Techdirt. Stories about "nbc"

Hilarious And Ridiculous: Networks Threaten To Pull Channels Off The Air If Aereo & Dish Win Lawsuits

Mike Masnick — Mon, 8 Apr 2013 13:52:41 PDT

The entertainment industry has a long, long history of claiming that if copyright law doesn't go their way, they'll all go out of business. It's the adult version of "if you don't do it my way, I'm taking my ball and going home." If court cases don't go their way, or if the law isn't changed, we've been told over and over and over again for the last century (and more frequently in the last two decades) that the industry will take its ball and go home, because they won't create under such awful circumstances (even if those circumstances really aren't particularly different than they've operated under for years). The latest? First, Fox's COO, Chase Carey, claims that if they lose the Aereo case, they might shut down Fox, the network TV channel, and move all its content to cable TV channels.

“If we can’t have our rights properly protected through legal and governmental solutions, we will pursue business solution. One solution would be to take the network and make it a subscription service. We’re not going to sit idly by and let people steal our content.”

That came out about the same time as another quote from a TV exec, Garth Ancier, who has worked at Fox, NBC and WB, basically saying the same thing, arguing that an unnamed "two" of the four major networks are considering shutting down if the Aereo case (and possibly the Dish Auto Hopper case) goes against them.

“I know two that are talking about it,” he says, leaving open the possibility that the others might be as well. He declines to specify which, saying he’d heard it in a “talking over coffee” setting and didn’t want to betray a confidence....

“To say it’s serious is probably an overstatement,” Ancier says. Rather, it’s a contingency plan the networks in question are keeping in their back pockets in case they can’t prevail over Aereo and Dish in court or find some other way to stave off the threat they represent.

Let's be the first to call bullshit on this. No networks are stupid enough to shut down over this, and if they are, good riddance. Put that spectrum to better use. First of all, network TV shows get a lot more viewers. By a wide margin. Yes, there's an occasional cable show (Game of Thrones) that sneaks in to the top ratings, but it's pretty rare. The cable shows that get the most viewers are still viewed a lot less often than most network shows. If you look at Nielsen's latest rankings for last week, the top 10 network shows all scored higher ratings than the top cable show (Walking Dead). And by the time you're at the 4th most popular cable show, you're talking about a show that's getting just around half of the tenth most popular network show.

No network with any business sense at all is going to give up that prime position for getting viewers, and shunt themselves off into the hinterlands of cable TV. And, seriously, if they do want to cede that position, I'm sure there are plenty of smart folks willing to take over that position. And, of course, nothing that Aereo or Dish Hopper is trying to do does anything to threaten the traditional business model of network TV in the first place: ads. In fact, both serve to increase viewers. The real issue is that the networks have gotten fat and happy off of the money they get from cable and satellite companies for carrying the networks, and they don't want that gravy train to go away. So, an artificial situation came up that let them get lots of money, and now that it might go away (and reality is that it won't go away for a long long time) they're threatening to take their ball and go home?

This is clearly bullshit whining from the networks hoping that lawmakers will protect their revenues from cable and satellite providers. It has nothing to do with "stealing content" as Carey claims. Policy makers would be well served to call the networks' bluff. Let the cases play out and let's see (1) if the networks really give up their prime real estate and (2) if others don't rush in to make use of it.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Aereo Wins Again: Appeals Court Says Its System Is Not Infringing

Mike Masnick — Mon, 1 Apr 2013 10:56:31 PDT

As you may recall, Aereo has been in an ongoing legal dispute with the TV networks, who seem to be arguing that anything that disrupts their coveted business model simply must be illegal. While they've won against others, Aereo actually won the first round at the district court level, blocking an attempted injunction. The networks quickly appealed. On appeal, it seemed clear that the judges realized just how insane the situation is. If you don't recall, Aereo sets up a separate individual antenna for each customer, and then streams TV broadcasts to that customer over the internet. This setup makes no technological sense whatsoever. It's inefficient and stupid. But because of the wacky way copyright is interpreted, it's believed to be necessary to avoid being guilty of infringement for doing the same damn thing much more efficiently.

Today, on appeal, the appeals court affirmed the district court ruling, once again blowing a big hole in the networks' arguments. The full ruling (linked above and embedded below) is well worth a read, as it's nice to see the court really try to do its best to truly understand the technology at play, rather than resorting to simplistic and inaccurate analogies, as copyright maximalists often desire. The key to the networks' argument here is that those individual antennas that Aereo sets up are a myth. They claim that it's really one giant antenna. The court disagrees. This issue plays into the big question of whether or not Aereo's service is functionally the same as the (legal) Cablevision remote DVR system, or if it goes too far and is a tool for infringement. The distinguishing factor in that Cablevision case was that Cablevision made a unique copy for every user who requested it (again, stupid and inefficient from a technological standpoint, but this is the life we lead under bad copyright laws). Bizarrely, even Cablevision argued against Aereo here, trying to distinguish its own case (perhaps to handicap a potential competitor).

The court, thankfully, doesn't buy Cablevision's own wacky interpretation, but rather relies on what the court in is case actually said, mainly, that having a unique copy means that it's not doing a "public performance" of the work.

As discussed above, Cablevision’s holding that Cablevision’s transmissions of programs recorded with its RS-DVR system were not public performances rested on two essential facts. First, the RS-DVR system created unique copies of every program a Cablevision customer wished to record. Second, the RS-DVR’s transmission of the recorded program to a particular customer was generated from that unique copy; no other customer could view a transmission created by that copy. Given these two features, the potential audience of every RS-DVR transmission was only a single Cablevision subscriber, namely the subscriber who created the copy. And because the potential audience of the transmission was only one Cablevision subscriber, the transmission was not made “to the public.”

The same two features are present in Aereo’s system. When an Aereo customer elects to watch or record a program using either the “Watch” or “Record” features, Aereo’s system creates a unique copy of that program on a portion of a hard drive assigned only to that Aereo user. And when an Aereo user chooses to watch the recorded program, whether (nearly) live or days after the program has aired, the transmission sent by Aereo and received by that user is generated from that unique copy. No other Aereo user can ever receive a transmission from that copy. Thus, just as in Cablevision, the potential audience of each Aereo transmission is the single user who requested that a program be recorded.

The court rejects the networks' argument that Cablevision was different because Cablevision had a license for its initial transmission, noting that the case has nothing to do with transmission, but is solely based on the question of whether or not this is a public performance under the Copyright Act. As it notes, if there is no public performance, the license question is moot, as Aereo only needs such a license for the public performance.

The court also responds nicely to the bizarre argument of the networks that because Aereo specifically designed its system to be legal within the confines of the Cablevision ruling, that proves it's infringing. As we noted at the time, this argument doesn't help the networks at all. After all, the courts found Cablevision legal, so it makes sense that Aereo would design with that in mind for the purpose of staying on the right side of the law. The networks' basic argument is, directly, that if you try hard to stay within the law, you must be breaking the law. That's crazy, and the court, rightly, rejects it:

Plaintiffs also make much of the undisputed fact that Aereo’s system was designed around the Cablevision holding, because it creates essentially identical copies of the same program for every user who wishes to watch it in order to avoid copyright liability, instead of using a perhaps more efficient design employing shared copies. However, that Aereo was able to design a system based on Cablevision’s holding to provide its users with nearly live television over the internet is an argument that Cablevision was wrongly decided; it does not provide a basis for distinguishing Cablevision. Moreover, Aereo is not the first to design systems to avoid copyright liability. The same is likely true of Cablevision, which created separate user associated copies of each recorded program for its RS-DVR system instead of using more efficient shared copies because transmissions generated from the latter would likely be found to infringe copyright holders’ public performance right under the rationale of Redd Horne.... Nor is Aereo alone in designing its system around Cablevision, as many cloud computing services, such as internet music lockers, discussed further below, appear to have done the same...

