According to the BBC, two founders of The Pirate Bay have launched a fresh venture - a file-sharing site called Bayfiles they claim will respect copyright rules.
Designed as a one-click-hosting service, it is similar to other sites such as RapidShare and MegaUpload.
The founders claim that Bayfiles will let users share and store movie, music and other files all while respecting copyrights.
But lawyers say it is still likely to bust copyright laws.
To mark the tenth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Google and the New York Times have launched a dedicated 9/11 YouTube channel. PC Mag reports.
Entitled "Reflections on 9/11: 10 Years Later," the channel contains archived broadcasts from September 2001 and unique content from the Times.
The two content partners are also crowdsourcing personal stories and selecting clips to post on the channel and the Times Web site on September 11.
Contributors can answer questions like, "What is your strongest memory of 9/11?" or "How did 9/11 change you?" or "What did you lose or gain because of 9/11?"
Apple has done away with TV show rentals. Several bloggers noticed the option to rent individual episodes missing from iTunes and Apple TV Friday, and Apple later confirmed the decision was based on lack of interest.
GigaOM on how how Google plans to change the way you watch TV.
Google chairman Eric Schmidt was on a diplomacy mission last week, reaching out to broadcasters in the UK and urging them to embrace changes in the way that viewers watch TV, as enabled by the Internet.
“You ignore the Internet at your peril,” Schmidt told the audience. “The Internet is fundamental to the future of television for one simple reason: because it’s what people want.”
For Schmidt, people want the experience that the Internet brings, because it enables things that traditional TV cannot: “It makes TV more personal, more participative, more pertinent.”
Bihar Rural Development Minister Nitish Mishra told media as graft becomes a nationwide concern, particularly with the anti-corruption crusade by Anna Hazare in New Delhi.
For the first time in Bihar, nearly one million people living below poverty line will be given the first instalment of money under IAY for construction of houses Saturday at statewide camps organised by the government in all 534 blocks.
The state government has directed all district officials to make arrangements to record video of complaints of all beneficiaries of IAY at the camps.
"We have asked officials to set up three counters in every camp, where beneficiaries will lodge written complaints against officials who may have demanded bribes and delayed work," Mishra told IANS.
"Everything will be recorded and soon uploaded on YouTube to expose corrupt officials and end the involvement of middlemen," he added.
The move follows increasing complaints by villagers about officials asking for bribes to get things done with respect to the IAY in the state.
Even top government officials have admitted that the poorest of the poor have to pay bribes to officials to get the benefit of this housing scheme. Those who have no money to pay bribes don't get the benefit.
The first thing that usually comes to mind when one thinks of Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs is the iPod, which revolutionized how people listen to music. But Jobs, who announced on Wednesday afternoon that he is stepping down as CEO of Apple, should also get a lot of credit for changing the way we watch TV. [via The Vancouver Sun]
Back in 2005, it was Jobs who cut a deal with Walt Disney Co.'s ABC to sell ABC shows on iTunes just one day after the episodes had aired on the network. The deal was considered groundbreaking at the time and caused a lot of concern in the television industry, particularly among ABC affiliates, who sent a letter to the network expressing anger at the agreement and at the fact that ABC had not consulted them on it.
The fear was that if viewers opted to watch shows via iTunes, ratings for the network and its stations would fall and the backbone of the television industry would collapse.
What Jobs and Disney knew was that new platforms were emerging that would become just as important as the television in the living room and the networks would only be hurting themselves if they ignored them.
But Jobs' and Disney's deal also was the beginning of the end of appointment television. While the VCR and later the DVR already started to free viewers from being held hostage to network schedules, iTunes and the platforms that followed took it to the next level.
In a report released today by online measurement firm comScore, Facebook ranked as the third largest website for viewing videos online in the month of July, with Google Sites and Vevo ranking as the first and second largest. VentureBeat reports.
... Interestingly, while Facebook ranked third on this chart, it still has a lot of catching up to do in terms of the amount of time each viewer spends on the site watching videos.
The company averaged 17.9 minutes per viewer, while Vevo almost tripled that with 66 minutes and Google Sites had a whopping 353.7 minutes.
The difference makes sense because YouTube and Vevo revolve around video as their main content, while Facebook features multiple types of media, including photos.
Miramax Films is making 20 of its movies available to rent on Facebook, even as new research shows the social network has yet to become a formidable competitor in the digital movie market. [via The Los Angeles Times]
The independent studio that spun out of Walt Disney Co. last year is offering films, including "Pulp Fiction," "Kill Bill," "Clerks" and "Swingers," on a new Facebook page called Miramax eXperience. Each movie costs $3 to rent for 48 hours.
