Internet Portals to Be Fined for Obscene Videos

According to Digital Chosunilbo, South Korea is cracking down on porn videos online.

"People who post pornographic material on Internet portals such as Naver, Daum and Yahoo, and portals which fail to prevent them are looking at fines of up to W100 million ($11.000).

"The Ministry of Information and Communication on Monday is pushing a revision of the Information and Communication Law to “strengthen the social responsibility of Internet portals,” Vice Minister Yoo Young-hwan said."

650 video responses to Diddy' appeal to hire new assistant

More than 650 people have uploaded resumé-videos in response to singer and entrepreneur Sean "Diddy" Combs job offer for a personal assistant, according to USA Today.

"Keep those videos to three minutes or less ("I don't like anything long-winded,'' he says) and upload them to www.youtube.com/group/diddyassistant. Here's Combs, describing the job in his own video-appeal on YouTube.

Related articles:

-- Posting Your Résumé on YouTube

-- Underemployed TV writer posts resumé on YouTube

50 Cent to judge first YouTube Rap Competition

The YouTube OntheRise Rap Edition is the first of three genre-specific music competitions, reports 901am.

"This first installment seeks to discover the best rap and hip-hop artists in the United States, inviting unsigned talent who aspire to be professional artists to submit their own original music videos.

Artists can submit original videos that best represent their talents from August 10 through August 17. 50 Cent, Common and Polow da Don will help judge the contest and will select 20 finalists to be presented to the YouTube community on August 29."

Pilots of new US shows leaked online

Some of the most anticipated autumn pilots from America’s top TV networks can be found on line, according to TVScoop and TVWeek.

"Shows including the much hyped Bionic Woman, The Sarah Connor Chronicles and Lipstick Jungle have been made available from illegal download sites such as Torrent Spy, The Pirate Bay and Mininova ince last Friday. Other titles include Pushing Daisies, Cavemen, Reaper and Chuck.

In recent years, some networks have begun to distribute premiere episodes online in advance of their debuts. Such promotional previews are often carefully timed to hit right before the regular broadcast of the show. Also, network previews are typically streamed via the network’s own Web site, or through other controlled environments such as popular portal and business partners like AOL or MSN."

Comic-Con's key for TV

Interesting article from Variety, on how television series are being promoted at Comic-con, and how the event attracts fans way beyond the comicbook world.

"It's taken on a life of its own," Warner Bros. TV Group exec VP of marketing Lisa Gregorian said of the event.

"There are fans there of all kinds of entertainment," she continued. "And these are people who communicate what they like through blogs and the Internet."

The Internet has changed the way in which we market TV shows... "We're marketing much further out than we ever did," Gregorian said. "The awareness of these new shows is so much higher."

And while "Jericho" didn't become a major hit last season, CBS Paramount believes its show also got a boost from a strong showing at last year's Comic-Con.

"They launched it before it even aired," said Lauri Metrose, VP of communications for the studio. She describes the Comic-Con crowd as "tastemakers."

"These are the people who are online, talking about TV shows and movies," Metrose said. Studios "are getting savvy to the fact that these people are passionate and can make a difference."

Comic-Con has also spread beyond its sci-fi roots, expanding to become a showcase for all sorts of programs with nerd or superfan appeal.

"It's about smart shows and shows that appeal to the smart audience that's down there," said Phil Gonzales, VP of communications for CBS Entertainment.

TV downloads 'use underhand tactics'

Experts have warned that the new breed of TV download services may leave some web surfers struggling to cope with slow internet connections. [The Guardian]

"Ian Fogg, a broadband analyst with Jupiter Media, said this could drastically reduce the speed of some viewers' internet connections. When testing the BBC iPlayer software, for example, his colleagues found that their web surfing slowed to a crawl - even though they had closed the application.

"It's coming across quite underhand, and the consumer has no visible way of switching it off," he said. "Many will notice that their internet connections may be running slower, but will not necessarily know why."

Web child fight videos attacked

Police chiefs have urged websites to remove violent video footage of children fighting, following an investigation by the BBC. The BBC

"Panorama found that films showing brutal fights between children are regularly uploaded to sharing websites.

Police say the companies should monitor what is posted on their sites and remove any violent or criminal content.

But YouTube, said it did not employ anyone to police what is posted. The site, which is owned by Google, claims pre-screening content is a form of censorship which is not the role of a private company.