In other words, no, designing your system in accordance with the law doesn't mean you're trying to violate the law. As the court later notes, it appears that the networks really want to overrule Cablevision, which is made clear by their claims that Aereo designing within the confines of Cablevision must be infringing. The court notes that even if that's what the networks want, barring a Supreme Court decision in the alternative, they can't change their earlier ruling.

Though presented as efforts to distinguish Cablevision, many of Plaintiffs’ arguments really urge us to overrule Cablevision. One panel of this Court, however, “cannot overrule a prior decision of another panel.” ... We are “bound by the decisions of prior panels until such time as they are overruled either by an en banc panel of our Court or by the Supreme Court.” ... There is an exception when an intervening Supreme Court decision “casts doubt on our controlling precedent,” ... but we are unaware of any such decisions that implicate Cablevision.

There is a dissent from Judge Denny Chin, who argues that because Aereo had to go through the technologically inefficient process it does, that shows why it's infringing.

Aereo's "technology platform" is, however, a sham. The system employs thousands of individual dime-sized antennas, but there is no technologically sound reason to use a multitude of tiny individual antennas rather than one central antenna; indeed, the system is a Rube Goldberg-like contrivance, over-engineered in an attempt to avoid the reach of the Copyright Act and to take advantage of a perceived loophole in the law.

That argument is really troubling, and it's good that the majority overruled it. If that were true, any inefficient or convoluted process required by the law to remain consistent with copyright law would be seen as evidence of infringement. And that's just wacky. You'd effectively create veto power for any new innovation that way.

Anyway, the case is far from over, but so far Aereo is 2 for 2 and the networks have come up empty. Let's hope that trend continues.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

System Used By New Six Strikes CAS, Falsely Identifies Game Mods As NBC TV Shows

Mike Masnick — Fri, 1 Mar 2013 08:44:00 PST

Reader David Sutherland emailed us this week about a DMCA notice that he received via his MediaFire account. The notice, which we've included below (including all of the crappy formatting) claimed that he was using MediaFire to host "one of the following files: Downton Abbey, CONTRABAND (2012), GRIMM (2011), House M.D., MAN WITH THE IRON FISTS, THE, The Office." The "file" they claimed was one of those TV shows/movies was "Cantha Cartography Made Easy 2009.tpf" which is actually a game mod for Guild Wars. You might possibly be able to argue that ArenaNet, makers of Guild Wars could have a copyright claim (maybe, sorta), but that's not who sent the notice and it's not what they claimed it was. Sutherland notes that he set up this MediaFire account solely to host game mods and has never hosted any other content there.

So, who sent the DMCA takedown? Dtecnet. And, as you can see from the messy, messy DMCA notice below, they tried to takedown a huge list of files. If Sutherland's experience is anything to go by, you have to wonder how many of them are actually infringing.

Of course, we've seen plenty of bogus DMCA takedowns. It happens all the time. But this one is doubly important, because it's from DtecNet, a division of MarkMonitor. MarkMonitor/Dtecnet also just happen to be the company providing the key monitoring for the new "six strikes" Copyright Alert System (CAS). The Center for Copyright Information has a web page on its site about an "independent expert assessment" of MarkMonitor's antipiracy methodologies. Except... that page is completely blank. Perhaps, if they're looking to do an analysis, figuring out why they're taking down content that has nothing to do with what they claim would be a good place to start.

Good thing the CAS works entirely based on accusations, without needing to show any proof at all, huh?

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Crime Inc. Inc., The Business Of Hyping The Piracy Threat

Joe Karaganis — Mon, 1 Oct 2012 11:00:00 PDT

Growing up in Chicago in the 1970s and 1980s, I have fond memories of watching Bill Kurtis on Channel 2 news. He was sort of a local Walter Cronkite--the personification of the news. At our house, he was on every night.

So I felt some nostalgia when I got a call from a staffer on Kurtis' current show, Crime Inc., about an episode they wanted to do on media piracy. And also some apprehension, since we've been pretty adamant in our work that criminality--and especially organized crime--is the wrong way to look at piracy. But since I'm a regular complainer about press coverage of these issues and an optimist that the debate can be changed, I agreed to help.

The Crime Inc. people sent over an outline that leaned heavily on content industry talking points: job losses attributable to piracy; financial losses to Hollywood, artists, and the economy; downloading as theft; and the role of organized crime.

But they had also found our Media Piracy in Emerging Economies report and wanted to understand our perspective. I explained that we have problems with the way the major industry groups frame these issues. We don't think piracy is primarily a crime story, but rather about prices, lack of availability, the changing cultural role of media, and the irreversible spread of very cheap copying technologies. They said they understood. It's a complicated topic.

I said I'd help as long as this didn't end up as an MPAA propaganda piece. 60 Minutes had done one of those a couple years ago and it was a major public disservice. They said they'd do their best.

Over the next few months I spent four or five hours talking to and corresponding with staff at Crime Inc. I walked them through the difficulties with measuring the impact of piracy, the problems with opaque industry research, the general irrelevance of organized crime, the market structure and price issues that have made piracy an inevitability in the developing world, the wider forms of disruption in the music industry and so on, and so on. I gave them a list of people to talk to, including Internet hero and MPEE support group gold member Mike Masnick. And they did interview Mike for several hours.

The episode aired a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, it is an almost pure propaganda piece for the film and music industry groups, reproducing the tunnel vision, debunked stats, and scare stories that have framed US IP policies for years. Nothing I told them registered. Mike did not appear. The only concession was two minutes at the end for an alternative business model segment focused, strangely, on the Humble Bundle software package.

By the end, I no longer thought this was an MPAA covert op. Rather it looked like a Rick Cotton overt op. Cotton is VP and General Counsel at NBC-Universal, an enforcement hardliner and piracy fabulist to rival Jack Valenti, and one of Crime Inc.'s corporate bosses at NBC-Universal. He got plenty of airtime to talk about the existential crisis of piracy and the need for stronger enforcement. I have no idea if word came down from him to produce this story (it was the early days of the SOPA fight) or if Crime Inc. was just following the well-worn script on these issues. One doesn't exclude the other. But it is clear that the show rented itself out to Cotton's larger enterprise: Crime Inc. Inc., the business of hyping the piracy threat.

So what do we learn from Crime Inc. Inc? Here's a short summary. I'll also reproduce some of my end of my correspondence with them below, which goes into more detail.

First--and bizarrely--that there is a massive problem of organized criminal DVD and CD street piracy in the US. And that this is part of a much wider array of linked criminal activities; and that DVD piracy is more lucrative than the drug trade.

I imagine they led with this because it's more filmable, but it has little to do with present day piracy. I tried to tell them that. Our work does go into this and finds what everyone knows--that DVD piracy has been displaced by sharing and downloading of digital files in the US in the past decade, and that the street trade has been almost completely marginalized. Even at its peak, CD/DVD piracy does not appear to have been a big market. Our 2011 'Copy Culture' survey found that only 7% of American adults had ever bought a pirated DVD. The drug trade claim--ugh. It's incredible that this bit of nonsense can be endorsed by journalists with some investment in understanding crime.

Second--we get a recitation of impossible-to-kill zombie stats: that media piracy costs the global economy $57 billion/year; that it costs the movie business $6.2 billion/year; that 2 million people work in film/TV production in the US and that piracy has destroyed 373,000 jobs. The problems with these numbers will be familiar to readers of this site, but see below for more detail.

Third--the now traditional guided tour of Mexican street markets, to look for evidence of cartel manufacture of CDs and DVDs. See here and below for more on how this has become a media ritual. In short: are cartels involved? Almost certainly yes, in parts of Mexico where the cartels control most of the informal (and some of the formal) economy. Is this typical of developing countries or the US? No. Will it survive the spread of bandwidth and cheap computers in Mexico? No.

