Wednesday, 23rd December 2009

Apple looks at internet TV foray
Apple is courting owners of US television networks, including CBS and Walt Disney, in the hope of launching a subscription television service over the internet by next year, people familiar with the discussions said.

Source: FT

Wednesday, 23rd December 2009

Mobile TV users stick to schedule
The BBC has provided a revealing snapshot into how consumers are using BBC iPlayer on their mobiles to watch TV, finding that peak time viewing is about 9.30pm. The prime-time period for evening mobile viewing runs from about 7.30pm to 11pm across the week, a similar pattern to the viewing habits of people watching on a television.

Source: The Guardian

Wednesday, 23rd December 2009

Warner launches on-demand push into Europe
Hollywood studios are eyeing a significant shift in the way they make their films available for rental in Europe after Warner Brothers launched a continentwide video-on-demand push. The studio behind the Harry Potter series and recent hits such as The Hangover has started making its films available to cable television subscribers in the UK, Germany and France on the same day the titles are released on DVD.

Source: FT

Wednesday, 23rd December 2009

BBC gives go-ahead for free online TV service
The BBC Trust has given the provisional go-ahead to Project Canvas, a video-ondemand joint venture that offers free-to-air broadcasts and internet content on television.

Source: FT

Tuesday, 22nd December 2009

BBC to allow internet through TV
The BBC is to offer internet services through the television set, it has been disclosed. Partners in the venture, known as Project Canvas, are the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Five, plus BT and Carphone Warehouse. The BBC Trust has been reviewing whether the project is a suitable use of the licence fee. Last week it told the BBC executive that it would make a provisional ruling in favour of the corporation's involvement.

Source: Telegraph

Tuesday, 22nd December 2009

Sharpen up your festive TV
A new study shows that around a third of people with HD TVs aren’t actually watching high-definition programmes and are watching standard, grainy images blown up onto a big screen instead. However, Mark Prigg reports that "a new breed of gadgets is emerging that can make use of the huge number of online HD programmes".

Source: Evening Standard

Tuesday, 22nd December 2009

Jamie Cullum supports illegal downloading
British singer JAMIE CULLUM is convinced he will always download tracks illegally - even though the practice has cost him 60,000 sales of his latest album THE PURSUIT.

Source: Contactmusic.com

Tuesday, 22nd December 2009

Avatar’s a BitTorrent Hit, But Fox Plays Down Copyright Theft ‘Threat’
Avatar is doing very well at the box office so it will come as no surprise that it is also very popular on BitTorrent. However, rather than having a furious reaction to the copyright theft, Fox is playing down the leak and saying it will have a much smaller effect on profits.

Source: Torrentfreak.com

Tuesday, 22nd December 2009

“Star Trek” Tops One Annual List: Most Unauthorised Downloads
A study by the site TorrentFreak said "Star Trek" overtook its Paramount sibling "Revenge of the Fallen" in terms of copyright theft by 300,000 downloads, having had 10.9 million unauthorised downloads total. If each download represented a single $9 movie ticket, that means Paramount lost nearly $91 million to copyright theft from Star Trek alone. Add in "Revenge of the Fallen," and the number is more than $180 million.

Source: Airlockalpha.com

Monday, 21st December 2009

BBC given go-ahead to put internet on TV
The BBC has been given the go-ahead for the Project Canvas venture to bring internet services to the television set, a decision that could make the public service broadcaster a leading player in a new TV technology.

Source: FT

Monday, 21st December 2009

No decrease in illegal downloading, says BPI
The number of people downloading music illegally is not decreasing, despite the availability of new legal services, according to music industry research. A survey for The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) revealed one in three consumers are using illegal sites.

Source: BBC News

Monday, 21st December 2009

Legal threats won't stop illegal file sharing
Threats to cut off internet users who illegally download copyrighted content are unlikely to reduce levels of illegal downloading, according to silicon.com's jury of IT chiefs. Under the recently unveiled Digital Economy Bill, people who unlawfully download copyrighted material could have their internet accounts suspended. But the silicon.com panel of CIOs and IT directors voted 10 to two against when asked whether such measures would reduce the amount of illegal downloading, with many warning that the measures would do nothing to reduce illegal downloading and may even target the wrong people.

Source: Silicon.com

Monday, 21st December 2009

Beware! There’s no such thing as ‘unlimited’ downloads…
Lisa Bachelor reports on ‘unlimited’ broadband packages with fair usage policies, where if you exceed what the company deems to be “fair” the penalties cut in: ranging from financial penalties to a forced slow-down in speed.

