While Mark Cuban's insisting that TV Everywhere is brilliant, it's difficult to see what the benefit is for users. We already noted that the whole program seemed to be something of a mess with no one agreeing on standards, meaning that there might be a bunch of different ones. Oh, and then there's the whole plan to include way too many ads and not let users skip any of them. Meanwhile, Broadband Reports notes that the various players appear to be bickering with each other over who pays for what... and who gets compensated for what. The whole thing is a recipe for a disaster. As Broadband Reports summarizes, "bickering between broadcasters and TV operators, limited selection, walled gardens and unskippable ads" are the sort of things that drive people to other options, such as file sharing -- which is what TV Everywhere was supposed to prevent.
I'll be the first to admit that I actually agreed with the stance of telcos a few years back that local "franchising" rules were a problem. If you don't know, for a long time, if you wanted to offer cable-based television in a market, you had to get a "franchise" agreement from a local (town/city/region) authority. For many years, this meant a single cable company offering service with absolutely no competition. When the telcos came along with plans to offer television over fiber or DSL lines, they realized (accurately) that having to get approval in every tiny region would be cost prohibitive. This was all absolutely true, and it was also true that it was silly and unproductive for telcos to have to get so many different approvals and abide by so many different rules just to finally give the cable companies some serious competition in markets.
The telcos were successful in making their case, but, of course, these things never happen without a catch. Various states wiped out local franchises, and put in state-wide franchises... but, in doing so, the telcos were often able to dictate the terms of the state-wide franchise rights, making them quite friendly to the telcos, but not so friendly to others or to actual consumers. Apparently, states are now realizing that the promises given to them by telco lobbyists haven't been shown to be true. The insistence that statewide franchising would lead to lower prices for TV service, for example, hasn't been validated at all.
I recently got to hear first hand how the statewide franchise law in California is leading to serious problems for some really amazing local municipal and school networks, which will now get shut down, since the statewide law doesn't require it, as the local franchise rule did. I'm not convinced that the answer is to return to local franchising, which still seems like a process that is too convoluted for innovation. Perhaps the real answer is that none of this will matter eventually, once television all runs through your browser, anyway...
Back in March, some cable companies announced plans for an offering called TV Everywhere, which was designed not to actually add value to your cable subscription plan, but to pressure TV networks to stop putting their content online for free, and offer it, instead, via cable authentication. For users, it would mean the ability to watch their cable subscriptions online, but only after they authenticate themselves, which seemed like a big hassle. It may be an even bigger hassle. Apparently, in this effort to take on things like Hulu (and, to a lesser extent, YouTube) no one at the cable companies got the message that simplicity is what made those sites work:
CBS Interactive president Quincy Smith this week proclaimed that there's no unified standard among cable companies for the project, and dozens of companies are all approaching back-end technology differently. There's also no real consensus between cable companies on how to proceed. One result? Users not having a central resource for video content.
Bowman suggested that projects like TV Everywhere may not yield a single site that will contain content from dozens of programmers. Instead, the authentication system the industry develops may be used to point pay-TV subscribers to several different sites to view their pay-TV content online.
Earlier this year, we talked about how some magazines were really making an effort to make the physical magazine worth buying by doing cool things with the physical product. Most of those were niche publications, but there's some evidence that much more mainstream magazines are experimenting as well. Last year, Esquire Magazine experimented with an e-ink cover. However, it looks like Entertainment Weekly is going even further, by allowing CBS to embed video within an ad in the magazine. Yes, you read that right. Basically, a small video screen is installed in between two pages, and seen through a cutaway. Apparently, it works pretty well, with full-motion video, including sound (apparently somewhat loud, with no volume control, which is a bit annoying).
While a bit gimmicky (and probably quite expensive), it does get you thinking about some other possibilities for actually making physical magazines a bit more worthwhile.
It's no surprise these days to see that service providers are getting sued for the actions of their users, but it is always fun to see how the lawyers for the plaintiffs try to get around the obvious problems of DMCA or CDA safe harbors. The latest case involves boxing promoter One Ring suing Ustream, one of a number of live video streaming companies out there. Like the misguided lawsuit threat against Justin.tv, this involves a sports group suing the platform provider because a user turned their webcam towards the television, so that others could watch the stream. The DMCA pretty clearly makes these lawsuits entirely baseless, as the only liability is on the person who actually used the account and pointed the webcam at the TV (separately, the fact that you can potentially be guilty of copyright infringement for showing the world what you see with your own two eyes is quite troubling, but a discussion for a different day).
In this case, though, there's a little tidbit, brushed over by the original article, but which suggests how One Ring hopes to get around the DMCA safe harbors on copyright infringement. It's not just suing Ustream over copyright, but it's also claiming that since its logo was seen via the broadcast, Ustream is also guilty of trademark infringement. That's because there's an annoying loophole in that trademark is not technically covered by either the DMCA's safe harbors or the CDA's safe harbors. The DMCA only covers copyright, and the CDA specifically exempts "intellectual property," thus leaving trademark in nowhere's land between the two. Not surprisingly, this has become a popular loophole for lawyers to try to exploit (in fact, we were recently threatened on this very point).
That said, it still seems like Ustream should have a strong case. Even if trademark is not explicitly covered by a safe harbor, simple common sense should make it clear that the company should in no way be liable for the actions of its users. On top of that, claiming that its trademark infringement to show the One Ring logo is also quite questionable and hardly seems likely to stand up under scrutiny. Still, it's an annoying lawsuit that Ustream has to deal with, for no particular reason.
