and in all three regards, particularly the first two, ICANN hasn’t performed well.
Orem doesn’t, however, agree with the idea of U.N. control over Internet governance. He suggests handing over control to tighter, better run third-party organizations.
But they have a bee in their bonnet concerning ICANN. Certainly, it is controlled by the United States government—which reneges on its duties by letting ICANN blunder about so much—but the solution is not to bring it under U.N. control. The solution is to hand all its powers over to leaner, more technically focused groups that operate with less fuss and more consensus.Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 11:40 AM | Print | Comments (0)
John Battelle has an intriguing analysis of the most recent copyright infringement lawsuit brought against Google regarding the Internet giant’s plan to create a searchable book archive as part of its Library Project. On October 19, the American Association of Publishers (AAP) filed a complaint against Google, almost one month to the day after the Author’s Guild filed a similar complaint.
Battelle believes this litigation “is a far bigger issue than simply book publishers wanting to protect their business models.” Aside from the general feeling among publishers that they are being cut out of the transaction process or “disintermediated,” the suit might also represent the publishers’ parent companies desires to avoid a slippery slope that might lead to similar archiving of video material.
And this is not just about books. If Google - and by extension, anyone else - can scan and index books without permission, why can’t they also scan and index video? Look at who owns the book companies that are suing - ahhh, it’s Newscorp (Harper Collins), Viacom (Simon&Schuster), Time Warner (Little Brown).Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 11:07 AM | Print | Comments (0)
Independent Wall Street Analyst Richard Greenfield from Fulcrum Global Partners issued a curious email report this morning entitled “Redefining the Idea of Video in an IP World, aka what we did with our computer last night.” Mailed to clients, this report notes that there has been “a meaningful pick-up in content creation/repurposing for broadband.”
Greenfield attached to his report a series of slide shots from a variety of online video outlets he visited, including Windows Media Center Online Spotlight Home Screen, Windows Media Center Online Spotlight Music/Radio Screen, Windows Media Center MTV Overdrive, Windows Media Center AOL Music on Demand, iTunes Video Podcast Directory and The Biz – AOL online-only reality TV show. His conclusion:
While we are not at the point yet where a consumer is likely to drop their existing cable/satellite video provider and simply use broadband for video, the future risks of disintermediation are becoming more tangible. Our slideshow highlights video accessed via windows media center, iTunes and simply the web itself.
Noting that the rise of IP video is good for program creators but bad for traditional distributors, Greenfield recommends that the FCC step in to ensure that cable operators and phone companies don’t smother this infant industry in its cradle:
We believe the FCC may need to act to prevent broadband providers from hurting the consumer experience of a product like MTV Overdrive delivered via Windows Media Center (in favor of broadband content they own/want to highlight or even simply to favor the more traditional experience of watching cable TV via a cable providers’ set-top box).Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 10:24 AM | Print | Comments (0)
The Wall Street Journal has a piece today on how phone and cable companies are reining in customers’ Internet usage, with the not-so-coincidental byproduct of blocking IP-based competitive activities such as VoIP and video file-sharing. The article, penned by Peter Grant and Jesse Drucker, hones in on the central conundrum of the Web 2.0 era: unfettered use of bandwidth can chew up network resources but limiting that use can block competition.
Vodafone and Verizon Wireless have provisions in their contracts that customers can’t use their high-speed wireless networks for VoIP services, ostensibly because the two partners fear bandwidth crippling. “We don’t want people clogging up the network,” Verizon Wireless spokesman Jim Gerace says in the article.
Cable R&D consortium CableLabs contends that 18% of all traffic on cable high-speed networks comes from file-sharing service BitTorrent.
But phone and cable companies, the main broadband conduits in the home, have the power to cut off promising new competitive voice and video services by mickeying with bandwidth usage or by simply out and out barring alternative service usage. And some of the seemingly “neutral” solutions — charging customers more for more bandwidth-intensive services or giving these high-bandwidth competitors lower packet priority — don’t seem much better.
Time Warner Cable is considering several ways of controlling the traffic on its network, Mr. Lajoie says. The operator might simply give video file-sharing traffic a lower priority than other traffic so that it slows down first during periods of peak usage. Or it might restrict the flow of bits to a particular user’s computer if the usage is too heavy. Time Warner Cable may also charge heavy users more if they want preferred treatment. “Revenue opportunities…definitely exist,” Mr. Lajoie says.Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 8:05 AM | Print | Comments (1)
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