One showed a youth brandishing a handgun and smashing it against a police car.

Another shows a laughing teenager jumping on a police car and shattering its windscreen. "

Congress enlists YouTube to grill the attorney general

YouTube, the video-sharing Web site that is already reshaping the form of presidential debates, will now try its hand at revolutionizing Senate Judiciary Committee hearings. Townonline reports.

"With the blessing of Congress, YouTube plans to grill the United States Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, "and get the denials that the Senate Judiciary Committee can’t."

"It was clear we weren’t gong to get anywhere on our own," noted Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., the top Republican on the panel.

Specter was even hopeful that the <>"mind-bending format," in which Gonzales will have to deliver answers to video-recorded questions sent in by the public, will help encourage others to come forward to testify "and grab their chance for fame."

For YouTube, a System to Halt Copyright-Infringing Videos

Google hopes technology will be in place in September to stop the posting of copyright-infringing videos on its YouTube site, a company lawyer told a judge presiding over copyright lawsuits yesterday. [via NY Times via Techmeme]

Video Podcasting Nearly Killed The Tech Blog Star

Adario Strange on Wired's blog Epicenter thinks Om Malik is better off behind the screen - than as host of his new video talk show GigaOM Show.

"Malik—as much as I absolutely love his writings and his new crop of websites—is simply not a talkshow video star in the making. Some people just aren’t cut out for audio/video media."

Related: - GigaOM and Revision3 Launch Internet Television Show

TechPresidentTV

TechPresident.com launches TechPresidentTV on YouTube with Josh Levy and others weighing in with post-debate analysis.

[via PrezVid]

Jailhouse rock

A video of over 1,000 prisoners, clad in orange jumpsuits, gyrating in synch to Michael Jackson's "Thriller" has created a stir on the Internet. Canada.com.

"The Thriller sequence, complete with zombie moves, is the biggest hit, attracting over one million views since it was posted last wee on YouTube.

Byron Garcia, who oversees the jail and introduced the dance routines last year, loaded the videos onto the Web.

"I want the prison system to learn from this," Garcia told Reuters. "The inmates are after all human beings and the inmates after all, once inside, know that they have committed mistakes, let them enjoy their stay."

Republican Edition of YouTube Debate on the Rocks?

Political blogs like The Caucus are picking up reports that Republican interest in the CNN*YouTube debates may be flagging. Rudy Giuliani may be dropping out due to “unspecified scheduling conflicts.” Mitt Romney is criticizing the Democratic version this week for being too cheesy.

[via NewTeeVee]

Many in the dark about TV switch

Not enough is being done to let American consumers know that soon they will be unable to watch their favorite shows on their old television sets because they can't receive the new digital signals, U.S. lawmakers said on Thursday, reports Reuters.

"U.S. television stations are required to switch to digital only broadcasts by February 17, 2009. People who do not own digital sets will need to buy a converter box or subscribe to digital or satellite cable to be able to watch television.

An estimated 20 million households still rely on analog televisions that receive free over-the-air broadcasts.

... Sen. Gordon Smith, an Oregon Republican, and others expressed concern about the elderly being able to make the switch and possibly falling victim to scams."

[via
TV Barn Ticker]

Report.tv. Citizen journalism, web-video style

The video sharing site Report.tv based in St. Louis has launched in alpha test this week, reports Contentinople [via NewTeeVee].

"Its intent is to put the news in the hands of amateur anchorpeople reporting community-based news. Citizen journalism, web-video style.

"... Report.tv offers targeted channels for specific geographic regions in the United States and will allow for content to be uploaded from users into these channels.

Current.tv perhaps pioneered this idea, bringing together user-generated videos and video journalists offering their take on the news, both as a cable TV channel and online where users can create their own programming.

Friction.tv, a destination for user-generated news and opinions in the U.K., formed a partner deal with Five News bringing its videos onto the evening news.

Ctzn.tv will bring video journalists from around the world together on one site as well as accept submissions from its community."

GigaOM and Revision3 Launch Internet Television Show

GigaOM and Revision3 today announced the debut of The GigaOM Show, a thirty-minute Internet television program that provides an unflinching look at technology news and rare interviews with business leaders.

Om Malik, widely considered one of the most influential blogger-journalists today, and Joyce Kim, a respected technology lawyer and entrepreneur, will co-host the program.

