News - Digital Media

When Barack Obama announced he was going to release the name of his vice presidential pick via text message, he affirmed that this method of communication is no longer relegated to teenagers, but has penetrated the mainstream. According to Nielsen research, 2.9 million people received the text, even though the mainstream media announced Joe Biden's name well before it was even sent.

Texting's popularity has certainly been evident at the Democratic National Convention. Even the most unlikely of delegates have whipped out their cell phones and proudly described the text messaging protocols their states are using to organize floor votes, gathering times, etc. Since you're reading this blog post on CNET, you're probably thinking: big deal. But I give a certain amount of credit to Obama; his VP stunt seems to have brought the concept of text messaging to a higher level of national consciousness that has influenced a wider, older demographic. Case in point, my mother began texting two days ago!

While the majority of delegates appear to have embraced text messaging, fewer are blogging and even fewer are using the social networks to get their messages out. There's the occasional college student who's using Facebook to update friends and family, and a small handful of people who know that Twitter is now a proper noun.

I have a feeling, however, that the same way the Democrats embraced presidential candidate Howard Dean's technology efforts four years ago, the party will come around and be using tech in the mainstream in four more. Although, I'm not so sure I need to be following my mom on Twitter...

The FBI on Wednesday arrested a Los Angeles-area blogger on suspicion of violating federal copyright laws after he allegedly streamed tracks of the unreleased Guns N' Roses album Chinese Democracy on his Web site.

Kevin Cogill, 27, caused quite a stir earlier this summer when he allegedly began streaming nine songs from the album, which has been 15 years in the making, on his blog Antiquiet. The traffic crashed his site almost immediately, and shortly afterward the songs were removed at the band's request. But users who recorded the streams quickly made the songs available on file-sharing sites. It's unknown how Cogill allegedly acquired the material.

The FBI began investigating the incident in late June, and earlier this week Cogill posted a plea for legal help on his blog, writing that, "more and more each day, it looks like I may be indicted."

The Family Entertainment and Copyright Act of 2005 makes the sharing of pre-release copyright material a felony punishable by up to three years in prison and up to $250,000 in fines. According to his arrest affidavit, Cogill admitted to posting the songs, reports the Los Angeles Times.

Cogill was due to appear in the Los Angeles District Court Wednesday afternoon.

UPDATE: According to a post on Antiquiet, Cogill was released under a $10,000 signature bond and is scheduled to appear at a preliminary hearing on September 17.

(Credit: YouTube)

Instead of just pulling down pirated clips, copyright owners are choosing to use YouTube's copyright filters to generate advertising revenue, Google said Wednesday.

Late last year, Google introduced a copyright identification system called Video ID, which tracks unauthorized videos. It enables a copyright owner to either block the clip, leave it up, or enable YouTube to sell ads against the material.

Google said on its blog Wednesday that copyright owners were choosing to turn a buck from unauthorized clips 90 percent of the time.

"It's clear to our (more than 300) Video ID partners that our technology has created a framework that allows copyright holders to sanction the creativity of their biggest fans," Google said. "These partners now have a new way to successfully distribute and market their content online."

These statistics can obviously be used to counter arguments that YouTube costs copyright owners money. Viacom filed a $1 billion lawsuit against Google and YouTube for allegedly encouraging users to commit copyright infringement.

Google has always said that most of the smart media companies choose not to war with YouTube. They are clasping hands with the Web's No.1 video-sharing site and using it to promote shows and generate ad revenue.

But here's the juiciest part of this story. Profiting from pirated videos can shove copyright owners smack into a moral dilemma. A source at a large media company told me recently that executives there were debating that exact question. Several start-ups are working on technology that will track unauthorized videos wherever they exist on the Web and then insert an advertisement into the clips.

I just got off the phone with Fred von Lohmann at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who chuckled when he heard about the debate.

"The second (big media companies) say yes to profiting from those clips this way, it will make it hard for them to argue that ISPs should be forced to screen for unauthorized material. It's hard to make that argument when you're re being compensated."

The EFF's von Lohman also brought up another interesting scenario. If someone uses, say for example, a piece of Prince's music to criticize the musician--which would fall under fair use--von Lohmann wonders whether Prince would be paid for such a use?

"There would be a question about whether that would be appropriate," von Lohmann said.

TiVo's midyear report card is in, and the numbers are better than most analysts expected.

