Given the option to pull copyrighted material posted to YouTube without their permission or to monetize it with YouTube’s new Content ID system, some 90 percent of copyright owners are choosing the latter. Since it was first announced, Content ID–which allows rights owners to block an infringing clip, leave it be, or grant YouTube permission to sell ads against it–has won some impressive partners, including such media companies as CBS, Universal Music and Electronic Arts.
Read More »
Looks like Google has updated its arrogance algorithm again. Having dismissed Viacom’s $1 billion copyright infringement suit over video clips on YouTube as a “mistake,” the company is taking the same tack with a similar suit brought against it by Italian TV company Mediaset SpA.
Read More »
If Bono is U2’s geopolitical pragmatist, the band’s manager, Paul McGuinness, is its neo-Luddite. At the Music Matters confab in Hong Kong, McGuinness slagged broadband Internet service providers, accusing them of aiding and abetting music piracy while CD sales and royalty payments to musicians plunge.
Read More »
Add Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) to the list of folks who complain YouTube is neither thorough or expedient in removing objectionable content from its servers, whether it be in violation of copyright or “good taste.”
Read More »
If there was an Emmy Award for legislation production, NBC Universal Chief Executive Jeff Zucker would surely win it. Last October he called upon Congress to pass a bill that would create a dedicated intellectual-property enforcement bureau and today it’s looking more and more like he’s going to get it.
This week members of the House [...]
Read More »
If the Motion Picture Association of America is so intent on shuttering BitTorrent trackers, perhaps it should set its sites on the really big offenders, like say … Google. It’s going to have to sooner or later, because some day there won’t be any smaller operations left for it to sue.
Read More »
If you lack the moral compass with which to determine ownership of digital music, Recording Industry Association of America president Cary “tough love” Sherman would like to provide you with one. Speaking at the Congressional Internet Caucus Advisory Committee’s State of the Net Conference in late January, Sherman suggested that rather than filtering the Internet [...]
Read More »
The cheeky folks at the Pirate Bay may need a peg leg or two when Sweden’s legal sharks are done with them. A Swedish prosecutor filed charges today against the popular BitTorrent tracker’s proprietors, accusing them of “promoting other people’s infringements of copyright laws.“
“The operation of the Pirate Bay is financed through advertising revenues,” [...]
Read More »
Digital music sales are soaring, but that hasn’t stopped the recording industry from continuing to spin its long-running woe-is-me tale of piracy and declining revenues.
According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry’s 2008 Digital Music Report (PDF), global digital music sales rose to $2.9 billion in 2007, up from $2.1 billion in 2006.
Now that [...]
Read More »
According to last year’s looking-ahead-to-the-year- to-come lists, 2007 was to be “a year of hyperdisruption for the technology industry.” It was to be “a year of carnage.” But it was also to be “a year of great happiness and multiple blessings.” Above all, 2007 was to be “a busy year for technology.” Which, as you’ll see below, is pretty much how it turned out. What follows is Digital Daily’s abridged guide to the year in tech news–a fond reminiscence of what was, and our First Annual Year-End List For Year-End List Haters.
Read More »
Looks like Samba is the first beneficiary of the European Commission’s antitrust sanctions against Microsoft. To comply with the terms established by the EC’s 2004 antitrust ruling, the software giant has signed an agreement with Samba that will give the company the protocol documentation its developers need to make its open-source software inter-operate with Windows.
“Today [...]
Read More »
Copy-protection vendor Macrovision’s decision to acquire Gemstar impressed investors about as much as one of the “Welcome Back, Kotter” reruns listed in Gemstar’s flagship magazine, TV Guide. Macrovision shares dropped 24%, to $19.66, and Gemstar lost 18%, to $4.91, on news of the $2.8 billion deal.
Seems the market’s not too keen on Macrovision spending that [...]
Read More »