Fourth--that downloading is theft and everyone knows it. End of story. Pity the hipster they found to stage this point. We document more complicated attitudes toward copying and sharing in the US, marked by generally strong concern with the ethics of uploading or 'making available' of materials; widespread but weak and largely non-operative concerns with downloading; and virtually no concerns about sharing with friends and family.

Fifth--that piracy is why sympathetic characters like a Hollywood stuntwoman have to worry about not having steady jobs or insurance. This is an odd claim in an era of record profits for the major studios, massive corporate welfare for film production, and continued outsourcing of production to non-union, low-wage countries, but hey--it's a show about piracy.

Sixth--that the SOPA debate was about... I kid you not... "Hollywood vs. high-tech thievery." Censorship or innovation concerns? No. (Skip to the very end for this somewhat garbled line. I imagine some embarrassed producer telling host Carl Quintanilla to just mumble through it and get it over with.)

That's not a full list, but life is short and Crime Inc. has already absorbed too much of mine. I'll add that watching this on Hulu in several sittings was a maddening experience in itself since Hulu resets with every viewing, force feeding the same 90 second Buick LaCrosse commercial each time. [How has this viewer annoyance system survived? And how is this targeted advertising for someone living in Manhattan?]

Uncharacteristically, there appear to be no pirated versions of the episode available online. Which leads me to think that Crime Inc. may have stumbled onto the most powerful anti-piracy strategy of all: make TV that's only designed to please the corporate boss.

Additional thoughts from Mike: Just to add to Joe's excellent breakdown of the what happened. I had two roughly hour-long phone calls with Crime Inc. staffers, sent one detailed email to them and also spent an entire afternoon being interviewed on camera by them in San Francisco. In all of that, I corrected various misconceptions, and repeatedly pointed out that these issues were complex and nuanced, and it would be inaccurate to classify things as simply "theft" or to not recognize the wider implications of what was happening. Throughout it all, they insisted that the show would be a balanced exploration of the topic, and they even promised me a DVD of the final program (which has yet to arrive). I should have suspected that the whole thing was going south when we spent an inordinate period of time with the producer coaching me to make fun of Kim Dotcom during the videotaped interview. She literally would take some of my words and suggest alternatives as ways to make fun of Dotcom. I pushed back on a few points and she seemed annoyed that she couldn't get me on tape saying it exactly the way she wanted. This, apparently, is how the TV sausage gets made. My reward for all of that was apparently to be cut out of the program entirely.

Given how much of my interview was about opportunities, alternative business models, and the recognition that the issues were really business model problems, rather than legal problems having to do with copyright law, I now wonder if my inclusion was solely to try to get me to mock Dotcom on camera, with the rest just being a setup to make me comfortable to say such things. Failing that, my segment got cut out entirely.

I'm sure NBC and Rick Cotton got what they wanted out of the broadcast. But what could have been a valuable and nuanced discussion about the complex problems being dealt with here turned into a simplistic, stereotyped and factually bogus report that reflects poorly on Bill Kurtis, NBC and Crime Inc.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Copylaundering: Jay Leno Airs Campaign Video From YouTube, NBC Claims Ownership Of Original

Leigh Beadon — Fri, 25 May 2012 03:05:00 PDT

This is easily one of the best responses to copyfraud I've ever read. Sure, Jay Leno is a pretty easy target for a roast, but musician Brian Kamerer does a brilliant job of taking him to task over a bogus YouTube takedown. I strongly suggest reading the whole thing, but here's the short version of what happened.

A few years ago, Brian helped a friend, who was running for mayor, create an intentionally silly campaign jingle and commercial, which they uploaded to YouTube. Two years later, they heard from another friend that the video had appeared on the Jay Leno Show as part of a segment about local campaign commercials. They just got a kick out of it, and moved on—until now, another three years later. Brian discovered that the YouTube video had been taken down on a copyright claim... by NBC (most likely as the result of a ContentID match as NBC uploaded old episodes into the system). So Leno mines the internet for material to air on his show—without permission or even the courtesy of letting them know—and then, years later, the network claims ownership of that material and accuses the actual creators and copyright holders of infringement. Brian is unimpressed, to say the least—and even supplies a script for how he imagines things went down:

JAY LENO

Hey remember those loser kids, we played their bit once, remember those guys? Let’s get em.

WRITER

What? Who? Why?

JAY LENO

Those guys, we took their video about three years ago and played it, I loved that song, remember?

WRITER

Oh yeah, sure, I remember those guys. So, what is it you want to do to them?

JAY LENO

I want to have the boys at NBC say that we own the video, so that if they try to watch their video on YouTube, they won’t be able to, and it will look like they stole the video, like Carlos Mencia!

WRITER

Or we could just leave those two nice boys alone. After all, you loved that song, remember?

JAY LENO

You’re fired! Secretary! Get me someone who has the balls to frame these two unknown assholes, so that eventually their work will be blocked on YouTube! And I need fifty more classic cars!

He's kidding of course—he knows that's not how it really happened. The real problem is that the system is broken: the law favors the accuser and permits this kind of copyfraud, giving NBC absolutely no incentive to narrowly target its takedown efforts. But Brian, quite reasonably, points out that he's not interested in excuses—everything that happened revolves around the public face of Jay Leno, and he sees no reason that Leno shouldn't bear the blame.

I know you’re reading this going, “Brian, you don’t understand! It’s not me, it’s just some NBC internet robot that scans YouTube videos and then compares the videos to the vast NBC library and just blocks the YouTube videos that match up, because the robot assumes the video has been stolen. Besides, you don’t own anything on YouTube! Don’t be mad at me, funny man Jay Leno! I liked your video! It’s the robot’s fault. The robot fucked up.”

Don’t hide behind NBC on this one, dude. And don’t blame YouTube. And forget about the robots. I’m not talking to the robot now. I’m talking to you, Jay Leno. Where does the buck stop on The Jay Leno Show, if not with Jay Leno himself? The buck stops with you Jay.

As more people fall victim to copyfraud—including this process whereby a TV network launders your copyrights into their own—and tell the story publicly (and entertainingly) as Brian has done, the aggressive entertainment companies are going to have a harder time recruiting stars as mouthpieces for the anti-piracy cause. Increasingly, they are going to see their own artists rebelling against their bogus takedowns and over-enforcement, as some already are. Combine that kind of pressure with transparency efforts like Google's newly available takedown data, and eventually something's got to give—starting with any remaining shred of public respect for copyright law.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

TV Network Execs Contemplate Going To Court To Say Skipping Commercials Is Illegal

Mike Masnick — Tue, 15 May 2012 12:56:00 PDT

Late last week Charlie Ergen and the folks at Dish Networks presented the TV networks with a bit of a conundrum. You see, the company decided to actually give consumers what they want: setting up a special DVR system, called Auto Hop, that would let viewers not just automatically DVR the entire primetime lineup of all the major networks with the single push of a button -- but also to automatically skip commercials when watching the playback, as long as it wasn't the same day the shows aired. This is something that consumers clearly want -- which Dish execs were pretty upfront about:

“Viewers love to skip commercials,” Vivek Khemka, vice president of DISH Product Management, said in a statement

But, of course, who is a consumer in this market gets complicated pretty fast. The TV networks, of course, make a fair bit of money from advertising on these shows, and they're not happy about any idea that means people might skip commercials. Those of you who have been around for a bit may recall a few relevant stories. First, there was Jamie Kellner, the former chair of Turner Broadcast Systems, who once claimed that walking away from your TV while commercials aired was a form of theft. Then, of course, there was the famous ReplayTV case. If you don't recall, ReplayTV was an early competitor to TiVo, and in many regards a better product. Among its features, it took an already considered legal feature from VCRs called "commercial skip" and added it to DVRs. The industry sued, in large part because of this feature, which they considered to be breaking the law.

