David V's Blog (5/4/2007) - YouTube You Sued?
CNET (5/7/2007) - Podcast: YouTube, you sue?
Monday, May 7, 2007
Friday, May 4, 2007
YouTube You Sued?
YouTube has announced it will be sharing ad revenue with users posting videos to their popular video sharing site. It has been no secret that YouTube has had problems with users posting copyrighted content.
To date this meant that copyright holders could submit a DMCA request to YouTube to have the content removed from the site, they could get a court order demanding the identity of the person who posted the copyrighted content, and they could sue the person who posted the material.
Now that users will be profiting from the content they post, what will this do to the user's legal liabilities? If a user gets sued for posting copyrighted material and the copyright holder can prove damages related to the revenue the poster received, what happens to the cut of that exact same revenue YouTube received?
The DMCA provides nice provisions designed to protect website owners from items posted by their users; however, now that YouTube is providing an exact picture of the advertising value of that video does that mean that the copyright holder can seek damages for YouTube's cut from that content? As a whole YouTube has a much better case for dealing with copyright content through the provisions of the DMCA, but when they start putting specific value on specific content are they opening up a bigger can of worms?
All in all, I like YouTube's strategy, but I hope they spend some time thinking about defining the value of specific content on a video file sharing site.
To date this meant that copyright holders could submit a DMCA request to YouTube to have the content removed from the site, they could get a court order demanding the identity of the person who posted the copyrighted content, and they could sue the person who posted the material.
Now that users will be profiting from the content they post, what will this do to the user's legal liabilities? If a user gets sued for posting copyrighted material and the copyright holder can prove damages related to the revenue the poster received, what happens to the cut of that exact same revenue YouTube received?
The DMCA provides nice provisions designed to protect website owners from items posted by their users; however, now that YouTube is providing an exact picture of the advertising value of that video does that mean that the copyright holder can seek damages for YouTube's cut from that content? As a whole YouTube has a much better case for dealing with copyright content through the provisions of the DMCA, but when they start putting specific value on specific content are they opening up a bigger can of worms?
All in all, I like YouTube's strategy, but I hope they spend some time thinking about defining the value of specific content on a video file sharing site.
Thursday, May 3, 2007
Feral Ferrell Video
More accustomed to the big screen than the computer screen, actor Will Ferrell has released a viral video on FunnyorDie.com.
I don't know if we're going to be seeing a run by other Hollywood types in the viral video space, but it's good to see some off the cuff work showing up out there. Maybe Tobey Maguire could do a Diet Coke and Mentos video or perhaps George Clooney could pretend to be a Jedi in his parent's basement. Either way I'm thinking guaranteed Webby's!
I don't know if we're going to be seeing a run by other Hollywood types in the viral video space, but it's good to see some off the cuff work showing up out there. Maybe Tobey Maguire could do a Diet Coke and Mentos video or perhaps George Clooney could pretend to be a Jedi in his parent's basement. Either way I'm thinking guaranteed Webby's!
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
Iraq Propaganda 2.0
About two months ago Multi National Force Iraq, the US backed force in Iraq, started their own YouTube channel called MFNIraq.
The channel has a wide variety of videos including everything from F/A-18 Hornets bombing a chlorine truck to an Iraqi Boyscout Jamboree.
To my surprise, all the official comments I've read on this do not reference the existing YouTube propaganda campaign by Iraqi insurgents.
The insurgent YouTube campaign includes videos of horrendous insurgent activities with messages clearly designed to promote terrorism. The messages are all in Arabic and the videos are widely popular with their target audience.
I'm sure the US military noticed the effectiveness that the insurgents were experiencing by utilizing YouTube and decided to fight back with videos of their own. I'm a little confused why they didn't develop a channel in Arabic, as that might be a better way to counteract the effectiveness of opposing propaganda in Iraq itself.
This may also be a ploy to take some of the spotlight off of some of the more embarrassing military footage out on YouTube.
All in all, I find it very interesting to see these propaganda wars played out in the new 2.0 world. Maybe we could work on a scheme where future conflicts can be settled based who has the most friends on their MySpace profile or who has the coolest people listed in their MyBlogLog. Of course in that scenario with 175,060,680 Myspace friends, Tom would be world emperor.
The channel has a wide variety of videos including everything from F/A-18 Hornets bombing a chlorine truck to an Iraqi Boyscout Jamboree.
To my surprise, all the official comments I've read on this do not reference the existing YouTube propaganda campaign by Iraqi insurgents.
The insurgent YouTube campaign includes videos of horrendous insurgent activities with messages clearly designed to promote terrorism. The messages are all in Arabic and the videos are widely popular with their target audience.
I'm sure the US military noticed the effectiveness that the insurgents were experiencing by utilizing YouTube and decided to fight back with videos of their own. I'm a little confused why they didn't develop a channel in Arabic, as that might be a better way to counteract the effectiveness of opposing propaganda in Iraq itself.
This may also be a ploy to take some of the spotlight off of some of the more embarrassing military footage out on YouTube.
All in all, I find it very interesting to see these propaganda wars played out in the new 2.0 world. Maybe we could work on a scheme where future conflicts can be settled based who has the most friends on their MySpace profile or who has the coolest people listed in their MyBlogLog. Of course in that scenario with 175,060,680 Myspace friends, Tom would be world emperor.
