P2P supernova BitTorrent, responsible for a substantial minority, and some say majority, of web traffic, has reached an agreement with the Hollywood studios. In an important symbolic move, the deal requires BitTorrent developer Bram Cohen to remove from the BitTorrent site links that lead to unauthorized films owned by the seven studios represented by the Motion Picture Association.
Under the pact, BitTorrent won’t stop unauthorized film links from being posted on the site, but will remove them once he receives complaints from the studios. Although the removal of the links won’t completely stop swapping of unauthorized movies using BitTorrent, it will slow the shadowy online trades because BitTorrent’s site currently makes movie files easy to find. And the deal will not prevent the inevitable rise of another popular, equally threatening file-sharing service.
Still, BitTorrent and Hollywood are in talks to launch a legitimate movie P2P service. A successful outcome of these talks could do more than any litigation (Hollywood’s hand was strengthened, while BitTorrent’s options were narrowed, by the Supreme Court’s Grokster decision this summer) or chest-beating by Hollywood to retard the growth of P2P.
The music industry’s track record in dealing with its own early-stage P2P threat and the ultimate success of iTunes, Rhapsody and other legitimate online music services, underscore the wisdom of Hollywood’s willingness to negotiae rather than continue to fight a losing battle. Unlike Hollywood, record companies chose to fight the audio equivalents of BitTorrent such as Napster and Grokster, rather than jump on the P2P bandwagon itself.
The record companies; decision resulted in years of prolonged legal battles and continued ramp-up in audio file sharing. Then Apple came along and built a viable business with iTunes and now legal distribution of music on the Internet is the fastest growing segment of the music business. But Apple and RealNetworks and Yahoo and other web-based music distributors are reaping the benefits of being Internet music middleman, an opportunity that has virtually been lost to the record industry.
In this glimpse of reasonableness on Hollywood’s part, it’s not inconceivable that the studios, unlike their record company peers, see the writing on the wall and could embrace P2P rather than fight it. It’s also possible that the studios are paying lip service to BitTorrent and intend to display their usual business tactic of attempting to stamp out new technologies to maintain their existing business models.
But for now, the studios and BitTorrent are talking and hopes are high that Hollywood might “get it” now.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 11:31 PM | Print | Comments (0)A story in the Palm Beach Post talks about the plans of West Palm Beach, FL to test high-tech surveillance cameras and perhaps deploy up to 100 at a cost estimated to be $17,000 per device. According to the paper, “[t]he police department hopes to buy them with grant money or cash from drug seizures…Able to rotate 360 degrees and read a license plate a half-mile away, they will roll 24 hours a day and can be programmed to zoom in at the sound of gunfire.”
The cameras’ arrival will put West Palm Beach in the middle of a national debate about the use of police surveillance in public places. The cameras have been hailed as an innovative police tool and condemned as a dangerous infringement on privacy.
[C]ities that have used them on a large scale, including Chicago and Baltimore, credit them for significant reductions in crime…[but] the effectiveness of police surveillance cameras has been questioned…A drug dealer may not ply his trade before the lens, they say, but he won’t stop dealing. He’ll just move to the next block. Others question whether money for pricey cameras could be better spent on hiring more police officers.
Some organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union, have complained that round-the-clock surveillance cameras infringe on citizens’ general expectation of privacy, but courts have ruled that people on streets or public property can be photographed or filmed against their wishes.Posted by Mitch Shapiro at 4:22 PM | Print | Comments (0)
Jack Shafer, Slate’s editor at large, spins a fanciful tale of Google’s demise called “The Great Google Wipeout.”
While some elements of Shafer’s scenario are not too far outside the realm of possibility, it basically assumes that Google will do most everything wrong and that its competitors—including Rupert Murdoch, Amazon and Microsoft—will do most everything right to take advantage of the search giant’s missteps. It also assumes that regulators (in the U.S. and also in China) will turn against Google.
But, while it seems pretty unlikely and at times superficial in its analysis, Shafer’s piece is a fun read that does highlight some current and potential competitive dynamics and probably does include some words of caution that might be worth attending to by any at Google inclined toward excessive hubris.
And, as Shafer notes at the start of his tale, “It wasn’t like it had never happened before in the tech world.”
Posted by Mitch Shapiro at 3:23 PM | Print | Comments (0)
Just in time for the Christmas shopping season, Google is adding a feature to its Froogle shopping service that will allow users to check out pricing and availability of items in their local stores. The move extends yet again the scope and depth of information Google is making available through its ad-supported business model, and is likely to impact the local Yellow Pages business as well as Froogle’s positioning in the online comparison shopping sector.
According to the New York Times:
Google…said that beginning this morning it would make available a feature that provides a local version of its Froogle shopping service. The service uses a third-party database of national product inventory organized by locality…[L]ocal merchants will be able to send Google product information that will be searchable from Froogle. For example, if users type “iPod Nano New York,” they will see map information with the locations of stores that have the iPod Nano in stock.
Google declined to identify the third-party information service that would provide the initial product inventory information for local stores, but it said there would be data from “several hundred” chains, like Best Buy, Circuit City, Home Depot, Bombay and CompUSA…The limitation of the service, Google acknowledged, is that the inventory information might not be precise or necessarily up to date.
The service will be freely available to merchants in the United States, Ms. Mayer said. Google, as it frequently notes, plans to gain revenue from the new Froogle service by placing relevant text ads on the same page as the local results. The company also believes that it gains revenue when users employ Google more frequently as its services become more useful.
An AP report adds:
Besides displaying a map showing all the local stores carrying the merchandise, Froogle also will list price differences…Froogle, a comparison shopping site that Google launched three years ago, will continue to give visitors the option to buy the merchandise online. Google receives a commission for the online referrals.