Of course, the expense of the lawsuit resulted in Replay's parent company SonicBlue declaring bankruptcy. It then sold off the remains to D&M, who tried relaunching a version of the product without all the cool features people liked, and it went nowhere. Eventually, DirecTV bought the remnants. However, the basic lawsuit died out with the bankruptcy. A bunch of ReplayTV users, led by Craig Newmark from Craigslist, actually tried to continue the case on their own, to have those features declared legal, but after the networks promised not to sue those users for using the features, the judge tossed the case.

Left unresolved, of course, is whether or not features like commercial skip are actually legal.

As some are pointing out, the TV networks may have missed a golden opportunity by not continuing the fight against Craig and the other users, since they wouldn't be able to afford the bigtime lawyers that Ergen and Dish can easily toss out here. So the TV networks basically have to make the decision if this is really a battle worth fighting.

It does seem clear that the anti-consumer folks who run the TV networks would certainly like to slap Dish around for this move:

"I think this is an attack on our eco-system," said NBC Broadcasting chairman Ted Harbert on a conference call Monday. "I'm not for it."

Isn't it just like NBC to think that a tool that the public actually finds useful is an "attack" on their ecosystem? At some point, in the way, way distant future, perhaps we'll live in an age where companies like NBC Universal recognize that, when things are more efficient and easier for consumers, it is a good thing, rather than something to freak out about and declare evil?

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Chris Dodd: The Internet Developed Because Of Strict Copyright Enforcement

Mike Masnick — Wed, 7 Mar 2012 09:33:01 PST

It's really quite amazing just how badly Chris Dodd still doesn't seem to get what happened in the SOPA/PIPA fight. Every time he opens his mouth to "explain" what happened, he just looks less and less and less aware of what actually happened.

His latest discussion on the topic came at the National Association of Attorneys General meeting in Washington DC -- a "friendly" audience for Dodd. His discussion starts around the 2 hour, 10 minute mark if you want to fast forward the video. For reasons that are unclear, CSPAN has disabled embedding on this video. Either way, Dodd continues to show off that he has no idea what happened. The specific "panel" that he's on is (of course) pretty one-sided. It involves him, old friend Rick Cotton from NBC Universal ("just think about the poor corn farmers!") and then two university officials to talk about how they're forced to censor the internet because of draconian laws that the MPAA pushed through (where there's at least a little pushback on the ridiculousness of copyright law, but just barely).

Dodd does his usual nod to the fact that the MPAA is "pro-internet" and "pro-innovation" and how any "solution" has to keep a free and open internet. That's funny, because the proposal he backed over the last year didn't actually do that. So, it's a bit late to say that now. And, next time, if he really wants to protect the free and open internet, perhaps invite some of the folks who actually built it to the table, rather than shutting them out, calling them liars and trying to dismiss their concerns. It might help people take him more seriously when he talks about how much he loves the internet.

He goes on to talk about how an example of "good" legislation was the kind that the MPAA shoved through a few years ago, forcing colleges and universities to become copyright cops. Not surprisingly, Dodd happens to leave out the part where the MPAA was so egregious in lying with bogus stats to get that law passed that it eventually had to admit it lied. Of course, that didn't stop the law from passing.

From there he launches into a defense of SOPA without naming SOPA. He takes us on a tour for the ages of bogus, debunked or misleading stats, in talking about just how evil "foreign rogue websites" are -- leaving out the actual facts, including that existing laws seem to be doing just fine in tracking those guys down. He neatly conflates counterfeit drugs and bulletproof vests with people downloading movies. Funny, because I don't think anyone's ordering bulletproof vests from Megaupload.com. On top of that, he claims that (unnamed) search engines are reaping billions in profits from these sites, which is flat out bunk.

He concludes by asking the assembled attorneys general for "help" in dealing with this "ever growing problem." Wait, I thought that the MPAA was insisting that the "problem" was getting under control... but now they're admitting that it's "ever growing"? Yeah, okay...

Rick Cotton's talk is no less ridiculous. He kicks off by telling the attorneys general that it's time to end "the wild west" of the internet, and that we can't think of the internet as "Somalia" any more. This is, of course, totally and completely ridiculous and Cotton should be ashamed for such blatant misinformation. After all, he's been a key player in helping to pass many of the 15 different copyright laws in the past 30 years targeting "piracy" -- with many focused directly on the internet. To pretend that the internet is "the wild west" is just flat out ridiculous. He quotes the bogus Mark Monitor report claiming tons and tons of traffic to infringing sites. And while he admits that Megaupload has been shut down, and that it represented a huge portion of that traffic, he ignores the point that this was under existing laws. And yes, he says this right after insisting the internet is lawless.

Rick Cotton is shameless in his disinformation efforts.

When they get to the question section, the first question is to Dodd about SOPA (which neither he nor Cotton mentioned directly). Dodd starts out with his usual talking points about how this was unprecedented -- that the bill had tremendous bipartisan support, and how SOPA was just about foreign sites (ignoring that the original draft of SOPA was not limited to foreign sites -- yay misinformation!). Dodd pretends that a bunch of these sites "learned" from the "over 300" domain seizures to set up in foreign territories -- ignoring that most of the sites he's complaining about have been around for much longer. He also skips over the bogus seizures and the questionable legality of the seizures themselves. Minor details, apparently.

He then states that it's unlikely that these bills will move forward this year, but "there are efforts underway" and he's hopeful that solutions to "this problem" are being worked on.

And he concludes on the doozy that I point out in the title, claiming that the internet itself would have been at risk if the tech industry had "the same attitude" to copyright as they do today:

The internet itself would have been in deep trouble, if you'd had this attitude about copyright twenty years ago -- where the very ideas that gave birth to this industry would be at risk.

Oh really? Which ideas? Ideas about freely sharing information and code? Ideas about not caring if anyone could copy your source code -- in fact requiring that such copying be allowed? To claim that the internet industry's view on copyright law has somehow shifted from being protectionist to not just shows, yet again, how Dodd has absolutely no clue what he's talking about on this subject, and should maybe take some time to talk to people who actually work in the industry before he makes a bigger fool of himself.

From there Mark Shurtleff, Utah's Attorney General, blamed the whole SOPA/PIPA situation on a "well-orchestrated" online campaign that was based on pure lies. Um. It's ridiculous to hear him say this after sitting through nearly an hour of lies from the pro-SOPA/PIPA camp. He even admits that his own kids argued against him. Perhaps he should listen to them, because it appears they were a lot better informed than their father. He notes that he's now afraid that any attorney general that tries to "stick his or her neck out" on these issues will get similar SOPA/PIPA treatment -- so he asks Chris Dodd and Rick Cotton to come up with "a plan" to help them.

That, right there, is pretty incredible. A US state attorney general, asking private industry how to help them avoid having to deal with the public speaking out against plans to censor the internet and attack internet openness. Wow.

Dodd responds by saying that the movie industry "needs to move into the social media space. We were not in that space at all." That's pretty ridiculous. The MPAA has a blog. I mean, they don't allow comments on it, and it's sort of the laughingstock of anyone who actually understands these issues, but they have that. They also funded and supplied the key employees for "Creative America" -- the astroturfing group that supposedly is trying to round up supporters for SOPA and had an active Facebook page and blog... though the Facebook page mostly involved discussions about just how laughable Creative America's positions are.

SOPA supporters had an online and social media presence. It's just that they didn't have reality on their side. That's the problem. If Dodd and the MPAA ever bothered to understand what actually happened perhaps he'd stop making these crazy claims.