Illegal downloads of some Fox Networks TV shows like Hell's Kitchen and MasterChef have increased since the company established an eight-day delay before its TV shows are made available on Hulu and Fox.com, according to TorrentFreak, reports Cnet.
It’s been a week since Fox stopped offering free access to its TV-shows the day after they air on television. The TV-studio took this drastic step in the hope of getting more people to watch their shows live and thus make more revenue. TV-viewers, however, are outraged by the decision and have massively turned to pirated sources to watch their favorite shows.
During the first 5 days, the number of downloads from the U.S. for the latest episode of Hell’s Kitchen increased by 114% compared to the previous 3 episodes. For MasterChef the upturn was even higher with 189% more downloads from the U.S. For MasterChef.
TIME Magazineon Japan's booming porn industry - for elders.
Japan has seen a surge in demand for pornography that has turned adult videos into a billion-dollar industry, with "elder porn" one of its fastest-growing genres.
Director Gaichi Kono says the eroticism of elders is captivating to younger viewers. "I think that, as a subject, there is this something that only an older generation has and the young people do not possess. It is because they lived that much more. We should respect them and learn from them," says Kono passionately.
... Japan's adult-video industry is believed to be worth as much as $1 billion a year, according to industry insiders, with the largest video-store chain Tsutaya releasing about 1,000 new titles monthly, while the mega adult mail-order site DMM releases about 2,000 titles each month.
Although films featuring women in their teens and 20s are the mainstay of the industry, a trend toward "mature women" has become evident over the past five years. Currently, about 300 of the 1,000 adult videos on offer at Tsutaya, and 400 out of the 2,000 at DMM, are "mature women" films.
Image left of a DVD box of a pornographic film, starring 74-year porn star Shigeo Tokuda.
Universal Pictures has announced that The Big Lebowski is available for rent on the social network. USA Today reports.
Viewers can purchase a 48-hour rental window to the 1998 Coen brothers comedy for 30 Facebook credits or $3.
The digital release launches Universal's Social Theater application, which combines streaming movies with social media interaction.
In recent months, studios have increasingly offered movies for rent on Facebook, eager to capitalize on its large network of users. Warner Bros. has offered The Dark Knight, and Paramount has released the "Jackass" films.
Variety on how networks are synching up their social TV strategies.
A growing number of channels are fielding apps on smartphones and tablets to supplement TV shows with extra content synchronized to be relevant to what's occurring on the television screen.
These so-called companion apps pump out everything from insta-polls to exclusive photos and videos intended to appeal to viewers already using second screens during broadcasts to engage in social media.
Many people surf the Web while they watch television. Soon the websites they visit could adapt in real time themselves to the shows being watched—automatically presenting information relevant to the show, or even tuning their ads in response to what you're watching.MIT Technology Review reports.
A new type of Internet-connected television, due out before the end of the year, has built-in software and hardware that send data about what is on-screen to an Internet server that can identify the content.
Web pages being viewed using the same Internet connection as the TV set can then tap into that information. The system can identify any content onscreen, whatever the source, whether live TV, DVDs or movie files playing from a computer.
Flingo, the San Francisco-based startup that developed the technology, known as Sync Apps, says the new set is already being mass-produced by one of the top five television brands in the U.S. and will retail for less than $500.
Google has quietly rolled out yet another feature of its Google+ social network, letting users click Share from any YouTube video, revealing an icon that suggests watching the video with friends in a Google+ hangout.
Discerning TV viewers take note: Apple just flipped a switch and turned on HD availability for many HBO television shows in the iTunes Store. Customers in the U.S. and Canada can now purchase HD episodes and seasons of many HBO series, including Eastbound & Down, Rome, Entourage (later seasons) and Big Love.
Chinese video sharing website Tuduo plans to raise $174m at a valuation of $3.2bn when it becomes the latest internet company to make its Wall Street debut on Wednesday. The Guardian reports.
Similar to YouTube, Tuduo shows user-generated videos as well as licensed and in-house content. Tuduo's bigger rival, Youko, raised $203m when it floated on the New York Stock Exchange in December.
Beware any headline in a newspaper or blog that starts with a question, writes Medical correspondent Fergus Walsh for the BBC.
Generally the answer to the question is no, and is a means for the writer to grab the reader's attention and then proceed to irritate them.
Walsh poses the question because of a study that may well get some media attention. Published online in the British Journal of Sports Medicine it suggests that compared to people who watch no TV, those who spend a lifetime average of watching six hours a day can expect to live nearly five years less.