Source: MediaGen

Friday, 18th December 2009

Britain - the digital champion?
Rory Cellan-Jones queries the picture painted by Ofcom of Britain as one of the world’s most advanced countries when it comes to digital communications by pointing out that Britain trails other European countries when it comes to broadband connections with a headline speed above 8M Bits/s.

Source: BBC News

Friday, 18th December 2009

Praise for government copyright abusers plan
Internet New Zealand wants people to stop their illegal downloading from the internet before being caught. The government is receiving praise from the online community for clamping down on illegal downloading, introducing legislation next year, for a three-step infringement notice system. In the three stage warning notice approach, ISPs will issue three notices to those they feel are involved in illegal downloads, before action is taken. After three such notices have been issued, the victim can then seek a fine of up to $15,000.

Source: TVNZ, Stuff.co.nz

Friday, 18th December 2009

Talking about Internet copyright theft
The Insider speaks to a few of the key players involved in the current state of online file sharing, including: Gary Fung, the owner, creator and admin of isohunt.com, one of the world’s largest torrent search engines, and John Lovelock from the Federation Against Software Theft (FAST).

Source: The Inquirer

Thursday, 17th December 2009

YouTube may show films and TV programmes - but at a price
Google is reported to be considering charging for premium content on YouTube as it looks for ways to make the service profitable.

Source: The Indepentent

Thursday, 17th December 2009

C4 and TalkTalk join internet TV group
C4 and TalkTalk have joined Project Canvas, the joint venture between the BBC, ITV, RTL's Five and BT to put internet video on television sets.

Source: FT

Thursday, 17th December 2009

UK consumers enjoy ‘advanced’ digital communications
The UK is one of the world's most advanced countries in terms of digital communications, an Ofcom report says.

Source: BBC News

Thursday, 17th December 2009

Streaming is destroying illegal downloading
Findings from the Global Web Index www.globalwebindex.net, a collaboration between leading online market research provider Lightspeed Research and Trendstream, suggest that the illegal act of downloading media content is being eradicated by streaming in the US market.

Source: internetvideomag.com

Thursday, 17th December 2009

India 'centre for internet copyright theft'
India has become one of the main internet film copyright theft centres, with the domestic movie industry losing millions of pounds through illegal downloads, according to a study. The country was placed fourth among the largest illegal downloaders of online content, after the US, Britain and Canada, a report on the studies by the Motion Picture Distributors' Association (MPDA) suggested.

Source: Google.com

Wednesday, 16th December 2009

UK cinemas enjoy £1bn boomtime with 3D renaissance
Katie Allen reports that mass escapism and a surge in 3D blockbusters have put UK box offices on course for record takings of £1bn in 2009. Cinema admissions for the first 10 months of this year are at 142.2m, according to the Film Distributors’ Association. It expects the year as a whole to be the best for attendances since 2004.

Source: The Guardian

Wednesday, 16th December 2009

Congress earmarks $30 mil to fight copyright theft
U.S. Congress agreed to provide $30 million in new funding for the battle against copyright theft as authorities on Monday also reported success with a recent year-end copyright theft crackdown code-named Operation Holiday Hoax.

Source: hollywoodreporter.com

Wednesday, 16th December 2009

Obama administration pledges new coordinated US effort to punish counterfeiters of movies, CDs
The U.S. government pledged renewed efforts on Tuesday to crack down on copyright theft, promising to aggressively pursue foreign and domestic counterfeiters of movies, CDs and other items that cost U.S. businesses billions of dollars each year.

Source: Orlando Sentinel, Variety, SFGate

Wednesday, 16th December 2009

Detica dismisses internet spying concerns
Detica, the online security company, has dismissed concerns that it is spying on internet users ahead of the launch of a trial to monitor illegal filesharing over Virgin Media’s network.

Source: Times

Wednesday, 16th December 2009

Hollywood tries 'combo' deal to push Blu-ray
Studios are packaging Blu-ray discs with regular versions on DVDs, and throwing in "digital copies," which can play on computers and iPods.

Source: The Independent

Tuesday, 15th December 2009

How to morally justify illegal downloading
Robert Smith argues that entertainment companies are never going to convince people to pay for something that they could easily get for free, and that threats won’t change that.

Source: The National Business Review

Tuesday, 15th December 2009

Awkward download laws make music-sharing case a travesty
The Boston Globe argues that the solution to the problem of file sharing is more likely to emerge from technological change than from legal action, and that in the meantime, the law should reflect the difference between large-scale counterfeiters who profit from copyright infringement and students who casually share files.

Source: Boston.com

Monday, 14th December 2009

Stuntman Steve Truglia
The Guardian article featuring Steve Truglia about working in the film and TV industry isn’t glamorous and that it involves long hours, for not much money.