On Friday, we posted a guest post from singer Amanda Palmer, all about her thoughts on connecting with fans. If you didn't get a chance to read the whole thing, at the end she included a music video that she did. However, the story behind that music video is so good that it deserves a separate post of its own. We already know that Amanda has been a big fan of using Twitter to reach out to fans, and she did exactly that in this case -- but not to film a video. Just to hold an impromptu "flash gig" on the beach with two days' notice. Cool idea. Other bands should try that as well.
And then... one of her fans suggested the morning of the gig that she learn this song by Cat Stevens. So she did. And she went to the beach and a bunch of her fans showed up and she played some music and everyone was happy. And then they realized that the setting was great to film a music video. One of the people there was Danna Kinsky, who hardly knew Amanda, but is a filmmaker, and had her camera. Another person there was Lindsey Barnes, a photographer, who agreed to shoot some photos of the group. And, with the help of Kirsten Vangsness to corral and organize people, they created an impromptu music video...
The whole thing was thought up, organized and completed in 20 minutes. There was some after the fact editing and sound work, which appears to have taken a few weeks, but the end result is really amazing. It's a better music video than an awful lot of expensive professional music videos... and it was a spur of the moment thing. As the video notes at the end, musicians shouldn't fear Twitter, but learn to embrace it:
It's really an amazing example of what you can do by connecting with fans. We're so thrilled that Amanda is taking part in our CwF + RtB experiment, that this week's special promo is that you can just buy her book and CD by itself (the book is signed by both Amanda and Neil Gaiman), or for a little bit more, you can also buy the whole Techdirt Music Club and get a bunch of other stuff as well. If you just want the Amanda Palmer stuff separate from The Music Club, it's only available until midnight August 10th, so don't miss out...
In talking yesterday about the legality of viewing the "spy camera" footage of sportscaster Erin Andrews in her hotel room, someone pointed out in the comments that some journalists are now claiming that this shows why the internet needs to be regulated. Wait, what? How? Why? Creating the video was already illegal. What kind of regulation is needed here and how would it actually change anything? It seems that any time something "bad" happens some people suddenly jump up and insist "their oughta be a law!" without actually thinking through what that actually means.
Meanwhile, some others have noticed that this video apparently has been online for many months, and no one paid any attention at all to it until ESPN made a big deal out of it. Now, you can understand ESPN's general position, but it makes you wonder if there wasn't a better way to handle this that could have involved tracking down who was responsible without putting out a big press release and kicking off all this interest in the video. It's almost as if (perish the thought!), ESPN is actually trying to exploit this situation (and Andrews) to draw more attention to itself...
You may have heard that some miscreant somehow surreptitiously filmed well-known ESPN sportscaster Erin Andrews naked in her hotel room using some sort of pinhole spy camera installed the room. Obviously, this was incredibly illegal (apparently, the suspicion is that it was an insider at ESPN who knew which room she was in) and hopefully the person/people responsible are caught and punished. However, CitMediaLaw points out that some legal analysts are apparently claiming that it's criminal just to watch the video. But, that's not true. It makes you a terrible person, but it's not illegal. After talking about how a talking head legal analyst on CBS claimed it was illegal to watch the video, Carlos Miller checked in with a First Amendment lawyer who balanced the questions clearly:
According to Photography is Not a Crime's legal analyst Marc Randazza (yes, I have a few, so take that, CBS), Bloom is talking out of her ass.
"That CBS analyst needs more legal education and less melodrama," the Florida First Amendment attorney said in an email responding to my question.
He also added that although it is completely legal to download and view the video, he didn't have much respect for anybody who would.
"Anyone who does download it is kind of an asshole," he said. "She did have an expectation of privacy. We live in a society where the sleazes and the lowest common denominator individuals seem to thrive. If we dried up their mud flats, they would die off.
"What I mean by that is that downloading the video is legal. but doing so is a douchebag move. I certainly won't be downloading it (although I personally would love to see her naked too)."
As if to prove the point, apparently, the NY Post posted still images from the video -- and ESPN has responded by banning NY Post writers from ESPN. The Post didn't break the law, but that doesn't make it any less evil a move.
It was just a few weeks ago that we were suggesting all the talk about YouTube's inability to be profitable was suspect, and there was increasing evidence not that YouTube was profitable yet, but that the claims of how much they were losing didn't take into account the real situation. Still, it comes as a bit of a surprise for Google to come out with a blog post that basically tells everyone that they are way, way, way off in thinking that YouTube is a huge money loser for the company. The reason it's a surprise is because it actually seemed like Google enjoyed having people think that YouTube was such a loser, since it held back competition. Perhaps there was some fear that it was also holding down the stock price or something. Either way, hopefully we can put to rest the silly idea that YouTube is some sort of blackhole for money.
Earlier this year, there was an uproar when Hulu and Boxee got into a back and forth "blocking" of Hulu content on Boxee (with Boxee posting workarounds for every Hulu block) at the request of Hulu's content partners, who were worried about pissing off cable companies. The whole thing was silly. Boxee wasn't doing anything illegal or wrong. It just provides a specialized video web browser. Today, already, anyone who can hook up a computer to a TV can access Hulu on their TV using a regular browser. The only difference with Boxee was that it was a better browser for the TV. It's hard to see why that should be blocked. Then, a few weeks ago, the same thing happened with the PS3 suddenly being blocked from displaying Hulu content as well. Not surprisingly, Hulu has now admitted basically the same thing: it came under pressure from content partners. Hulu is (again) reasonably apologetic and open and honest about the situation, but again it raises questions about whether or not Hulu can really survive as it serves two masters, one of whom is so backwards looking it thinks that pissing off consumers who are doing something completely legal is a good business strategy.