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
I Googled iGoogle
So about now everyone knows about iGoogle, the new name for the Google Personalized Home Page. With my ever increasing list of "i" devices (all from Apple), I'm a little worn out on the whole "i" concept. Let's see how many "i" devices I have in my home.....
1 Shuffle iPod
1 Nano iPod
1 Regular iPod
1 Video iPod
1 iTrip
1 iHome
That's a total of 6 "i" devices! With the iTV and iPhone firmly on my shopping list and the iRobot inevitably waiting to pop its head up as the next gift I receive, I'm sure I'll be well beyond my "i" quota by the end of the year.
What ever happened to everything being "e" something? Are the days of "Etrade", "Ebooks", and "e commerce" behind us? What's the next big prefix on the Internet? What ever happened to everything being "smart"? Smart phones, smart refrigerators, smart cars? Are we so lazy that we have to shorten everything to one letter?
For now I'm going to sit quietly and wait for everything in my home to be prefixed with an "i"; although I'm a little apprehensive about getting an "iToilet". In the mean time I'm going to be sticking to good old fashion acronyms. TTYL TFRMB.
1 Shuffle iPod
1 Nano iPod
1 Regular iPod
1 Video iPod
1 iTrip
1 iHome
That's a total of 6 "i" devices! With the iTV and iPhone firmly on my shopping list and the iRobot inevitably waiting to pop its head up as the next gift I receive, I'm sure I'll be well beyond my "i" quota by the end of the year.
What ever happened to everything being "e" something? Are the days of "Etrade", "Ebooks", and "e commerce" behind us? What's the next big prefix on the Internet? What ever happened to everything being "smart"? Smart phones, smart refrigerators, smart cars? Are we so lazy that we have to shorten everything to one letter?
For now I'm going to sit quietly and wait for everything in my home to be prefixed with an "i"; although I'm a little apprehensive about getting an "iToilet". In the mean time I'm going to be sticking to good old fashion acronyms. TTYL TFRMB.
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
SideReel Entertainment Search Engine
A business acquaintance of mine, Bart Myers formerly of GUBA, has launched a new editable entertainment search engine called SideReel.
SideReel is a Wiki type search engine which allows users to edit search results (more specifically the particular page about a topic) including updating broken links, episode descriptions, and cast lists. In Bart's email announcement about the new service he writes "SideReel is a user-editable index. If you find a link that is broken, incorrect information or just want to add something, you can – just click on the Edit icon on most pages. It's like Wikipedia, IMDb and on-demand TV all-in-one".
There are also links available through the search engine to full episodes of your favorite shows hosted at various places around the web.
I ran a search for "Heroes" (greatest show ever) and saw just one search result, but the end page (hosted on SideReel Wiki style) gave a complete description, cast list, crew list, similar shows, additional links (fan sites, etc.), episode guide, and links to NBC where you can watch past episodes.
I personally use episode guides quite often, so for me SideReel will be a good place to go for that. I'm not much for watching TV shows on my PC, but if you do SideReel is a good all in one place to get what you're looking for. Currently there is no advertising on the site so it's a nice clean look.
I didn't see any documentation on how they plan to handle spam edits on their listings and none of the links on the editable results pages have "nofollow". SideReel also doesn't require a user name to edit results so I could see where some link spammers might take advantage of this.
All in all, though I was very pleased with the site.
Congratulations Bart on the launch of your new service and good luck!
SideReel is a Wiki type search engine which allows users to edit search results (more specifically the particular page about a topic) including updating broken links, episode descriptions, and cast lists. In Bart's email announcement about the new service he writes "SideReel is a user-editable index. If you find a link that is broken, incorrect information or just want to add something, you can – just click on the Edit icon on most pages. It's like Wikipedia, IMDb and on-demand TV all-in-one".
There are also links available through the search engine to full episodes of your favorite shows hosted at various places around the web.
I ran a search for "Heroes" (greatest show ever) and saw just one search result, but the end page (hosted on SideReel Wiki style) gave a complete description, cast list, crew list, similar shows, additional links (fan sites, etc.), episode guide, and links to NBC where you can watch past episodes.
I personally use episode guides quite often, so for me SideReel will be a good place to go for that. I'm not much for watching TV shows on my PC, but if you do SideReel is a good all in one place to get what you're looking for. Currently there is no advertising on the site so it's a nice clean look.
I didn't see any documentation on how they plan to handle spam edits on their listings and none of the links on the editable results pages have "nofollow". SideReel also doesn't require a user name to edit results so I could see where some link spammers might take advantage of this.
All in all, though I was very pleased with the site.
Congratulations Bart on the launch of your new service and good luck!
Friday, April 20, 2007
Froogle Still Shown in SMS Searches
As reported on the "Official Google Blog" Froogle has now been re-branded "Google Product Search". A quick look at froogle.com shows the domain has been redirected to google.com/products and all references to Froogle have been removed from this interface, yet Froogle lives on.
When running a search using Google's SMS based search service results for "price" queries still return "Froogle:" with the results.
To see for yourself SMS a query to Google for "price:plasma tv". I'm sure there all kinds of little references to Froogle lying around and it will take some time before all are removed.
For now, the Froogle brand hangs to life one forgotten piece of code at a time.
When running a search using Google's SMS based search service results for "price" queries still return "Froogle:" with the results.
To see for yourself SMS a query to Google for "price:plasma tv". I'm sure there all kinds of little references to Froogle lying around and it will take some time before all are removed.
For now, the Froogle brand hangs to life one forgotten piece of code at a time.
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