Business

MySpace.com Sued By Universal Music

MySpace.com Sued By Universal Music As new media continues to challenge the traditional means of delivering music, video and other digital content, copyright lawyers can expect to get rich in the legal fall out.

Universal are the latest media group to get on the blower to their legal boys, filing a case against the social networking site, MySpace.com.

Universal claims that MySpace, “encourages, facilitates and participates in the unauthorised reproduction, adaptation, distribution and public performance,” and is seeking unspecified damages, including up to $150,000 for each unauthorised music song or video uploaded on to the Website.

MySpace’s botty-covering tactic of making users agree to grant the Website a license to publish uploaded content isn’t washing with the Universal legal team, who insist that they have no such authority over works they don’t own.

“A willing partner in theft”
The complaint, filed at the US District Court, claims that “MySpace is a willing partner in that theft,” observing that most of the media slapped up its pages aren’t generated by users, but purloined from copyright owners.

MySpace hit back in a statement, insisting that they are in full compliance with copyright laws:

MySpace.com Sued By Universal Music “We have been keeping UMG closely apprised of our industry-leading efforts to protect creators’ rights, and it’s unfortunate they decided to file this unnecessary and meritless litigation,” the statement said.

“We provide users with tools to share their own work – we do not induce, encourage, or condone copyright violation in any way.”

Universal were having none of it, claiming that their, “music and videos play a key role in building the communities that have created hundreds of millions of dollars of value for the owners of MySpace.”

“Our goal is not to inhibit the creation of these communities, but to ensure that our rights and those of our artists are recognised,” the statement added.

20 November, 2006

Spam Soars With Nine Out Of Ten Emails Being Junk

Spam Soars With Nine Out Of Ten Emails Being Junk Just over nine out of every 10 e-mails sent worldwide are junk, with a “spam tsunami” flooding inboxes with relentless junk advertising.

That’s the findings of e-mail security company Postini, with vice-president Daniel Druker telling the Sunday Times that the internet is “under siege.”

“Spammers are increasingly aggressive and spam has evolved from a tool for nuisance hackers to one for criminal enterprises,” he said.

According to their figures, spam has almost trebled in the last five months, with the company detecting more than 7 billion spam e-mails worldwide in November – up a massive 2.5 billion from June and now making up 91% of all e-mails.

Chief culprit for the rise in spam is sneaky software that hijacks home PCs and then uses them to blast out spam, unbeknownst to the owner.

Spam Soars With Nine Out Of Ten Emails Being Junk Because each hijacked PC only sends out a relatively small amount of spam, they’re not detected by anti-spam networks and thus avoid being blacklisted on industry spamlists.

Although UK regulations were introduced in 2003 to outlaw spam, they’ve been spectacularly useless, failing to make a single prosecution.

In America, there has been some success, with a court jailing serial spammer Jeremy Jaynes for nine years in September after he despatched hundreds of thousands of junk e-mails daily from his North Carolina home.

The Top Ten Spammers
Last week, anti-spam firm Spamhaus released their list of the top ten networks responsible for delivering spam:
1. verizonbusiness.com
2. serverflo.com
3. sbc.com
4. xo.com
5. proxad.net
6. rr.com
7. tpnet.pl
8. edu.tw
9. hinet.net
10. ttnet.net.tr

Spam Soars With Nine Out Of Ten Emails Being Junk Spamhaus blames much of the problem on ISP’s who either fail to stop the spammers or do nothing to stop them through mismanagement or good old fashioned corporate greed.

The company also noted that around 80 percent of spam is generated by no more than 200 professional spam gangs, with the top ten spam bad boys including four Russians, two Americans and one each from Canada, Hong Kong, Israel and Ukraine.

Spam, spam, spam, spam… you’ve got mail [Suday Times]
Spamhaus
Postini

20 November, 2006

UK Web-rage Man Gets 2 Years Jail

UK Web-rage Man Gets 2 Years Jail The UK first case of Web-rage to go through the courts has reached sentencing.

Paul Gibbons, 47, of Bermondsey, south-east London has been handed a two year jail stretch.

It all started when Gibbons took an extreme dislike (to put it lightly) to some of the online discussion comments put forward to John Jones, 43, who lived in Essex. This grew to the point where Jones taunted Gibbons.

The normal course of events in this type of occasion, would be a flame war as the various parties attack each other over a series of posts – then, eventually it would fizzle out.

Not this time. Gibbons took such affront, that he gathered details online about John Jones’ address and went to pay him a visit, complete with a pickaxe handle and a friend with a machete.

UK Web-rage Man Gets 2 Years Jail When Jones opened the door of his house – with a knife of his own, he was severely attacked.

There have been previous examples of people being attacked for online conflict. In China, one player of online game “Legend of Mir 3” killed another over a dispute over ownership of a virtual sword.