Either way, the clear conclusion from this talk is that folks like Dodd and Cotton still have no clue what happened and still don't understand the issues at hand. They're still approaching this from the old way of doing things, where it's politics as usual. They're not interested in really understanding what the public was concerned about and they have no intention of actually listening to what was said. All of the strategies discussed were about "reloading" on their side, not about actually talking to the people who understand the internet. It's sad, but it means that SOPA and PIPA will be back, though as Dodd explicitly says "hopefully it won't be called SOPA any more..."

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Hulu's Owners Unable To Find Idiots Willing To Overpay To Take Hulu Off Their Hands Before They Kill It

Mike Masnick — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 19:08:55 PDT

We recently noted that the attempt by Hulu's owners to sell Hulu wasn't going well, mainly because those same owners had made it clear that they hoped to kill Hulu, by limiting how much it could compete with their lucrative legacy business of cable TV. No one was willing to offer more than $2 billion -- significantly less than what Hulu's owners wanted -- other than Google. But Google would only do it if the TV companies agreed to certain conditions (i.e., not killing off Hulu by limiting content, requiring a paywall, etc.)

So it comes as little surprise that Hulu has now announced that its owners are no longer trying to sell the company off. Instead, they'll focus on suffocating it from within. Well, that part wasn't mentioned, but watch what happens to Hulu execs over the next few months. I think it's likely that we're going to start seeing some departures of key people. Hulu was an amazingly well executed offering with a really capable team... but as we predicted, the fact that the only way it could really succeed was to cannibalize the business of its owners, almost certainly meant that Hulu would never be allowed to execute on the strategy it needed to become a massive player.

Of course, what the big TV companies still fail to recognize is that killing off Hulu doesn't stop the move to an a la cart, online driven world. It just means that when it comes, they will be even less relevant, and less able to capitalize on it.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

According To MSNBC, If Online Voters Support Ron Paul, Their Votes Count Less

Mike Masnick — Fri, 9 Sep 2011 10:37:20 PDT

First thing's first: let's face up to the fact that online polls (especially on political issues) are pretty close to meaningless. However, Jamey Fletcher points us to a rather amazing graphical mess perpetrated by MSNBC in response to Ron Paul supporters flooding the vote for its online poll concerning who won the recent ~~dog & pony show~~ debate among a bunch of Republican presidential wannabes. Here's the screenshot he took, and the live poll certainly looks similar to me right now as well (though, at last check, Paul has an even larger percentage of the vote): Now, as Jon Stewart has pointed out, the mainstream press loves to ignore Ron Paul. But math is math. 50% is not just a nudge above 17%... and yet that's what the graphic appears to show. In fact, on Jamey's screen the top two bars are 368 pixels and 244 pixels. That's a very different ratio than 50% to 17%.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

NBC, BBC, Travel Channel: Not Guilty Of Racketeering For Asking People About Ideas For TV Shows

Mike Masnick — Wed, 6 Oct 2010 23:55:15 PDT

When you go around preaching the concept that ideas can be "owned," you're just asking for a lawsuit when you then ask people to voluntarily submit their own ideas. At some point, the Travel Channel put up a website, asking viewers for ideas for new shows. I'm sort of surprised they would do this, seeing as they must have known what would happen next. Some guy submitted an idea that probably a dozen or more people submitted: do a reality show on a family driving around the country in an RV. And, when the Travel Channel, along with NBC and the BBC announced a show called "The Great American Road Trip," the guy Christopher Cardillo insisted it was his idea that was being taken unfairly. So he sued for both copyright infringement and racketeering.

Of course, you can't copyright ideas and Cardillo had never actually registered the copyright on the proposal itself anyway, so there was no copyright claim. And, now the court has also tossed out the ridiculous racketeering charge. The idea that setting up a website to solicit show ideas is akin racketeering seems to be a bigger stretch than even some of the most ridiculous lawsuits we see on a daily basis. While it's good that the court dismissed this, I'm amazed at a few things. First, on the copyright issue, the court notes "plaintiffs' failure to register their idea is fatal to their copyright claim." But, um, shouldn't the court know that you can't copyright an idea? While it gets the results right, the reasoning is weird.

Similarly, on the racketeering issue, the court spends a lot of time focusing on how there's no pattern of racketeering from a single incident, but it's not clear that there was even a single incident that is in any way illegal. The idea of doing a reality show of people traveling in RVs around the country is hardly unique, and the actual show is quite different than what Cardillo proposed anyway (his involved just his family driving from the US to South America -- the real show involves a bunch of families around the country involved in a contest).

Still, in the end, it's surprising that in a TV industry made up of folks who keep insisting that ideas can be "owned," that anyone would ever bother to put up a website asking for show ideas, and not expect to get sued.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Ridiculous Content Restrictions Mean NBC Loses Viral Buzz For Emmy Clips

Mike Masnick — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 06:52:14 PDT

I'm not a big fan of award shows and can't remember the last time I watched one, so it's no surprise that I missed the Emmy's this past weekend. However, in an age where mocking the hosts of these shows for doing a terrible job is considered common practice, apparently a lot of people were impressed by some of Jimmy Fallon's work hosting the show. Too bad NBC can't let people see why. Staci Kramer, over at PaidContent notes that the opening musical sequence (a play on the TV show Glee with Fallon and various other TV personalities singing a Springsteen song) got a really good response online... but NBC can't post it online due to "restrictions." That is, NBC didn't secure the rights to repost the song online, losing out on any potential benefits from helping make the video go viral.

Of course, it's not clear who's "at fault" here, but either way NBC ends up looking clueless (yet again!). It had to know that there would be value in getting such things online, and while the license holders might not have wanted to license it, NBC should have made the point that if it wasn't put online legally by NBC, surely plenty of others would put it online elsewhere for all to see, without NBC or the rightsholders getting any direct benefit. It's really a tremendous "head-in-the-sand" approach to dealing with these issues. Anyone who says they can license music for the show on TV, but not online, is missing the point, and NBC's inability to explain this to them coherently is a negotiating blunder. And, because of that, others get all the benefit of the viral content, and NBC looks clueless online.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

NBC Tells Concerned Senator That Its Olympics Coverage Was Great... According To Itself

Mike Masnick — Fri, 2 Apr 2010 08:43:00 PDT

As you may recall, NBC was widely slammed for its ridiculous Olympics coverage, which included time delayed programming for no reason at all, extremely limited online programming, and -- in some cases -- requirements to prove you were a particular cable company subscriber to get access to the internet streams. This upset Senator Herb Kohl, who questioned NBC, and wondered if it would further restrict access to its programming should the merger with Comcast go through.

NBC has now replied, but has done so in a misleading manner -- claiming that "viewers had access to more coverage than in any prior Winter Olympics." Now, this is misleading by omission on two separate accounts. First, note the use of "Winter Olympics." Two years ago, NBC actually did provide greater access to its Summer Olympics coverage online. Four years ago, at the last Winter Olympics, broadband was more limited and you can't really compare the two. So that point is somewhat meaningless. Second, since there was no direct competition in the US, it's also a meaningless statement. However, if you look at how online coverage of the Olympics was handled in other countries, you quickly realize that NBC did a terrible job and greatly limited viewers. For example, we regularly heard from folks in Canada, who noted they could access almost everything via online streams.

NBC further makes this questionable claim:

"Without this hybrid approach to ad-supported broadcast households and (pay-TV) households, NBCU would simply not be able to bring our complete Olympics coverage to the American public."

Let's see... you took an amazingly popular sporting event, pissed off a ton of people who wanted to watch it by making it harder to watch and apparently lost hundreds of millions of dollars in the process. And now you're suggesting this was a successful strategy? Wow. Perhaps if you had provided more of what consumers actually wanted, you would have found a better business model.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Because NBC Could Never Have Figured Out How To Put TV Shows On The Internet By Itself...