The results aren't fabulous, but anything's better than the $17.7 million loss a year ago. In the second quarter of this year, the maker of digital video recorders earned revenues of $65.2 million, eking out a profit of $2.9 million, good for 3 cents per share for investors. Analysts had been anticipating revenues between $54 million and 59.3 million, a loss of 2 cents per share.

TiVo recorded lower services revenues this quarter than a year ago, but it did make more money on hardware, to bring up its revenue 4 percent to $65.2 million. The company continued to lose subscribers this quarter, as a result of DirecTV's earlier decision to stop offering TiVo and sell its own DVR system instead.

Other distribution deals, including the partnership with Comcast, are still in the early stages, according to TiVo. The company added just 36,000 new customers in the second quarter, while losing 78,000 subscribers, bringing the current total to 3.6 million.

TiVo stock was down 37 cents to $7.59 in after-hours trading.

As promised in May, Google has brought the open-source Gears technology to Apple's Safari, augmenting some browser abilities such as using Gears-tailored Web sites while offline.

The company announced a beta version of Gears for Safari (DMG file download link) on the Gears users mailing list Monday.

"We would love for you to install it and test it and file bug reports so we can polish it and find all the corner cases," said Google's Jeremy Moskovich.

Gears extends a browser so, for example, some Google Docs can be edited or viewed while the user isn't connected to a network. It also can speed up use of the WordPress blogging software and some operations at MySpace, and Google is expanding its scope to geolocation services and other areas, too.

The software requires Safari 3.1.1 on Mac OS X Tiger 10.4.11 or Leopard 10.5.3, he said.

Gears already works on Firefox and Internet Explorer; Opera is working on a version for both its desktop and mobile browsers.

(Via Google Operating System.)

TiVo announced Wednesday that it's hooking up with Entertainment Weekly to automatically record the TV programs highlighted on the publication's recommended viewing list.

Under the partnership, TiVo will record for its subscribers the programs on Entertainment Weekly's "What to Watch" listing. The service is slated to begin this fall.

TiVo subscribers will also be able to download Entertainment Weekly's EW.com original programming, such as Just a Minute, Ausiello TV, and Idolatry.

"This partnership creates an exciting new service for our fans, closing the loop between the entertainment choices we spotlight and our audience's ability to connect directly to those entertainment experiences," Scott Donaton, Entertainment Weekly publisher, said in a statement.

For TiVo, the partnership is just the latest it has struck this summer. In July, TiVo announced a deal with Amazon to allow subscribers to purchase products from the online retailing giant off their TV. And last month, TiVo touted plans to allow users to access YouTube videos via their TV.

Most of the largest motion picture studios are backing a plan that would create interoperability among digital rights management schemes.

TechCrunch is reporting that Sony Pictures is behind the plan that has the support of most of the top film companies--other than those backed by Walt Disney. A Sony spokesman could not be reached for comment Tuesday evening.

According to Michael Arrington, the plan calls for "a set of policy decisions and a software and services framework that will allow interoperability of various formats and DRM schemes that are currently splintering the market."

The plan also calls for a neutral party to manage a central registry where users would register their devices. Movies purchased from participating services would then play on devices from participating manufacturers.

OK, while acknowledging I haven't heard all the details, the plan at this point sounds complicated and it also calls for competitors to cooperate. This is not an easy thing in Hollywood.

I'm always skeptical of any proposition that requires the studios to agree on standards. Hollywood should also learn from the music industry and abandon DRM now. Consumers have already rendered a verdict on DRM: death.

Mozilla released an experimental browser plug-in Tuesday that aims to connect the Web with language to help users perform common Web tasks more quickly and easily.

Ubiquity, created by Aza Raskin--son of Apple Mac pioneer Jef Raskin--is a command-line interface that enables users to use plain language to manipulate Web tasks, such as mapping, translation, shopping, or retrieving entries from Wikipedia, Yelp, or Twitter.

The free Firefox plug-in enables the creation of "user-generated mashups with existing open Web APIs," according to a post on Mozilla's site Tuesday. "In other words, allowing everyone--not just Web developers--to remix the Web so it fits their needs, no matter what page they are on, or what they are doing."

The challenge, as Mozilla sees it:

Mashups help in some cases, but they are static, require Web development skills, and are largely site-centric rather than user-centric.

It's even worse on mobile devices, where limited capability and fidelity makes this onerous or nearly impossible.

Most people do not have an easy way to manage the vast resources of the Web to simplify their task at hand. For the most part, they are left trundling between Web sites, performing common tasks, resulting in frustration and wasted time.