Source: The Guardian

Monday, 14th December 2009

UK trails on super-fast broadband say OECD figures
The UK is trailing when it comes to next-generation access, new figures show. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the UK is placed 21st out of 30 in terms of speed. That puts it below countries such as Greece, Portugal and Spain.

Source: BBC News

Monday, 14th December 2009

The man who plans to bring the internet to your television screen
Ian Burrell interviews BBC director of future media and technology Erik Huggers, who discusses Project Canvas, the ambitious plan to transform living room media consumption by bringing the internet to our television screens. The project is currently awaiting approval from the BBC Trust amid complaints from BSkyB that the venture (being jointly undertaken by the BBC, ITV, BT and Five) is an inappropriate use of licence-fee money. The audience has much to lose, he claims. "The risk is complete fragmentation of the market place," he says of the danger that individual consumer electronics giants and pay-TV platforms are each left to set up their own online TV offerings.

Source: The Independent

Monday, 14th December 2009

Hollywood still ahead of the games
Letter from Robin MacPherson, of Edinburgh Napier University, who argues that comparing global revenue from video games to film is not comparing like with like. $28bn of theatrical box office may look puny against game sales of $40bn, but PricewaterhouseCoopers reports that filmed entertainment across all distribution media was actually worth over $80bn last year, and is forecast to grow to over $100bn by 2013."

Source: The Guardian

Friday, 11th December 2009

Viewers complain of 'fuzzy' BBC pictures after promise of high definition TV
Urmee Khan reports on viewers' complaints concerning the picture quality of BBC HD broadcasts. The corporation has been accused of reducing the picture quality by lowering the bitrate when new encoders were introduced in August. A BBC spokesman said: "We did extensive testing on the new encoders which showed that they could produce pictures at the same or even better quality than the old encoders at the higher bitrate."

Source: Telegraph, Dailymail

Friday, 11th December 2009

Harvard Prof to Appeal File-Sharing Trial Under “Fair Use” Claims
Harvard Law Professor Charles Nesson has decided to appeal the verdict against accused file-sharer Joel Tenenbaum with the First Circuit Court of Appeals. Nesson argues that downloading music without the copyright holder’s permission qualifies for “fair use” exemption from copyright laws, and if an individual file-sharer is not proven to have caused actual losses that they can’t be held liable for damages.

Source: ZeroPaid

Friday, 11th December 2009

Comcast Disconnecting Users Who Download More Than Four Movies a Day?
In the continuing proxy war against illegal downloading, it seems as though some Internet Service Providers are increasingly flexing their muscle as internet gatekeeper. Comcast, in addition to throttling BitTorrent traffic, has now started to disconnect “excessive” downloaders, arguing that they slow down the network for everybody else.

Source: ZeroPaid

Thursday, 10th December 2009

Talking Shop: iTunes Europe director Oliver Schusser
iTunes Europe director Oliver Schusser says that iTunes still needs to fight filesharers.

Source: BBC News

Thursday, 10th December 2009

Billy Bragg Opposes UK Measures to Disconnect Illegal ISP File Sharers
UK singer songwriter Billy Bragg, a board member of the Featured Artists Coalition (FAC), has come out strongly against new proposals in the Digital Economy Bill, which threaten to disconnect illegal peer to peer file sharers from their broadband internet service providers.

Source: ISPreview

Thursday, 10th December 2009

‘New Moon’ director defends woman accused of copyright theft
A Chicago woman facing prison time for videotaping three minutes of “The Twilight Saga: New Moon” has a new ally in her legal battle — the film’s director. Veteran director Chris Weitz told the Sun-Times he’s dismayed about Samantha Tumpach’s arrest Nov. 28 at a Rosemont movie theater on a felony charge of illegally copying his new hit film, and he’s contacted the film’s studio about his concerns.

Source: Suntimes

Thursday, 10th December 2009

Threat letters against copyright theft to be sent out to 15,000 internet
users in the UK
Threat letters that relate to evidence of the use of broadband connections for the illegal sharing of files will soon be sent out to around 15,000 broadband users throughout the UK. The approval to request the personal details of the broadband users that were considered to have downloaded films, of which most were BT broadband customers, was given recently to the law firm ACS Law by the Court of London.

Source: Broadband Expert

Wednesday, 9th December 2009

M&S to sell TV with built-in link to internet
Marks & Spencer is to start selling a TV which will allow viewers to access online TV without the need for any extra equipment. The iViewer, assembled in North Yorkshire by a British company called Cello Electronics, is the first TV to go on sale in Britain with pre-loaded internet capability.

Source: Telegraph

Tueday, 8th December 2009

BT and Google in talks on creating video delivery network for ISPs
BT is believed to be in talks with Google about an online tie-up that would deliver huge improvements in the quality of internet video programming. As the internet becomes congested by on-demand video streaming, such as the BBC iPlayer and 4oD, BT is understood to be working on a deal to make Google's video content available on a digital delivery network, which BT's wholesale arm is creating for British internet service providers (ISPs).