Mike Masnick — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 11:30:50 PDT

I've been pretty hard on NBC Universal and its partially owned subsidiary Hulu for some consistently poor strategic decisions making over the years, but this recent lawsuit against them seems pretty ridiculous. AdamR points us to the news that a company you probably haven't heard of called Hulavision (its founder is Errol Hula -- get it?) is suing NBC and Hulu claiming that they stole the idea for Hulu and the name. The details of the case don't look much more convincing:

Hulavision and principal Errol Hula claim that the company developed technology to deliver television programs directly to viewers online. Hula then met with NBCU business development exec Raymond Vergel de Dios at a Las Vegas trade show and was invited to have further discussions about working together. In the spring of 2006, Hula and NBCU allegedly signed a nondisclosure agreement, after which Hula revealed his company's business model, marketing strategy, product roadmap and a "shared revenue model chart" that included valuable trade secrets.

Yes. Apparently he seems to think that the concept, technology and business model of taking TV shows and putting them online is his and his alone. As if NBC wasn't likely to figure out how to take video and put it online. And, really, if they were going to take the name from Hula, you'd at least think they'd use a name that was a lot more indicative of video online. There is simply no benefit at all to NBC purposely trying to take Hula's name for Hulu.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Hulu Continues To Shoot Self In Foot: Blocks More Browsers

Mike Masnick — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 17:33:00 PDT

Hulu, at the behest of its corporate masters, continues to shoot itself in the foot and make it an increasingly less useful platform. Last year, Hulu got a lot of attention for blocking Boxee, a specialized browser to show internet video on a computer-connected television. Hulu was apologetic about it, but admitted that it was pressured to do this by its owners (though, NBC boss Jeff Zucker appears to have lied to Congress about NBC's role in this). However, it didn't stop there. Hulu, it seems, is hellbent on trying to block any browser it doesn't like from showing its content. It's blocked the PS3's browser and mobile browsers as well.

The latest is that it wasted almost no time before blocking the new Kylo browser from Hillcrest labs that, like Boxee, was designed to better format the content for television.

This is typical short-sighted thinking from the likes of NBC bosses who are bizarrely afraid that people might watch authorized television shows on their television. Of course, the real fear is that if people start doing this, the cable and satellite companies might start losing business, meaning that they'll pay a lot less to NBC to carry their shows. This is such typical thinking from NBC execs, who seem to go out of their way to pretend that they can hold people back from doing what they want, because it doesn't agree with NBC's increasingly obsolete business model. So instead of letting people watch authorized content, with very high paying advertising, they're instead driving people to get the content through unauthorized means. It's bizarre that anyone could think this is a smart idea -- but, then again, we're talking about NBC management here. They think that downloading movies is hurting the American corn farmer... so logic has never really been a strong suit.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Heroes Producer: Honored To Be The Most Unauthorized Downloaded Show

Mike Masnick — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 12:37:00 PDT

One of the talks at SXSW was apparently about "multiplatform storytelling," which fits in with a point that we've discussed here in the past. Content creators are realizing that they no longer need to pigeonhole themselves as "just musicians," or "just filmmakers" but can reach out and tell stories in very different ways. And, in the end, that's what every content producer is really doing: they're telling stories. It doesn't necessarily matter what the format is, and there are no rules that say you're restricted to telling your entire story through just one platform.

This talk was given by Tim Kring, creator of the popular TV show Heroes, and he made some interesting points -- noting that he's "honored" that Heroes is the most "illegally" downloaded TV show out there, because "we'll take audience anywhere we can get it." But he's not just sitting back. The reason he doesn't care if people are watching the show on TV or elsewhere is because they're really working on ways to connect with fans in much deeper ways, including creating a pretty complex and massive alternative reality game that had true fans of the show actively involved -- such that they knew about certain characters and important plot points way before they appeared on the small screen, and were made to feel like actual participants in the story. As he noted, "people want to participate in their TV shows."

Again, this is a point that has been made before -- but so many of the suits upstairs still seem to think that TV is a purely broadcast media, not one where people want to communicate and participate in meaningful ways (and, yes, that means a lot more than just calling or texting a phone number to "vote" on something). It's great to see the folks actually making these stories are understanding this, because eventually that thinking will begin to become more common, rather than seem like some crazy idea to appease "the internet folks." We're not there yet, of course. NBC, which airs Heroes is still freaking out about those illegal downloads and wasting tons of money and resources claiming that it must be stopped -- all while its basic network schedule has been a huge disaster. If NBC top brass listened to folks like Kring, and realized the challenge is to make people happy, rather than spending so much time trying to force them into "the way NBC wants things to work," perhaps the network wouldn't be in so much trouble.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

NBC Continues To Do The Exact Wrong Thing When It Comes To The Olympics Online

Mike Masnick — Tue, 9 Feb 2010 09:22:00 PST

Is it any wonder that NBC Universal keeps having trouble? If you painted them a map that explained how to clearly provide people what they wanted, the company would do the exact opposite. Two years ago, during the summer Olympics, NBC Universal severely limited online offerings. It didn't let people embed videos. It only made events that people weren't as interested in available online, and even then, would delay much of the content online. The backwards thinking here was that if they blocked the "good stuff" out and made it only on TV, it would drive people to the TV. Of course, NBC's own research showed that the more people watched online, the more they watched on TV. But, of course, by limiting access, not that many people watched online through legal channels (a lot more watched elsewhere). And, at NBC, they considered this a success. Seriously.

And to prove it, NBC Universal is apparently going to make things even worse this time around. TorrentFreak points us to a MediaWeek piece that describes NBC Universal's "plan to fight piracy," that makes so little sense it makes the whole Jay Leno fiasco look well-organized.

Rather than giving people a choice, NBC is limiting its live streaming even more. There are 300 events at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, and NBC is going to stream a grand total of two of them live online: curling and hockey. And, then its spending a ton of wasted effort getting lots of other sites to try to block live streams of Olympic events. You know what would have stopped those live streams in a way that NBC could have profited from? Providing those live streams directly. What sort of company sees that there's demand for a product and then purposely decides to not offer it and to actively stop others who are trying to offer it? Wow!

NBC's explanation for all this is just as bizarre:

"One of the things we learned in Beijing is that people really go to the Web for highlights," said Perkins Miller, svp, digital media at NBC

Perhaps that's because you didn't offer much live streaming last time around, and the only events you did so on were the events no one cared about.

But, of course, the best comes from Rick "oh-those -poor-corn-farmers-decimated-by-piracy" Cotton, NBC's general counsel, who seems so fixated on "stopping piracy!!!" that he seems oblivious to the concept of providing real value:

"Our aim is to make access to pirated material inconvenient, low quality and hard to find," said Rick Cotton, NBC's evp and general counsel. In terms of Web piracy, "you are never going to go to zero. But there has been a sea change in terms of recognition of the problem."

Again, you solve the problem of people going elsewhere by giving them what they want, not purposely deciding not to give them what they want and then getting upset when they go find it elsewhere.

And you wonder why, for the first time ever, a broadcaster is expected to lose money on the Olympics?

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

NBC Universal Boss Jeff Zucker Lies To Congress About Boxee

Mike Masnick — Fri, 5 Feb 2010 07:58:00 PST

NBC Universal management gets more and more ridiculous every time we come across anything they do. While they've left most of the more ridiculous statements to their chief lawyer, Rick Cotton (who is worried about the poor corn farmers harmed by movie file sharing), CEO Jeff Zucker has made his fair share of whoppers. While he got a lot of attention last month for his cowardly handling of the whole Leno/Conan mess, his latest move is to flat out lie to Congress. In a hearing in front of Congress as a part of NBC's effort to merge with Comcast, Rep. Rick Boucher asked Zucker about Hulu being forced to block Boxee (a battle that's gone back and forth a few times). When the whole thing started, Hulu management was very upfront about how they were pressured by their content partners like NBC to block Boxee, which is just another browser. It was quite clear that Hulu didn't want to do the block, but had no choice due to pressure from the likes of partial owner NBC:

Our content providers requested that we turn off access to our content via the Boxee product, and we are respecting their wishes....

