The “wild west” days of video sharing sites is over. YouTube has gone corporate, and the music industry is going after other sites to make them limit copyright abuse.

Universal Music has announced that it’s suing two video-sharing websites in the US. The firm has accused both Grouper and Bolt of allowing “mass infringement” of copyright by letting users swap videos that feature unlicensed Universal music. It wants damages of up to $150,000 for each video distributed on the websites without permission.

Bolt’s chief executive, Aaron Cohen, maintains his site removes copyrighted material as soon as it is notified.

“There’s no question that people upload copyrighted content from time to time,” said Bolt CEO Aaron Cohen. “Occasionally we receive official notices to remove content and we do.”

Universal Music claims that the sites have built their value through “use and exploitation of copyrighted material”.

“Grouper and Bolt cannot reasonably expect to build their business on the backs of our content without permission,” said a Universal spokesman.

via BBC NEWS

According to a new McKinsey & Co. report, the power of television advertising is in decline, and by 2010, traditional TV advertising will be one-third as effective as it was in 1990.

McKinsey assumes a 15% decrease in buying power driving by cost-per-thousand rate increases; a 23% decline in ads viewed due to switching off; a 9% loss of attention to ads due to increased multitasking and a 37% decrease in message impact due to saturation.

“You’ve also got pronounced changes in consumer behavior while they’re consuming media,” said Tom French, director at McKinsey. “And ad spending is decreasingly reflecting consumer behavior.”

Real ad spending on prime-time broadcast TV has increased over last decade by about 40% even as viewers have dropped almost 50%. In other words, advertisers are paying more and getting less, which will make them turn to alternatives, such as Internet video.
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LucasFilm is taking a progressive tack and encouraging the distribution of Star Wars-universe fan films online via sites such as YouTube.

From Star Wars: Blogs:

Lucasfilm has been informed that YouTube recently removed from its site several fan-made Star Wars spoofs and parodies. We would like the fan film community to know that this was not done at our request.

Apparently the action was taken by YouTube as a result of a misunderstanding of a request to remove an item containing material taken from starwars.com without our permission. We have asked YouTube to restore any works that they inadvertently removed.

This approach encourages the creative community of fans, while still allowing control over the distribution of the company’s own copyrighted material.

The New York Times has published a story about Hollywood’s growing awareness of vlogging, YouTube and Internet video:

EVEN as David Lehre’s MySpace: The Movie, an 11-minute parody of the social-networking Web site, spawned a high-profile feeding frenzy, some of the Hollywood agents, managers and lawyers, who were clamoring to represent him, didn’t know much about who he was, what he did or what they would do if they got him. But they wanted him anyway.
“It’s their fear of not being a part of it,” said Scott Vener, Mr. Lehre’s manager, who first discovered him on the video-sharing Web site YouTube, where “MySpace” became an Internet phenomenon.

Their fears were justified in at least one respect. Calls about Mr. Lehre didn’t start really rolling in to Mr. Vener’s office at the Schiff Company in Beverly Hills until reports about MySpace: The Movie appeared in the old media, and talent agents aren’t going to get rich chasing artists who are already being widely celebrated. If Mr. Lehre proves to be a harbinger of things to come, talent agents will have to become Internet literate, or hire people who are.

Some people say that the film industry has more to fear than just being late to the party. If the Net begins spawning films — and not simply helping to market or deliver them, as has happened to date — studios’ grip on the business of putting pictures on screens may be challenged.

“Their nightmare is a direct feed from moviemaker to audience,” said Walter Kirn, a frequent contributor to The New York Times who has been serializing his novel “The Unbinding” on www.slate.com and saw one of his other novels, “Thumbsucker,” adapted to the big screen. “Their only trump cards are that they are pools of capital for making expensive things. Otherwise they are cut out of the action.”

MySpace, The Movie is available via YouTube:

The public split of Rocketboom co-producers Amanda Congdon and Andrew Baron is turning into a bizarre soap opera, complete with misunderstandings, accusations and strangers wooing the beautiful star.

In the latest twist, Rocketboom star Amanda Congdon accuses Baron of spreading misinformation and reneging on his promises to her:

“I am disheartened by Andrew Baron’s decision to spread misinformation,” writes Congdon. “He knows I cannot move to LA without a job…but insists on spinning things this way to shore up his assertion that I am “walking away” from Rocketboom. I did not walk away. I did not accept Andrew’s idea of ‘partnership’.”

The convoluted record that is available makes it impossible to know what really happened, but it’s clear that long-standing misunderstandings have corrupted the relationship that Congdon and Baron once had.

Which leaves a mess. Both are very young, talented and have unique experience. But…..

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