The GigaOM Show is targeted at executives in the high-tech industry, venture and angel investors, along with anyone who's fascinated about the continuing evolution of technology and the Internet.

[via Business Wire]

The Storyteller Challenge

Continuing the wave of recruiting new producing talent over the Web, MySpace, Fox and the Producers Guild of America have partnered for a new program they are calling The Storyteller Challenge. Broadcasting and Cable reports.

"The program will invite aspiring producers to enter their original five- to seven-minute pilots on a dedicated MySpace community page starting Sept. 4. The two winning entrants will each receive $25,000, as well as the chance for a development deal at Fox.

This marks the second such large-scale effort this month. Crackle (formerly Grouper) recently announced a similar plan to get Web talent in front of Sony executives by submitting their work to the site."

Geek movie fans a mixed blessing for Hollywood

More than 100,000 comic book and movie fans are expected to hit San Diego like a geek tsunami this weekend as part of Comic-Con International, an increasingly crucial promotional platform for Hollywood fare, reports The Washington Post.

"At the annual convention, a sort of pop cultural Woodstock, humans of all stripes will wear Klingon costumes, watch obscure anime, buy comics and attend film and TV panels thrown by movie studios and TV networks.

... While the exact size of that geek audience can be debated, most filmmakers and executives band together like a Superman-Batman pair-up in their conviction that the geek audience can kick-start early conversations about upcoming productions.

Said DC Comics' Gregory Noveck: "The geeks alone don't make a movie a hit. They are the canary in the coal mine. They give you an indication if there is potential for wider enthusiasm."

Comic-Con serves as a kind of ground zero for those first responders as they react to footage from upcoming movies as well as their marketing materials."

1 in 5 adults watch Web videos

One in five online Americans view video over the Internet on any given day, thanks to speedier Internet connections and a wider selection of clips, a Pew Internet and American Life Project study finds. The AP reports.

"Young adults watch in greater numbers and often turn to humorous clips, while all other age groups use video predominantly for news, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

On a typical day, 19 percent of U.S. Internet adults watch some form of video. News ranked first and comedy second overall.

Having high-speed Internet access helps: A quarter of those with broadband at home watch video on a typical day, compared with 9 percent for dial-up users."

Joost signs up 1 million users

According to TVSquad, Joost co-founder Niklas Zennström says more than a million people have signed up to beta test Joost.

"It'll be interesting to see what happens when the service launches publicly. Zennström says that could happen by the end of the year."

[via Engadget]

Trailers from Hell

Each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday on Trailers from Hell, there's a new video segment in which a renowned movie director comments over one of their favorite b-movie / exploitation / grindhouse flick trailers. Lots of personal memories, inspiration revelations -- it's like having a beer with a filmmaker whose work you dig, and fessing up about crappy movies you're both ashamed to admit loving.

[via boingboing]

Online TV ads contributed just $400 million in revenue in 2006

Online TV ads contributed just $400 million in revenue in 2006, part of a $25 billion industry, U&S said. But a “mind-blowing” “goldrush”, driven by the potential in sites like YouTube and MySpace to get TV distribution, will see the medium play a bigger part, the firm —even though it doesn’t see online TV platforms taking off for another three years.

[via PaidContent]

Leterme’s blunder gets 225,000 hits

Last weekend Belgium's prime minister-in-waiting, Yves Leterme, made a very public mistake when asked to sing Belgian's national anthem, he sang France's Marseillaise instead of the Brabançonne.

The video of his ‘blunder’ has been downloaded 225,000 times on YouTube.

[via Expatica]

Cable Without a Cable Box, and TV Shows Without a TV

Following a new Federal Communications Commission rule that went into effect July 1, cable companies in the United States now have to separate the security functions that prevent you from watching channels you haven’t paid for from the TV tuner box most of us rent, reports The New York Times.

"The practical result of the rule is that cable companies now have to supply set-top boxes that come with a removable CableCARD. The cards, which look like the PC Cards used in notebook computers, contain the information necessary to unscramble digital cable channels like HBO.

But they could allow other equipment to become much more versatile. The cards are designed to be inserted into a host of other devices, including TVs, digital video recorders (DVRs) and computers."