Ubiquity grew out of Firefox's new Smart Location Bar, or "awesome bar," which helps resolve incomplete URL entries into browser address bars. Ubiquity doesn't replace the awesome bar, but a separate command line is generated by typing Ctrl-Space for Windows or Command-Space for Macs.

Mozilla Labs released a prototype of Ubiquity for all platforms, as well as a tutorial, as an "illustration of a concept."

Mozilla says this is the type of mashup it hopes its users will be inspired to create.

(Credit: Mozilla.com)

Raskin, a Mozilla Labs engineer who worked to bring Firefox to the mobile platform, created the Ubiquity platform concept. "Ubiquity's interface goal is to enable the user to instruct the browser (by typing, speaking, using language) what they want to do," Raskin wrote in his blog post.

Webware's Rafe Needleman is taking the plug-in for a spin and has posted his impressions.

The recording industry appears to have won a closely watched copyright infringement case over charges of evidence tampering.

Judge Neil Wake ruled on Monday that Jeffery Howell, a defendant in Atlantic v. Howell, had willfully and intentionally destroyed evidence related to his peer-to-peer activities after being notified of pending legal action by the RIAA, according to a Tuesday report by Ars Technica. Furthermore, since it was done in bad faith, it "therefore warrants appropriate sanctions," the site reported.

The RIAA sued Pamela and Jeffrey Howell for copyright infringement in 2006, claiming that the husband and wife had used Kazaa to make copyrighted files available for download.

In a deposition, Jeffrey Howell admitted to loading the file-sharing software onto his computer. He said, however, that the songs listed in the complaint were for personal use and that he had not placed the files in the program's shared folder. He said the recordings were copies made from CDs he owned placed on the computer for personal use, not copies downloaded from Kazaa.

He also argued that that he was not the one sharing the files, but that it was the computer that was sharing the files.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation argued on behalf of the couple--which lacked legal representation--saying the RIAA's "making available" position "amounts to suing someone for attempted distribution, something the Copyright Act has never recognized." The argument--that merely the act of making music files available for download constituted copyright infringement--has been the basis for the Recording Industry Association of America's legal battle against online music piracy.

Judge Wake apparently agreed with that position and in April denied the labels' motion for summary judgment in a 17-page decision (PDF), allowing the suit to proceed to trial.

However, the RIAA accused Howell of destroying evidence on four occasions after being served with the lawsuit, the site reported. RIAA experts found that Howell uninstalled Kazaa and reformatted his hard drive, Ars Technica reported.

"Defendant's intentional spoliation of computer evidence significantly prejudices plaintiffs because it puts the most relevant evidence of their claim permanently beyond their reach," the RIAA reportedly argued. "The deliberate destruction...by itself, compels the conclusion that such evidence supported plaintiffs' case."

Wake reportedly agreed with the RIAA and is expected to inform Howell of his decision in a forthcoming written order.

Updated August 27 at 4:14 p.m. PDT, with correction to Fox Interactive Media's ranking for the preceding month.

Fox Interactive Media grabbed the most market share among digital display ad publishers in the month of June, according to a report released Tuesday by ComScore Ad Metrix.

Fox Interactive, which owns MySpace, accounted for 15.9 percent of display ad views, or impressions, during the month of June, followed by Yahoo, which ranked second with 10.5 percent of the market. The results marked the third consecutive month that Fox Interactive has maintained a lead over Yahoo, since ComScore changed its methodology for counting ad impressions.

ComScore has since changed its methodology to a "filtered" methodology, in which house ads and small "chicklet" ads that are roughly the size of a piece of Chicklet gum were disregarded in the tabulation of impressions, said Andrew Lipsman, ComScore senior analyst.

That said, the remaining top five Internet publishers retained their ranking in the month of June, which saw a total of 329.8 million digital display ad page views.

AOL, owned by Time Warner, ranked third with 5.8 percent of the display ad market, Microsoft topped out at fourth with a 4.7 percent market share, and Google hit a distant fifth with 1.5 percent market share.

Fox Interactive relied heavily on MySpace for its ad impressions, which accounted for 51 billion of Fox's 52.3 billion ad displays. Yahoo, which racked up 34.7 million ad impressions in June, reached 130 million unique users with its ads. According to ComScore, Yahoo reached the most users over any other publisher.

Lipsman, meanwhile, cautioned that the June results are a snapshot, given comparable year-ago figures are not available due to the tabulation changes.

Stay tuned for July results...