Google seems to announce something new every day and for the most part Google’s announcements seem…well, scattershot and not that interesting. But today is an exception. Google and the National Archives announced the launch of a pilot program to make holdings of the National Archives available for free online. The pilot program will make available 103 important historic films online including newsreels, documentaries and even a preserved film from 1894.
The program doesn’t extend to documents contained in the Archives but both parties are talking about it — they also hope to expand the number films from the Archives. The films are made available via a special section of Google Video as well as on the National Archives web site.
While Google video has come under criticism for its rushed introduction of premium video options and, some argue, poor site design, I think Google is slowly building up Google Video to be a robust repository that could become indispensable. It may not be as pretty as Apple’s iTunes, nor as commercially successful either, at least in the short term.
But with a growing collection of interesting videos, Google Video may prove all the critics wrong.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 1:20 PM | Print | Comments (0)
Picking up on Mitch’s hope that efforts by Google and EarthLink and others to mount muni-Wi-Fi could stave off distorting net neutrality regulations, Richard Greenfield of Pali Research circulated today slides that EarthLink used during its recent analysts day to promote its wireless initiatives. The slides contain a lot of useful information, not the least of which is just how optimistic EarthLink is regarding the money that can be made with muni-Wi-Fi.
EarthLink is targeting operating break-even for its Wi-Fi builds at one to two years, with gross margins of 79% for retail offerings and 58% for wholesale services. The ISP thinks that municipal Wi-Fi is a $15 billion market.
Like Greenfield, I’m not as optimistic as EarthLink. In his note accompanying the slides, Greenfield said “We remain skeptical that Muni Wi-Fi, in general, will live up to bandwidth expectations – particularly given the increasingly congested nature of unlicensed wi-fi spectrum.”
But the slides do provide a useful look at EarthLink’s municipal strategy and spell out the markets where EarthLink has either won the Wi-Fi contract or has submitted an RFP or plans to respond to an RFP. More interesting still are the targeted markets where EarthLink hopes to bid on a muni-contract (see table below.)
| EarthLink’s Muni-Wi-Fi Efforts | |||
| City | Status | City | Status |
| Anaheim | Selected | Los Angeles | Target |
| Arlington | Finalist | Miami | Target |
| Atlanta | Target | Milwaukee | RFP Issued |
| Aurora | RFP Issued | Minneapolis | Finalist |
| Baltimore | Target | New Orleans | Target |
| Boston | Target | New York | Target |
| Brookline | Finalist | Oakland | Target |
| Chicago | Target | Omaha | Target |
| Cleveland | Target | Pasadena | RFP Issued |
| Columbus | Target | Philadelphia | Selected |
| Dallas | Target | Pittsburgh | RFP Issued |
| Denver | RFP Issued | Portland | Finalist |
| Detroit | Target | Sacramento | Target |
| Grand Rapids | RFP Issued | San Diego | Target |
| Honolulu | Target | San Francisoc | RFP Issued |
| Houston | Target | San Jose | Target |
| Las Vegas | Target | Seattle | Target |
| Long Beach | RFP Issued | ||
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 9:16 AM | Print | Comments (0)
The MPAA announced yesterday that it has filed another round of lawsuits in its efforts to stamp out unauthorized distribution of films on the web, and this time the MPAA is targeting companies that act as search engines but do not actually distribute films themselves. The sites targeted in the suits filed in federal courts around the country include newsgroup operations such as Torrentspy.com, IsoHunt, BTHub.com, TorrentBox.com, NiteShadow.com, Ed2k-It.com, NZB-Zone.com, BinNews.com and DVDRs.net.
What’s different about this round of litigation is that the sites are newsgroups or search engines that point to unauthorized films and this is the first time the MPAA has sought to shut down sites that enable users to find films on the web. In other words, MPAA isn’t making the distinction between sites that point to content and the sites that actually host the content.
“Website operators who abuse technology to facilitate infringements of copyrighted works by millions of people are not anonymous – they can and will be stopped,” said John G. Malcolm, Executive Vice President and Director of Worldwide Anti-Piracy Operations for the MPAA in a statement.
CNET’s John Borland points out that the Digital Millenium Copyright Act protects search engines from liability when users find pirated content using their technologies so long as the search engines owners aren’t aware of the links to pirated content and aren’t benefitting from the transaction. Borland also points out that the law is unsettled in this area, with no cases that have come to trial regarding search engine liability for linking to pirated content.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 7:16 AM | Print | Comments (0)
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