Television, as you like it

Tomorrow, the BBC will change the way that broadcasting works in Britain for ever. When the much-touted iPlayer is launched to the public, albeit in a "beta" test form, no viewer need ever worry about missing a programme again, because a few clicks of mouse will bring it up on a computer screen, exactly as it was when it was transmitted live. The Telegraph reports.

"Mark Thompson, the corporation's director-general has called the idea "as big a revolution as the introduction of colour television". Soon, the time at which a broadcaster thinks a programme should be scheduled simply won't matter any more.

... The idea of downloading TV programs when you want, where you want is not new: Channel 4 has been doing it with great success since late last year with its 4oD service, earning its independent programme makers an extra £500,000 in just four months, and ITV is slowly unveiling its £20 million ITV.com website.

But the BBC is the biggest name in world broadcasting. Soon, British viewers will be able to download around 70 per cent of the programming available on current schedules, for free. "

YouTube User Puts Legal Lash to Universal

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed suit today against Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG), asking a federal court to protect the fair use and free speech rights of a mother who posted a short video of her toddler son on the Internet.

"In February, Stephanie Lenz uploaded to YouTube a 29-second video of her son dancing to Prince's song "Let's Go Crazy." She said she made it public for her friends and family.

But last month, YouTube told her UMPG threatened legal action if the video was not removed from the site immediately. The video came down.

EFF Staff Attorney Corynne McSherry told internetnews.com Lenz has reason to be upset. McSherry said the video is obviously a fair use of copyrighted material.

"According to the content owners, what they're worried about is long verbatim copies of their music, their movies, their news. Here, we're talking about a tiny snippet of music played in the background of a home video. That's clearly fair use. Unfortunately the folks at Universal didn't spot that like they should have," McSherry said.

Universal Music did not respond to requests for comment. "

Bawdy `No Good TV' Dominates YouTube

Though No Good TV opens with a notice saying you must be at least 18-years-old to enter, the site is a frequent contributor of videos to YouTube, which has no age limit unless videos are specifically restricted. The Washington Post reports.

"In the past week, NGTV videos have attracted millions of viewers on YouTube and accounted for four of the top eight most-viewed clips. Their popularity has been fueled by thumbnail photos of scantily clad women (including Jessica Alba and Jessica Biel), usually taken out of context from movie footage

The site launched earlier this month after a beta phase, promptly drawing an article from Hollywood Reporter questioning the complicity of Hollywood studios who supply NGTV with access to the stars of its films."

JustinTV hangs out with Time Square's Naked Cowboy

It takes one to know one and birds of a feather flock together.

[via TechCrunch]

UGC Killing Our Culture. Book review

Andrew Keen hates user-generated content. The author of recent nonfiction release "The Cult of the Amateur: How today's Internet is killing our culture" believes that homemade online media is killing the economic viability and independence of quality content, replacing the Springsteens and Truffauts in our culture with a meaningless stream of low-brow distraction and product placement. The Daily Reel reports.

"He argues that the homemade media that has become such an important part of Web culture over the past few years is largely worthless, and that mass culture was of a higher caliber when the media gatekeepers had greater power to decide who would be famous and what we would all watch.

... Put simply, Keen just doesn't think everyone deserved to be famous for 15 minutes.

"We're creating a culture of resentment in which everyone thinks they have a right to some sort of cultural visibility," he says. "People don't have that right. Sure, you have a right to be seen, but you don't have any natural right to a mass international audience. You earn that right. … There's a scarcity of talent and there's a scarcity of who can be successful. The reality is that we only have a certain amount of time in the day to watch and to read to listen."

What YouTube doesn't change

Another interesting (negative) analysis of last night's CNN*YouTube debate, by Matthew Yglesias for The Guardian.

"Last night's YouTube-sponsored Democratic presidential debate just took an old question-and-answer format and made it much, much worse.

... It would have been fantastic if CNN, Google (YouTube's parent company), or the Democratic Party had figured out some way to harness it for the purposes of Monday night's debate. Instead what happened is that a bunch of people made videos of themselves asking questions, CNN's staff watched the 3,000 or so videos, they picked some that they liked, and then played them on CNN's cable broadcast of the debate.

The results, predictably, were less entertaining than watching a DVD, but much less informative than trying to, say, read something.

In this neither entertaining nor enlightening manner, of course, the debate greatly resembled, well, the debates of the pre-YouTube era."

Related: - Their Debate - According to Jeff Jarvis, the CNN*YouTube debate was a bust.