The maddening part of writing this blog entry is that we realize that there is no immediate win here for users. Please know that we take very seriously our role of representing users such that we are able to provide more and more content in more and more ways over time. We embrace this activity in ways that respect content owners' -- and even the entire industry's -- challenges to create great content that users love. Yes, it's a complex matter. A tough mission, and a never-ending one, but one we are passionately committed to.

For those Boxee users reading this post, we understand and appreciate that you're likely to tell us that we're nuts. Please know that we do share the same interests and won't stop innovating in support of the bigger mission.

So how did Zucker respond when asked about it by Congressman Rick Boucher? He blamed Hulu for making the decision, and falsely claimed that Boxee illegally access Hulu content:

Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA): What about Boxee? Mr. Zucker you probably are in a better position to answer that. Did Hulu block the Boxee users from access to the Hulu programs?

Zucker (NBC): This was a decision made by the Hulu management to, uh, what Boxee was doing was illegally taking the content that was on Hulu without any business deal. And, you know, all, all the, we have several distributors, actually many distributors of the Hulu content that we have legal distribution deals with so we don't preclude distribution deals. What we preclude are those who illegally take that content.

Of course, that's a flat out wrong, as Boxee was not illegally "taking" the content at all. Boxee is a browser, like Firefox. If what Boxee does is illegal so is accessing Hulu with Firefox or IE. But it's even worse than that, because last year, in a different situation, Zucker admitted that he had been a part of the decision makers to have Hulu block Boxee, telling Kara Swisher that "our vision" was to block Boxee in an effort to keep "Hulu being an online experience" rather than one you could access via a TV.

So why would Zucker flat out lie during a Congressional hearing, and throw Hulu under the bus while doing so? Does he not understand how Boxee works? Did he forget his own dealings with Hulu? Or is he just making stuff up in a Congressional hearing?

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Content Is Advertising; Advertising Is Content... On SNL

Mike Masnick — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 06:33:00 PST

If you're in any business that relies on "advertising" for revenue, you need to stop thinking of it as advertising -- and start realizing that advertising and content are the same thing. All traditional "advertising" is content -- and if you want anyone to pay attention to it, it had better be good content. At the same time, all traditional "content" is advertising -- it's just a question of what it's advertising. But as more companies recognize this, we're going to see an increasingly blurry line between advertising and content. While some purists decry this situation, they shouldn't worry so much. It will improve both the overall quality of the "content" that you see all the time in two ways: it will allow for better financing of that content and it makes sure that the formerly "bad" advertising content isn't sustainable and goes away.

Reader James Thomas sends in an example of this blurring of the lines that occurred recently with Saturday Night Live. Apparently, on the SNL the night before the Superbowl, there were three skits "MacGruber" skits (a parody of the popular classic TV show MacGyver) each of which had a totally over-the-top promotion of Pepsi. That part may seem like traditional product placement (though, oddly over the top), but the interesting part was that the next night, during the Superbowl, NBC actually showed one of those sketches during a commercial break. In other words, the sketch itself was then repurposed as "commercial" content -- thus blurring the lines completely. I'm not sure how effective this was (personally, I don't find the MacGruber skits funny at all), but it does demonstrate some of how things are changing. If you did the same thing with content that actually was enjoyable, I could see it getting a much better reaction.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

NBC's Online Olympic Video Not Even Remotely Compelling

Mike Masnick — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 15:24:00 PDT

NBC is hyping up how it's really embracing the web this year in its Olympic coverage. However, the details suggest that (as per usual with NBC Universal) it's taking a very old school approach -- meaning the web is treated as a second class citizen and that it won't be either useful or interesting to people online. That is, there are some restrictions that make its online efforts close to pointless. First, the videos won't be embeddable elsewhere. In other words, one of the key factors for online videos these days -- the shareability of those videos -- won't be allowed. NBC is trying to control and hoard the content -- which goes against everything the web should have taught the big shots at NBC Universal.

Secondly, while NBC is talking up 2,200 live hours of competition being shown online, it's sounding like those 2,200 hours will be of the content that people aren't as interested in watching. That is, the stuff that's being shown on TV will not be simulcast online. In fact, it won't be available to watch online until after it's been shown on TV (so, hardly live). So, any of the big important stuff will have to wait until NBC has shown it on TV (most likely on tape delay). So the only really "live" content you'll see is the stuff that isn't particularly interesting.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Content Is Advertising... On TV

Mike Masnick — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 12:11:00 PDT

Continuing my series of posts on how all content is advertising and all advertising is content, there was an interesting story last week about how a top ad agency is teaming up with NBC to create TV shows around sponsors' products. This is an interesting idea, but the risk is in how it's being implemented. Such a strategy worked well when BMW put together its BMWfilms effort -- but the focus there was very much on making sure that the films were top notch. It involved star directors making quality short films that didn't necessarily promote BMW, but had BMWs in those films. The content itself was quite entertaining, and many people watched them.

And that, of course, is the key element here. The content itself needs to be compelling and stand alone as quality content, no matter what the products being showcased. Also, since the films were clearly labeled and promoted as BMWfilms, there was no "hidden" product placement. Everything was very upfront and aboveboard. What I fear with something like this new experiment from NBC, is that the the advertisers at the table will have too much of a say in the creative content, and will focus on making sure the product is positioned right, rather than making sure the content actually works and has entertainment value.

It will also be interesting to see how NBC handles promotion of this series. Will it be treated like any other series? Will it be available online? Will NBC let others copy and share it? Will there still be interruptions from commercials when it airs on TV? The answers may be very telling in how NBC is approaching this effort. Either way, this will be an experiment worth following. My guess is that, given the players involved, it will fail. The ad agency will push too hard to make the content more focused on the sponsored products. NBC will struggle with how to position and promote the show. And the whole thing will disappear quickly. I'd love to be wrong, and see real quality content come out of this, but, that may be asking too much at this point.

Is NBC Built For Failure In The Digital Age?

Tom Lee — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 10:21:00 PST

If you haven't yet read John Hockenberry's fascinating piece in the current issue of Technology Review, you ought to. Hockenberry was a longtime correspondent for Dateline NBC and went from there to the MIT Media Lab. It's hard to think of anyone more qualified to assess the news industry's relationship to new technology. And although the article does eventually devolve into (juicy) carping about his former employer, prior to that point Hockenberry's analysis of the media's failure to meaningfully embrace online technology is incisive.

But Hockenberry also makes this more general point:

Networks are built on the assumption that audience size is what matters most. Content is secondary; it exists to attract passive viewers who will sit still for advertisements. For a while, that assumption served the industry well. But the TV news business has been blind to the revolution that made the viewer blink: the digital organization of communities that are anything but passive. Traditional market-driven media always attempt to treat devices, audiences, and content as bulk commodities, while users instead view all three as ways of creating and maintaining smaller-scale communities. As users acquire the means of producing and distributing content, the authority and profit potential of large traditional networks are directly challenged.

By now everyone is familiar with the "Long Tail" concept, which, among other things, points out that information technology makes niche communities and products viable at a much more specialized scale than was previously possible. It's fairly well accepted that this focus on niche products may decrease the profitability of the mainstream hits found to the left of the long tail (see here for a good example).

But Hockenberry's observation makes obvious a point that's often neglected: that the shift in cultural attention that comes with the long tail may be closer to zero sum than we might imagine. It's not just that the network allows niche communities to proliferate; people also value those precisely-targeted communities more than they value media experiences designed for a general audience.

