Humorless Guitarists Take Down Amusing YouTube Mashup Video

from the not-the-intended-use dept

About a month ago, there was an amusing viral video getting passed around that showed various famous heavy metal guitarists, where the filmmaker dubbed over the films really, really bad guitar playing. It was incredibly well done, as the bad guitar playing was perfectly timed to the actions of the guitarists. It was clearly amusing satire -- yet at least one of the guitarists in question was a bit too sensitive about it. The video has been forced offline, and the creator has had his account cut off. The video was pretty clearly a satire on the way these guitar players play -- and it's difficult to see how the video would hurt the artists in any way. Yes, some might claim that people would think they really played that bad, but the videos seemed to be pretty clearly labeled as dubbed. Of course, like so many other efforts to make some kind of content disappear, it wouldn't be surprising to find this video showing up on other sites (and potentially getting even more attention).

Filed Under: copyright, guitar, music, online, satire, videos

Funny That HBO Is Putting Shows Online, Just As Parent Time Warner Starts Charging Extra For Bandwidth

from the coincidence? dept

The NY Times is covering the news that HBO has finally decided it needs a real internet strategy, and will start offering its content online, free of (additional) charge to existing subscribers. The idea of putting the content online makes a lot of sense, and it sounds like it's offering features that many HBO subscribers would find useful, from access to archived materials to live streams. However, there is something a little odd about all this, as noted by the folks at The Hollywood Reporter. HBO is owned by Time Warner. Time Warner is the same company that is now starting to experiment with overage fees, sometimes based on very low usage -- which would clearly preclude watching very much online video.

It is true that both of these programs are merely tests -- and they're tests in totally different markets right now. However, the HBO online video will only be available to Time Warner customers. The Hollywood Reporter story suggests that it's a case of two parts of a business not communicating with one another -- but I'm sure some more conspiracy-minded thinkers will naturally assume it's really Time Warner's attempt to squeeze more money out of people. Sure, it will say the HBO streams are "free," but just wait until you get that broadband bill... Of course, there is also another possibility. The Hollywood Reporter story mentions the possibility that Time Warner would create a special "exception" to the bandwidth rule if that bandwidth was for watching Time Warner-only videos. That, of course, is exactly the sort of thing that will be sure to get network neutrality advocates up in arms, though it's a subtle shift from traditional network neutrality claims. This time it won't be about "better quality," but about which content counts towards a bandwidth cap.

Filed Under: bandwidth caps, content, hbo, online, video
Companies: time warner

Acxiom Tries To Match Offline And Online Data To Better Target Spam To You

from the just-what-everyone-wants dept

Acxiom, the big provider of "marketing data" for direct marketing purposes -- who has a history of making it difficult to opt-out, while making it easy to have its databases hacked -- is apparently making a big push to link its offline profile data to your online activities as well. The company insists that it's being careful concerning private info, but this all sounds quite a bit like what DoubleClick tried to do with its purchase of data firm Abacus -- which got all sorts of negative publicity, leading the firm to shelve plans to combine the two databases. Acxiom claims that the company learned from what happened with DoubleClick and Abacus, but somehow it seems unlikely that many people will feel comfortable with such promises.

Filed Under: direct marketing, offline, online
Companies: acxiom

South Park Comes Full Circle, Though Viacom Doesn't Seem To Realize It

from the history-lessons-needed dept

Kevin Stapp writes in to let us know that Viacom has decided to put every episode of South Park online. The article quotes MTV Networks Chairman and Chief Executive Judy McGrath talking about having TV shows online doesn't hurt their viewership and could actually help: "One does not diminish the other by any stretch of the imagination." This is something that plenty of folks have noticed before, but perhaps something McGrath shouldn't be saying it as her parent company is trying to convince a court that YouTube is costing it money. McGrath's quote probably won't play very well in court.

However, what's even odder is that no one (in the article, at least) seems to recognize that this is simply a case of South Park coming full circle. The only reason that South Park even is a TV show is because of the video short created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone got passed widely around the internet back in 1995 and 1996. Also, once the show launched, it was one of the first TV shows that fans quickly put online and shared, helping promote the popularity of the show. I still remember people passing around links to the first few episodes in order to round up people to get together to watch the newest episodes on TV. And, what happened? You guessed it... Comedy Central flipped out and started threatening all of the sites that were hosting the episodes. Yet here we are, a decade later and its big news that the company has finally (partially) come to its senses?