Initially, Google is depending on a contractor to pull the inventory information from several hundred major merchants. The search engine hopes to make the service even comprehensive by encouraging stores to submit their own customized merchandises list to the newly created “Google Base” - an information clearinghouse for everything from family recipes to scientific formulas. Froogle will pull the product inventory lists from Google Base and include them in its index.
In the comparison shopping niche, Froogle ranked as the fifth largest site with 6.36 million unique U.S. visitors during September, according to Nielsen/NetRatings Inc. The top two comparison sites - E.W. Scripps Co.’s Shopzilla and eBay Inc.’s Shopping.com - each attracted about 15 million unique visitors.Posted by Mitch Shapiro at 2:14 PM | Print | Comments (0)
In the wake of news that it was working with AOL and had raised $16.2 million from several heavy hitters (including AOL), Brightcove has received a flurry of attention and praise in the past 24 hours. Here’s a sampling (Disclaimer: Having seen a demo of part of Brightcove’s software and thought a lot about the intersection of TV and the Internet myself, I’m inclined to think the attention and praise are justified, and, in an earlier post, I suggested a potentially very large valuation for Brightcove if it can execute on its business plan.)
In a subhead, a Reuters story asks the question of whether Brightcove may emerge as “The Google of Video.” And in a Forbes piece, Forrester Research analyst Josh Bernoff says “I think this adds a lot of credibility to Brightcove…They’re not just another startup company now.” In the Reuters story, Bernoff says Brightcove “just moved into the fast lane…If you’re thinking about getting video distributed more broadly, this is the best scenario.”
Don Dodge’s enthusiasm is partly based on the track record of Brightcove founder Jeremy Allaire:
Brightcove is a BIG idea from a guy who has proven he can execute. Allaire Corp was a public company with a market cap of more than $2.5B at its peak. The company was later merged with Macromedia, where Jeremy was CTO…Keep an eye on Brightcove. My prediction is that Brightcove will be The Next Big Thing in video distribution.
Barry Diller’s bullishness on Brightcove was evidenced by his company’s investment in the startup and the fact that he will be joining its board of directors. And he appears to see its impacts unfolding relatively soon. From the Wall Street Journal:
“Video on the Internet hasn’t really begun and you know that in the next five years — not 10 years — but five, it is going to transform things,” Mr. Diller said in an interview.
The Forbes piece also sketches out a possible evolutionary path for Brightcove’s platform and business plan:
Sometime later next year, Brightcove expects to join AOL in a co-branded service via AOL’s Web portal, offering a far broader audience than a content provider could expect from offering video only on its own Web site. For example, a search for video or text on AOL’s site could offer a link to a cable program or an academic lecture by a prominent professor, Allaire said. Revenue will be shared among video providers, Brightcove and AOL. Allaire wouldn’t discuss details of the revenue split.
While the service won’t prevent amateur videographers from offering their creations for commercial viewing, Allaire said the service’s initial focus is content from more traditional providers.
Brightcove does not have an exclusive agreement with AOL - the largest investor in Brightcove’s newly announced round of financing - so the deal does not foreclose possible future deals with other Web portals, Allaire said. Yahoo Inc., Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. all have recently moved to expand their online video capabilities. “You have to wonder what happens after Brightcove possibly signs up with other portals,” Bernoff said. “Google and Yahoo may be interested in these same sorts of partnerships down the line.”Posted by Mitch Shapiro at 1:49 PM | Print | Comments (0)
As of 12:01 am, the XBox 360 is on the market and the spate of think pieces regarding Microsoft’s surprising hardware hit are rolling in. The latest: The Wall Street Journal has a front page article today highlighting the importance of the gaming device to Microsoft’s strategy, with the XBox serving as some kind of counterpoint to Apple’s runaway success iPod.
The article notes that Microsoft is a little leery of competing against its PC partners, despite the fact that the Xbox has almost the fully capabilities of a computer. But, what the article doesn’t note is that Microsoft typically doesn’t compete with TV set manufacturers, or even set-top hardware providers such as Motorola or Scientific Atlanta, soon to be Cisco-owned. So television is fair game.
It’s been a natural concept for several years that the XBox is the Trojan horse for Microsoft to finally gain a foothold in the interactive TV arena, a grip that has been slippery for the Redmond giant for almost ten years. Indeed, last week’s announcement of a pact between Microsoft and CableLabs to build Windows Media technology capable of receiving via the PC cable’s video services is the first concrete step hinting that the XBox could become the sleeper killer video application for Microsoft. Along with the PC-based video envisioned by the cable industry and Microsoft is video received on the XBox platform.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 6:50 AM | Print | Comments (0)Cambridge, MA-based video publishing start-up Brightcove has landed a big fish client while still only in its market beta test phase. The company founded by tech pioneer Jeremy Allaire has a pact with America Online to enable commercial publishers and programmers that are distributing with and using the Brightcove service to have their videos distributed on the AOL service. [Note: an earlier version of this post incorrectly stated that AOL users could publish on the Brightcove platform.]
Brightcove’s self-publishing system allows users to pick among various menu-driven options to upload content and participate in ad sales as part of Brightcove’s ad network or generate pay-per-view payments or simply give away the content. AOL will have the right to refuse the published content based on its own criteria, and AOL visitors will be able to access the content through the online service’s video search engine.
Things are definitely looking up for Brightcove: the company announced yesterday that it has received $16.2 million from AOL, the Hearst Corporation, Allen & Company and the IAC/InterActiveCorp. Barry Diller, the chief executive of IAC/Interactive, will join Brightcove’s board.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 12:10 AM | Print | Comments (0)
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