... The paper's conclusions that "TV viewing may have adverse health consequences that rival those of lack of physical activity, obesity and smoking; every single hour of TV viewed may shorten life by as much as 22 min.
Cheer detergent is rolling out what it claims is an industry first: A clickable YouTube video that takes you to a non-YouTube site. Mashable reports.
The music video, for the song “Climbing Walls” from Strange Talk, has colorful objects, which viewers can click to be entered to win them.
The Cheer video leads to a Facebook app for Cheer where you can register for the item you “dug.” A YouTube rep says she believes Cheer is “one of the first” to use Annotations this way, though she said she couldn’t be sure others hadn’t.
Chill is a new service that lets you share and watch videos with others and have conversations in real-time. Currently, you need to have a Facebook friend already using the site to join up, then once you’re in you can choose to create your own ‘Lounge’ or join an existing one. PSFK reports.
Inside you can add videos to the queue by searching YouTube and Vimeo or typing in a direct URL link. The screen in the Lounge then plays the videos in order and you can thumb up or thumb down them and chat with the other people in the Lounge.
The weak economy is hitting Americans where they spend a lot of their free time: at the TV set. TIME Techland reports.
They're canceling or forgoing cable and satellite TV subscriptions in record numbers, according to an analysis by The Associated Press of the companies' quarterly earnings reports.
The chief cause appears to be persistently high unemployment and a housing market that has many people living with their parents, reducing the need for a separate cable bill.
But it's also possible that people are canceling cable, or never signing up in the first place, because they're watching cheap Internet video. Such a threat has been hanging over the industry. If that's the case, viewers can expect more restrictions on online video, as TV companies and Hollywood studios try to make sure that they get paid for what they produce.
How many web users are currently being sued for alleged online copyright infringement in the US? The folk at TorrentFreak, who have been obsessively logging these cases, claim 200,000 BitTorrent users are now involved in some stage of lawsuit, and claim settling with a relatively small fee on a large number of cases is fast becoming a way that rightsholders can profit from piracy.
Google Hangouts, a feature of Google+, Google’s new social network, lets people video-chat, watch YouTube clips together and even take turns belting out rounds of karaoke. Bits Blog reports on Lee Allison's Google+ Cooking School, an hour-long cooking classes conducted over video-chat.
As the mass-lawsuits against BitTorrent users in the United States drag on, detail on the collateral damage this extortion-like scheme is costing becomes clear. It is likely that thousands of people have been wrongfully accused of sharing copyrighted material, yet they see no other option than to pay up.
One of the cases that stands out is that of a Californian man who's incapable of watching the adult film he is accused of sharing because he is legally blind.
YouTube will soon be home to 20,000 licensed movie clips now that it has signed a deal with MovieClips.com. The startup will provide the clips which can be found at MovieClips YouTube channel and via search.
Johnny Carson has come to YouTube, with the new and official "Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" channel. Carson, the original king of Late Night, was the host of "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" from 1962-1992.
NBC’s top-rated summer series “America’s Got Talent” announced today the 12 acts from the YouTube online auditions that will perform live for the first time on Tuesday, August 9. TV by the Numbers reports.
Last season’s runner-up, soprano prodigy Jackie Evancho, auditioned through YouTube and her recent debut album “Dream with Me” has just been certified gold.
Over the past few months, thousands of acts from across the country submitted videos at www.youtube.com/agt and from these submissions, the show selected 20 acts and the YouTube community picked their favorite – Matt Wilhelm, a BMX racer from Chicago.
The conference’s original founder, Richard Saul Wurman, is working on a new creation that radically overhauls the formula used by TED--much as TED itself reinvented the standard business conference model when Wurman launched it in 1984. Fast Company reports.
Wurman’s plan is to stage a series of improvisational one-to-one conversations, held in front of a small invitation-only audience and then disseminated via a high-quality app.
Cable and satellite television companies have a pornography problem: Their customers aren't watching enough of it as they spend more time browsing porn on the Web. The Wall Street Journal reports.
... Adult TV's woes echo broader challenges that the television business is facing from Internet video. Distributors and TV networks, for instance, are talking about restricting next-day Web streaming of TV shows, which some executives believe eats into ratings and makes it easier for television viewers to become "cord-cutters."
IPads, connected TVs and TV Everywhere services will be the biggest drivers of the global transcoding business, which is expected to grow to nearly half a billion dollars over the next few years. That kind of growth has a number of startups (and investors) excited about taking advantage of a wide-open market opportunity.
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