As Investigating Officer Det Sgt Jean-Marc Bazzoni of Essex Police said, “The dangers of giving personal information out in a chatroom environment must never be underestimated.”

(via)

17 November, 2006

Orange Expand Mobile BBC World Deal To 8 Countries

The BBC is expanding its distribution with Orange to take its international news service, BBC World, to Orange mobile phones in eight countries.

The live stream of BBC World has been available on Orange mobiles in France for the past two years, so given this background it make sense for Orange to want to expand the coverage. They’re taking it to quite an assortment of countries – Belgium, Poland, the Netherlands, Romania, Portugal, Jordan, Egypt and the Dominican Republic.

The live streams will be distributed over either 3G or EDGE to what they’re calling “mobile broadband customers,” (first time we’ve heard Orange use the term before).

We spoke to Gerry Ritchie, BBC World’s Regional Director and Business Development, Europe, Middle East, South Asia, Americas (A title that would at one time have been an anathema – BizDev … at the BBC!) about the deal.

Gerry said that in the time that they’ve been doing video to mobiles, they’ve come to realise that ‘made for’ packages (edited summaries) don’t really work. When people hear about an event, they “turn to BBC World for immediate coverage, so even a 10 minute editing delay won’t work. People place trust in the BBC brand, as it is known for the quality of its reporting, not just getting the news there first, but making sure it’s accurate.”

BBC World is held within the commercial arm of the BBC, so Orange are paying the BBC for the privilege of showing it to their subscribers. Gerry wouldn’t give specific details of deal, but we did learn that they don’t do deals on the number of streams that are watched.

The deal isn’t on an exclusive basis, as the BBC want to get their content distributed as widely as they can, but clearly Orange will have a major advantage in being the first mover.

BBC World has already been highly successful in getting its content distributed around the world, including 46 cruise liners, 36 airlines and 26 mobile phone platforms.

BBC World

15 November, 2006

Google: Mobile Phones Should Be Free

Google: Mobile Phones Should Be Free Google chief executive, Eric Schmidt, has chatted to Reuters about his thoughts on mobile phones, and how their ownership and usage should be free, supported of course by advertising. In his words “It just makes sense that subsidies should increase” as advertising rises on mobile phones.

He also told Reuters

Google is experimenting with delivering text, brand-image and video ads onto small-screen mobile phones. It is enjoying early success in its strategy to win phone network allies in Japan, where TV viewing and shopping on phones is advanced.

This follows the release of their second application designed specifically for mobile devices, available outside the US as well.

While hypothesising about the possible, Schmidt brought in a little reality by adding that he wasn’t aware of any effort by partners such as phone makers Nokia or Motorola or mobile operators like Vodafone to make such a radical move.

Google is finding it harder to disguise that their search business is just a ruse – they are, as we’ve said for a long time, an advertising company.

They’ve already announced solid plans to move their advertising to printed newspapers, and with this recent comment, making it clear that they’ll be moving the advertising to mobile phones as well.

Reuters coverage

13 November, 2006

Universal Music Get Part Of Zune Price

Universal Music Get Part Of Zune Price Microsoft is giving the Universal Music Group (UMG) a per-unit fee for each Zune that they sell, in addition to the money that they’ll make out sell music tracks on it too.

There’s only days left until the US launch of Zune, Microsoft’s last hope to get in a strong position with portable music players. The deal with Universal has only just been sealed, so we’d imagine the negotiations with Microsoft haven’t been that relaxed, because, as we all know, a device without content is in a dangerous position.

In our view this deal is lunacy. Giving the record company part of the value of selling the portable music player is like letting them have part of the profit from selling a record player.

Is Microsoft really that desperate to try and make up the huge gap between itself and Apple, that it’s prepared to give away part of the actual device?

It is possible that this a move-of-genius by Microsoft, creating a new ‘standard’ of deal within digital music deal. The reality is that when Apple’s negotiating with the labels, they have the strongest card of all – OK don’t deal with us, and lose access to the most popular music sales in the world.

10 November, 2006

Virgin Media Born From ntl

Virgin Media Born From ntl ntl are to re-brand as Virgin Media during the first quarter of 2007.

The Quad play offering (TV, Broadband, Telephone, Mobile) bring together telewest as was, ntl as is and Virgin Mobile.

Gordon McCallum, chief executive officer of Virgin Management Limited and ntl Board member explains the new direction, “Taking on the Virgin brand is about much more than a new name and logo above the door. ntl Telewest’s management team has consistently demonstrated that it understands this and the commitment that’s needed to succeed. Much has already been achieved and we’re confident that the company’s on track to deliver the Virgin promise when we re-brand next year.”

Steve Burch, president and chief executive officer of ntl is clearly very excited about it, as you can see from his video below.