With this in mind it's a little easier to excuse the lame online efforts cited by Hockenberry. A broadcast network like NBC is fundamentally designed to produce at most a handful of signals, each as broadly appealing as possible. There's just no way to retrofit such a system into something that can compete with the endlessly precise intimacy of online communities. Sure, NBC may have missed some opportunities. But it's hard to believe that any of them would have stopped the inevitable diminution of mass media's importance to the average person.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Is AT&T Siding With NBC To Get Rid Of Neutrality?

Mike Masnick — Wed, 9 Jan 2008 13:03:07 PST

I tend to be skeptical when people start screaming "net neutrality" when it's not warranted, but here's a situation where it may be worth asking a few questions. We've been wondering for some time why AT&T would agree to help NBC try to block the transfer of any unauthorized content on its network. It made very little sense at the time. AT&T (in its previous versions) had actually been one of the big proponents of the "safe harbor" clause in the DMCA that meant it didn't need to police the content on its own network. So why would it suddenly, voluntarily, be saying it wants to spend time, money and energy in an impossible effort to police the content shared across its own network?

A clue may be found in an MPAA FCC filing over the summer, where it spoke stridently against any network neutrality rules, for fear that such rules might make it impossible for ISPs to police content -- something the MPAA has been pushing for over the last few months, resulting in the recent PRO IP bill (which is actually very anti IP, but that's a different story). Basically, the MPAA (mainly NBC Universal) was offering up a compromise plan to the telcos: you support us by policing your network and we'll support you in trying to double charge popular websites.

With that said, it should come as no surprise that NBC Universal and AT&T are now acting like best buddies as they discuss plans for filters. Lobbyists from both companies were at CES saying typically misleading things. AT&T's James Cicconi talked about how what was being done to stop piracy wasn't enough -- but fails to note that it's not his problem. Legally. Legally, AT&T shouldn't even get close to trying to police its own network, as it actually opens the company up to more liability. But, in its greed to be able to set up extra tollbooths, the company appears to recognize that using "piracy" as an excuse for blocking is a way in the backdoor, potentially even around the very promises AT&T made to keep the net neutral for 30 months in order to get approval to buy BellSouth.

The statement from NBC Universal is even worse -- but not at all surprising, coming from the man, Rick Cotton, who gave us the easily proven false statement about how piracy was hurting the poor corn farmers of America (who aren't hurting at all, and on whom piracy has no impact). When it was pointed out to Cotton that blocking content could be legally questionable, his response wasn't to address the actual concerns over filtering, but to go with the ever creative defense of throwing up his hands in frustration: "The volume of peer-to-peer traffic online, dominated by copyrighted materials, is overwhelming. That clearly should not be an acceptable, continuing status." Yes, because as long as the threats to your obsolete business model are "overwhelming," no one else's rights matter in the slightest. It's similar to Doug Morris at sister company Universal Music. Basically: "we're too clueless to recognize that the market has changed and that we need to adjust our business models -- so instead, we will demand that everyone else change in an attempt to keep the world the way it was a decade ago." Back here in the real world, those strategies tend not to work, though they can cause plenty of damage in the short term.

About the only good news concerning all of this is that when asked to join them, Apple told AT&T and NBC Universal to get stuffed. Microsoft, on the other hand, joined right up to help. What we're witnessing is a collaboration among companies too short-sighted to recognize how the market is changing, who will team up to pretend to bolster each other's outdated business model. Hopefully, if Congress and the FCC don't make it impossible, the rest of the world will simply route around them and build the new business models for tomorrow. Still, with the FCC potentially cracking down on Comcast's efforts at traffic shaping, it'll be fascinating to see how the FCC responds to AT&T being even more proactive in blocking content. Given Kevin Martin's earlier statements about ignoring AT&T net neutrality promises combined with his close relationship with the telcos, somehow we get the feeling they won't face very much pressure.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

NBC's Love/Hate Affair With YouTube Firmly In The Hate Position

Mike Masnick — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 14:52:00 PDT

Perhaps no company has had more of a love-hate affair with YouTube than NBC. On practically a weekly basis over the past year or so it seems like NBC's official position on YouTube switches back and forth. First, they hated YouTube because the SNL Andy Samberg video "Lazy Sunday" was widely available on it, requiring NBC's lawyers to demand it get taken down. This seemed odd to us, as it was a great promotional vehicle for Saturday Night Live. And, in fact, for a little while, it seemed that NBC agreed, as they set up an official NBC channel on YouTube where they released lots of content, including newer Samberg videos. NBC execs started to talk about how great YouTube was for promotional purposes and some even hoped that NBC would put more content on YouTube. Of course, then Jeff Zucker took over, and one of his first public statements involved slamming YouTube even as his executives were talking about how useful a tool it was. NBC soon filed an amicus brief against YouTube in a lawsuit against the company and, more recently, have been speaking out against the company. Perhaps this isn't too surprising, as the company has teamed up with News Corp in a weak attempt to create its own online video property.

So, with that flip-flopping in mind, it should come as little surprise that NBC has now completely shut down its official channel on YouTube according to Valleywag. This is pretty weak, though, as many people who enjoyed getting NBC content that way now have had that rug pulled out from under them. NBC still seems to be under the entirely wrong belief that people will come to them. People want to get content however it's convenient. That means offering it in a variety of places and a variety of formats so that people are more likely to view the content. Taking away options doesn't help things, it just pisses off more fans.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

CBS More Focused On Keeping Fans Happy

Mike Masnick — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 11:23:36 PDT

It's fascinating to watch the different approaches that competitors NBC and CBS are taking to dealing with the online video market. NBC has seemed almost to have a new strategy every day, happily putting videos up on YouTube, pulling them down from YouTube, being happy with YouTube, being upset with YouTube, putting videos on iTunes, pulling them down from iTunes. It's as if NBC doesn't have a real strategy at all -- or, at the very least, different factions within the company "win" every few weeks or so. In contrast, you have CBS, who recognized the importance of online video at nearly the same time as NBC. However, rather than going with a constantly shifting target, CBS's strategy has evolved in a pretty straight line. The company quickly realized that distribution and awareness was a lot more important than protection and focused on getting videos available wherever people wanted to view them (not just where CBS could control everything). That meant syndicating the content as widely as possible and even embracing the benefits from people sharing CBS content on YouTube and other sites. That's why it's not too surprising to hear CBS' Les Moonves respond to questions about NBC's decision to take its content off iTunes by saying that CBS is thrilled with iTunes and sees no reason to follow NBC's decision. The really telling statement is this one: "We look at iTunes as much as a promotional vehicle for our shows as a financial vehicle." That's why NBC is focused on putting up barriers for viewers, while CBS appears to be focused on taking them down.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Group Behind 'To Catch A Predator' Claims Wikipedia Is A Corporate Sex Offender

Mike Masnick — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 03:06:57 PDT

We've seen all sorts of criticisms of Wikipedia over the years, but this might be a first. Apparently the group "Perverted Justice," the controversial online vigilante group that tries to lure online pedophiles out into the open (and is the group that is used by NBC Dateline's equally controversial "To Catch A Predator" show) is now claiming that Wikipedia is "a corporate sex offender." Apparently, if you follow the links from Wikipedia to Perverted Justice's site, it has a screed against Wikipedia -- claiming "each article on Wikipedia that deals with any issue relating to pedophiles or internet predators has been heavily targeted and edited by the online pedophile activist movement." Of course, there's a bit more to the story. Apparently, Perverted Justice's founder was recently barred from editing Wikipedia after people felt that he was flaming other users, deleting any negative reference to his organization, accusing others of being pedophiles without substantiation and when asked about it, replying "with invective." This suggests the anger at Wikipedia is a bit more about the guy being barred than any sort of official Wikipedia issue. If anything, it seems like yet another case where Wikipedia's neutral point of view has resulted in confusion. There's no doubt that Perverted Justice's reason for being is good -- but calling Wikipedia a sex offender seems quite extreme and unreasonable.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story