Source: The Guardian

Tueday, 8th December 2009

The age of 3D TV
Mark Prigg writes about the development of 3D technology, noting that BSkyB is already broadcasting 3D TV to a handful of test boxes.

Source: London Evening Standard

Monday, 7th December 2009

Freemium: Can Spotify learn from Evernote?
BBC blog which looks at the business model termed ‘freemium’- where companies are allowing users to start with a free service, then trying to persuade them that if they pay they'll get something much better. Spotify, the streaming music service, is probably the best-known technology firm to adopt the freemium model. However, it’s hard to tell how successful Spotify is as they are less eager to say how many are actually paying customers, so the blog wonders if they can learn from the successful ‘freemium’ site Evernote.

Source: BBC News

Monday, 7th December 2009

BT sets speedier network target
BT is upping the pace of building its superfast broadband network. The telecoms company hopes to run optical fibre past 4m homes by the end of 2010 amid rising confidence that it can persuade householders and companies to buy high-speed access from it. It had previously pledged to run the new network past 1.5m homes by next summer on the way to offering coverage to 10m by 2012.

Source: Times

Monday, 7th December 2009

BIFA winners announced
The winners of the twelfth annual British Independent Film Awards (BIFAs) were announced yesterday.

Source: BIFA

Friday, 4th December 2009

Can streaming end illegal filesharing?
Mercedes Bunz argues that as it becomes easier to stream video content, the attraction of illegal downloading is diminished.

Source: The Guardian

Friday, 4th December 2009

Virgin challenged over web traffic monitoring
Privacy International is considering legal action over Virgin Media’s proposal to monitor internet users for illegal downloads.

Source: Computer act!ve

Friday, 4th December 2009

Internet service providers urge changes to digital bill
Peers are being urged to make substantive changes to government plans to tackle illegal file-sharing by ISPs.

Source: BBC News

Friday, 4th December 2009

Comcast to take control of NBC Universal
Comcast struck a deal to take control of the media empire NBC Universal (NBCU) in a controversial move that creates a new entertainment powerhouse, bringing together production of popular television shows and films with distribution to millions of homes.

Source: The Guardian, The Independent, FT

Thursday, 3rd December 2009

Google and Yahoo unite over copyright theft measures
Google, Yahoo, Facebook and eBay have written an open letter to Lord Mandelson which, while broadly welcoming the digital economy bills, says changes in copyright laws “risk stifling innovation and damaging the Government’s vision for a Digital Britain”.

Source: Channel4 News

Thursday, 3rd December 2009

Record labels must face the music
Don Tapscott argues that instead of trying to criminalise its customers, the music industry should be looking at innovative ways to make file sharing work.

Source: The Guardian

Thursday, 3rd December 2009

T-Mobile launches file sharing Android app
T-Mobile has launched a free file sharing app for Android devices called ShareAnywhere that lets you share files with your friends and colleagues over the internet.

Source: knowyourmobile.com

Thursday, 3rd December 2009

Microsoft escalates war on copyright theft
Microsoft is launching a large, coordinated attack against software copyright theft on December 3rd 2009, as part of a campaign that the company is calling “Consumer Action Day”, an effort to educate PC users and companies about the risks of unauthorized copies of software.

Source: techflash.com

Wednesday, 2nd December 2009

NBC Universal sale makes key breakthrough
General Electric, the American conglomerate, and Vivendi, the French media group, have struck a deal that opens the way for the NBC Universal entertainment group to be sold to Comcast, the American cable operator. By combining NBC Universal's television networks, film studio and theme parks with its own cable channels, Comcast would gain better access to the programming and film content consumed by its cable customers and would be able to expand its video-on-demand operations.

Source: Times

Tuesday, 1st December 2009

FACT and FDA reward employees in cinema for anti-piracy work
16 cinema staff from across the country have been rewarded with over £4000 to recognize their vital role in stopping the camcording of films in cinemas.

Source: Cinema business

Tuesday, 1st December 2009

Europe Worries U.S. Bowing to ‘Industry’ in ACTA Talk
The European Union is alarmed the Obama administration is lobbying on behalf of the entertainment industry as part of the United States’ negotiations for an new international copyright accord, according to a leaked EU document.

Source: Wired.com

Tuesday, 1st December 2009

Will Avatar turn out to be the cinematic equivalent of The Emperor’s New Clothes?
Anton van Beek discusses whether James Cameron’s Avatar really represents a leap forward in 3D cinema.

Source: Home Cinema Choice