The distinctly American idea of net neutrality is catching on in Japan. The Japanese government has set up a panel to study the idea, and whether some form of net neutrality requirements should be adopted.
The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications is seeking feedback from Google, Yahoo Japan, Apple and phone and cable operators companies, with the goal of preparing a final report by July 2007. Few other governments around the world have floated the notion of network neutrality — the issue only recently cropped up in Canada.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 5:02 PM | Print | Comments (0)
Business Week.com’s Dan Carlin has this piece today about DailyMotion, a French video sharing site that has designs to become the YouTube of Europe. DailyMotion predates YouTube and also captures a bigger market share in France — the site focuses on local content and has features, such as direct uploading from webcams, that YouTube doesn’t offer yet.
DailyMotion has also found a clever way to gain exposure as well as access to copyrighted content. It has a deal with top French TV station TF1 under which DailyMotion has created a special user-generated video site called Wat TV. Starting November 17, TF1 will play the best clips from Wat.TV each day and DailyMotion gains the rights to TF1 clips.
Despite the rise of country/language specific video sharing sites, DailyMotion, which is available in six European languages (note that if you access the site from the U.S., the default language is English) hopes to expand across Europe.
But Bejbaum [CEO Benjamin Bejbaum) is betting Daily Motion can do just that, despite the emergence of rivals such as Germany’s MyVideo or Israel’s Metacafe, which has raised $20 million from Benchmark Capital and Accel Partners. The Daily Motion site is now available in six European languages, and the company is opening an office in Berlin later this year. “Our strategy is totally international,” Bejbaum says. “We are closer to French content, but I want to see content from every country.”
One nasty little caveat to Carlin’s relatively glowing piece. Someone named Nob posted the following comment on the article:
The vast majority of Daily Motion’s content is stolen. They have every episode of The Simpsons ever and new episodes of Lost and Prison Break in their entirety. Pure Piracy. These guys are 15 minutes away from a crippling lawsuit.
I took a look at it does appear that DailyMotion offers many full episodes of “The Simpsons,” as well as “South Park.”
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 9:27 AM | Print | Comments (0)
The rumored $500 million infringement liability reserve that Google supposedly set aside when it bought YouTube turns out to be…only $224 million. As the wire services reported yesterday, Google, when it issued its announcement that the YouTube acquisition had closed, said that it was holding 12.5% of the stock in “escrow for one year to secure certain indemnification obligations.”
That translates into around $224 million, not a huge sum given the deal’s value, but the point is CEO Eric Schmidt denied last week that Google had set aside $500 million to cover the costs of copyright infringement liabilities it might be incurring with YouTube. I, like most people, bought Schmidt’s denial, although I wondered at the time why his denial wasn’t more vigorous. Here’s what I wrote:
Based on what I’ve read, Schmidt wasn’t real chatty about the details of this rumor, other than to deny the report. To quell any further repetition of the idea that Google put money in escrow to deal with copyright infringement matters, Schmidt could have been more fulsome in his denials.
As it turns out, Schmidt was low-key in rebuffing the rumors because although the dollar amount was wrong, there was in fact an infringement liability escrow. As Mike at TechDirt writes “Well, it seems that when he called it false, it appears he only meant the number, not the concept.”
Hmmm….don’t know whether to congratulate Schmidt or castigate him about the hair-splitting.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 8:57 AM | Print | Comments (0)The Washington Post has a fascinating page one tale today about how an amateur video shot with a cell phone spurred public outcry and law enforcement reform in Malaysia. A young woman, 22 year-old Hemy Hamisa Abu Hassan Saari, had been forced to strip naked and perform squat thrusts following what she claims was a false arrest for drug possession, a mortifying ordeal for the modest Moslem woman.
Unbeknownst to her, a male police officer was video taping the episode with his cell phone. He then sent it to friends and colleagues (presumably and appallingly for titillation purposes). It ended up on YouTube and then national Malaysian television, sparking public outrage over the woman’s obvious humiliation. Armed with video evidence of abusive practices by police, Malaysian authorities investigaged and implemented reforms.
The clip began circulating phone to phone, e-mail to e-mail. Eventually it was posted on YouTube and other Internet sites, to be viewed by millions. What started as cheap voyeurism escalated into an unstoppable cyberspace phenomenon, which forced the prime minister to establish an official inquiry that led to changes in police practice. The episode also underscored the growing power of amateur video, shot on cellphones and ever-tinier digital cameras, to hold the powerful to account.
What’s interesting is that human rights groups had been complaining about this practice to Malaysian authorities, to no avail. And they had taken their case to newspapers, but in a country which licenses its press, no newspaper would risk criticizing the police.
But the video changed everything. The rise of cell phone and tiny camera video recording capabilities has made it easier to uncover abuse and make changes in how authorities treat prisoners. One organization is setting up a web site devoted to exposing abuse through the use of amateur videos.
“Images have more resonance,” said Gillian Caldwell, executive director of Witness, a New York-based human rights group whose credo is “See it. Film It. Change it.” Her group has already gathered almost 3,000 hours of footage of human rights abuses from people in more than 75 countries. It is getting ready to launch a YouTube-like Web site for human rights. Caldwell said rights groups are increasingly harnessing the “power of images and human stories to motivate change.”Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 8:23 AM | Print | Comments (1)
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