Filed Under: online, south park
Companies: mtv, viacom

Latest Thing To Blame On The Internet: The Death Of Jokes

from the you-just-aren't-funny-any-more dept

People love to blame the internet for "the death" of things (newspapers, music, social lives, grammar, etc., etc.). Those claims are rarely (if ever) accurate -- but at least you can sort of understand where they're coming from. However, this latest study makes almost no sense at all, claiming that the internet is killing the ability to tell jokes. According to the short blurb about the study, 40% of people would rather forward an internet gag such as a video or a rambling joke email than tell a joke themselves. Of course, given the joke-telling ability of many people, this might not be a bad thing. Furthermore, it seems like, if anything, this has simply expanded the market for humorous content, rather than shrunk it. Perhaps, instead, we should be more worried about the decreasing ability for people to understand jokes than the desire to tell them.

Filed Under: jokes, online

Do Parents Really Need An Online Test To Know If Their Kids Are Obese?

from the parenting-by-computer dept

We've seen all sorts of stories about governments trying to do a parent's job for them, but, honestly, do parents really need an online test to tell if their children are obese? The article is actually a little vague about what this "test" is. It sounds like kids in the UK are having their height and weight measured, with that info being sent to parents by mail. Parents are then urged to type the height and weight into an online system that will do a simple body mass index (BMI) calculation to tell you that the kid is obese. However, if you need a computer to tell you when your kid is obese then perhaps the real problem is your own eyesight. Do we have an online test for that?

Filed Under: children, obesity, online, uk

Comics Publishers Should Free Their Archives

from the monetize-those-eyeballs dept

Marvel is apparently dipping its toe into online distribution by offering some of its older comics for online viewing. Apparently, for $60 people can get a year's access to "the first 100 issues of Stan Lee's 1963 creation 'Amazing Spider-Man' at their leisure, along with more recent titles like 'House of M' and 'Young Avengers.'" It's a good idea, and I hope they'll be more aggressive about it. Putting household names like Spider-Man online is obviously the first priority, but Marvel and its competitors have enormous catalogs of less well-known comics spanning much of the 20th century. But they should also follow Time' lead and make their entire catalog of lesser-known, out-of-print comics available for free online.

Filed Under: comics, online
Companies: marvel

Suddenly Everyone Wants An Online Office Suite

from the how-to-compete? dept

Just a couple weeks ago, we noted that both Google and IBM were coming out with free products that competed with Microsoft's dominant office suite offering, noting that it was looking increasingly like Microsoft supposed monopolistic domination of the space might not be as strong as some (i.e., European regulators) believed. It certainly looks like more companies smell blood in the water. Adobe has now announced that it has purchased Virtual Ubiquity, makers of an online word processor called Buzzword, just to throw some more well-backed competition into the space. Of course, at some point, you have to wonder how this market shakes out. Obviously, Microsoft is still dominant, but can that continue when it charges so much against free products? The real question, though, may be what everyone else in the market can do to compete. We recently had the Techdirt Insight Community tackle exactly that issue for a client, and the experts there came up with a few key areas that online office suite providers should specialize in to differentiate themselves from both Microsoft and Google in the space. We can't share that specific analysis, but if you're in that space and want the Community to help you craft a strategy to stand out and succeed, contact us.

In the meantime, while I can't reveal what they said, I can give you my own quick analysis for free. It's going to be very difficult for most of these online office suites to get much traction if they don't have a larger platform to plug into. Players like Zoho and Thinkfree are basically trying to build that platform from scratch, but they'll probably need to open up more to third party developers if they want to really gain traction. Google can succeed in the space, in part just by being Google -- but also as it continues to integrate its office suite offerings into other parts of Google. If and when Google finally does realize that it's become a platform play, then perhaps they'll open up the ability to develop apps on top of Google's office apps as well. On Adobe's side, they're trying to build this platform, but it's unclear how much adoption it's really getting or how well they'll be able to integrate this new purchase into the platform play.

Filed Under: office suites, online
Companies: adobe, google, microsoft

Online Survey Finds That People Are Online A Lot

from the don't-trust-50-percent-of-statistics-you-see dept

Last week, there was a much discussed story about the online study that reported that Americans choose to spend time on the Internet rather than having sex. The WSJ Numbers Guy makes an astute observation, that "people who answer online surveys aren't likely to be representative of Americans when it comes to online behavior." When he dug a bit deeper, he found that the survey was conducted with a panel of 1,011 online respondents, who responded to the survey during the week that it was open. Furthermore, the people surveyed were drawn from a pool of people that actually signed up to be surveyed. Obviously the results are skewed to users that actively use the Internet. When questioned, Ann Mack, JWT's director of trend spotting replied "The fact that the survey was conducted online may skew the results a bit." This just serves as a reminder to take studies or statistics that are presented to you with a grain of salt. In this case, the company that did the study was looking to create a new advertising category for people whose lives are so tied up with new technology -- so it's not surprising that the results that it found supported this categorization.

Filed Under: online, studies