As reported on Valleywag and picked up by Slashdot, Sony BMG has been testing an alternative to copyright takedowns of unauthorized music videos on YouTube: inserting a link to the band’s official page instead.
An eagle-eyed Valleywag tipster with a taste for Modest Mouse spotted an interesting new feature on YouTube. Uploads of music videos from the band by non-official sources now carry a link reading “Contains content from Sony BMG,” which leads users to the official Modest Mouse page on the site.
Commenter Mr. E discovers that the “claim” link is added automatically, by Google’s YouTube Video ID Tool, when a matching video is spotted on upload. Emphasis added:
Dear YouTube Member:
Sony/BMG has claimed some or all visual content in your video Float On. This claim was made as part of the YouTube Content Identification program.
Your video is still live because Sony/BMG has authorized the use of this content on YouTube. As long as Sony/BMG has a claim on your video, they will receive public statistics about your video, such as number of views. Viewers may also see advertising on your video’s page.
Sony/BMG claimed this content as a part of the YouTube Content Identification program. YouTube allows partners to review YouTube videos for content to which they own the rights. Partners may use our automated video / audio matching system to identify their content, or they may manually review videos.
Sincerely,
The YouTube Content Identification Team
This sounds like a promising development, a less intrusive means of copyright policing than the flat DMCA takedown. Might Sony be recognizing that fan appreciation is a good thing, to be nurtured into compensation rather than squelched with takedowns? As of Thursday morning, the Modest Mouse channel has been viewed 77,808 times, and this particular “Float On” video, with associated Sony ads, more than one million times. I can only hope the more nuanced approach succeeds without becoming too intrusive to the viewers or the host site.
Court tosses abuse of process claim brought by former file sharing defendant
Chan v. Priority Records, LLC, No. 07-15449, 2008 WL 2447147 (E.D. Mich. June 18, 2008)
Priority Records sued Candy Chan for copyright infringement, claiming she used iMesh to download and trade music files. The record company withdrew the suit when Ms. Chan told them it was her daughter that traded the files. The daughter became a defendant too, but that case was thrown out on a procedural issue.
Ms. Chan tried to recover her attorney’s fees in the copyright lawsuit against her, but the court denied the request. So she filed her own lawsuit against Priority Records, its law firm, and Settlement Support Center, alleging abuse of process and violation of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO).
The defendants moved to dismiss. The court granted the motion.
It held that Ms. Chan’s claims could have — and, pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 13(a) should have — been brought as compulsory counterclaims. Ms. Chan had raised these issues (but did not file the counterclaim) in the underlying copyright suit. Most of the allegations in this suit alleged illegal conduct occurring prior to the filing of the underlying copyright suit. And many of the allegations involved only Ms. Chan’s daughter, not Ms. Chan herself.
New Push Towards Social Advertising May Miss The Fact That Influence Isn't Static
As more and more people are realizing that banner ads don't work very well as advertising, there's a rush on to find better alternatives. What's now getting a lot of attention is "influential" ads. News.com has two examples of new companies trying to put this into action. The first is a company called 33Across that tries to use some algorithm to figure out who is most "influential" online and target ads towards them, hoping they'll influence others. The other is a company with the most generic name for this space: SocialMedia, who is hyping up the fact that it's come up with a "FriendRank" to determine how influential someone is, and then try to get those influential people to effectively "endorse" advertisements that their friends see.
These approaches have plenty of problems, but the biggest one is the simple fact that studies are starting to show that the concept of "influentials" is overstated. Sure, people are influenced by others, but it's not because some officially designated "influential" influences them. Influence doesn't work that way. People don't trust people because they're suddenly considered influential. They trust people because they know that individual well and trust them on that particular topic. In other words, Bill could be influential on a certain topic to Jill, but won't be influential to others or on other subjects.
But, these services don't seem to do much to recognize that. Instead, they assume that people actually have some sort of universal "influential" rank. What they'll quickly discover is that this won't be very effective, because people won't be influenced by who these services think are influential. And, if anything, these efforts will decrease influence by inserting additional friction. If I were to see a friend in an ad for a product, before making me think that product is more interesting, it will make me wonder what my friend gets out of it, and whether or not he really believes in the product. I trust recommendations that come up unsolicited -- not those that are built into an ad unit.
While We're Making Suggestions To The AP, How About Not Disappearing The News?
In the wake of the ridiculous dustup between bloggers and the AP, where the AP threatened bloggers who help promote AP articles, some are starting to point out that the AP's problem goes well beyond a seriously distorted view of copyright law. The reason this came up at all was because the AP's business model is pretty screwed up in a web world. This was clear from the fact that the more involved the AP gets online the more it ends up competing with all its member newspapers. Almost every action it takes seems to help the AP's business model, while hurting its members. With the latest skirmish, the AP is ensuring that those partner sites get fewer links in and less traffic. Back when the AP signed a deal with Google News, we pointed out that its member newspapers should be pissed off. Basically, the AP and Google had worked out a deal to keep traffic away from the member papers. That's no way to survive. Eventually, if this keeps up, those members freak out and stop supporting the AP.
That leads to great suggestions from Danny Sullivan on how it's time for the AP to totally rethink its business model, recognizing what the web does for its business:
Well, wake up call. You need a new model. Really. Or you're going to die.
The AP should have a news portal. You should take in content from your members, put it up in an easy-to-find way and generate the ad dollars to be redistributed back to your members. Like do it now, before since the entire licensing thing ain't going to live that long.
It's worth reading the whole thing, as it's right on point. However, there is one additional thing that's worth mentioning: the AP really needs to learn to keep its news online. Back when I would link to AP articles, one of the most annoying things was that they would disappear after a couple weeks. We used to get complaints all the time from readers who would find an older post and the underlying AP article would be gone. I had thought that maybe its deal with Google would change this, and started pointing to the Google versions of AP articles... but, nope, those disappeared after a few weeks as well.
In the narrowminded world of an AP exec, they probably think this leads to more licensing revenue, since it will make people search out and license the article after it can't be found any more. Nope. It just makes people pissed off. Many newspapers have realized that there's tremendous value found in freeing up the archives, and monetizing that long tail of traffic via advertisements. That's a lot more effective than pissing off large groups of folks (including the people who promote your articles) and hoping it leads to a little more licensing revenue. So, while I agree with Danny's recommendations for the AP to join the internet era, I'd also add a recommendation that it open up its archives and recognize that URLs should be permanent rather than fleeting.
The European Union's consumer chief will propose new rules to make it easier and safer for the bloc's 490 million consumers to shop online in any corner of the 27-nation EU. Some 150 million EU citizens turn to websites such as Amazon.com and EBay for shopping but only 30 million buy goods and services from another EU state, spending on average 800 euros ($1,240) a head.
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