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MPAA Chief: Hollywood and Silicon Valley Can Fight Piracy Together

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December 10, 2012

MPAA Chairman and CEO Chris Dodd is calling for Hollywood and Silicon Valley to join together against piracy. Dodd spoke at the Content Protection Summit in Los Angeles and criticized the idea that piracy debate is just a two-sided choice between free speech or copyright protection.

“Hollywood and Silicon Valley have more in common than most people realize or are willing to acknowledge,” he said. “Not only does Hollywood work closely with Silicon Valley to create and promote films; Hollywood film and television creators are tech companies.”

“They celebrate innovation through the world’s most cutting-edge content, and they embrace technology as imperative to the success of the creators in their community,” he added.

With the Protect IP Act and Stop Online Piracy Act, Hollywood and Silicon Valley were pitted against each other, but Dodd emphasized the need “to present a united front to deal with preventing theft of intellectual property,” Variety reports. He did not, however, advocate for any new legislation.

“We can have it both ways,” he said. “We can have an Internet that works for everyone. And in order to continue providing the world’s greatest content, we must protect the rights of our creators so they can produce for their audiences and also profit from their work.”

House Approves Senate Resolution to Keep Internet Free of UN Control

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December 7, 2012
  • The U.S. House of Representatives unanimously passed a Senate resolution introduced by Senators Claire McCaskill (D-Missouri) and Marco Rubio (R-Florida) asking the U.S. government to oppose United Nations Internet control.
  • The legislation was introduced in anticipation of the UN conference on telecommunications, where some speculate an updated international telecom treaty could allow for United Nations control of the Internet.
  • The 397-0 vote shows the overwhelming bipartisan support against such legislation.
  • “I think that we are all very, very proud that there is not only bipartisan, but bicameral support underlying this resolution, and there is complete support across the Executive Branch of our government,” said Representative Anna Eshoo (D-California). “In other words, the United States of America is totally unified on this issue of an open structure, a multi-stakeholder approach that has guided the Internet over the last two decades.”
  • “The 193 member countries of the United Nations are gathered to consider whether to apply to the Internet a regulatory regime that the International Telecommunications Union created in the 1980s for old-fashioned telephone service,” added Representative Greg Walden (R-Oregon).

Scout: Adobe Announces New Cloud-Based Tools for Game Developers

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December 7, 2012
  • Adobe’s Creative Cloud subscription service will now offer Adobe Scout, a cloud-based set of tools for game developers, reports VentureBeat.
  • “The tools enable developers to access a centrally located suite of tools for making their titles,” explains the post. “The aim is to streamline the game-development process from creation to final deployment.”
  • Adobe Scout helps games run faster because it “uncovers granular internal information in ActionScript-based mobile and browser content to unlock significant performance optimization opportunities,” according to Adobe.
  • The Creative Cloud service also includes Adobe Flash C++ Compiler, the Adobe Gaming SDK, and trial versions of Flash Professional CS6 and Flash Builder 4.7 Premium.
  • The Flash C++ Compiler takes code from PC, Xbox, PlayStation 3, and iOS game engines and converts them so they are compatible on all browsers using the Adobe Flash player.
  • Adobe hopes to convince more developers to use Flash, and argues that “using Flash makes developers more productive when it comes to cross-platform experiences,” notes VentureBeat.
  • The post includes two videos detailing Adobe Scout and the Adobe Gaming SDK.

Real Money Gaming Market: Zynga Looks to Nevada for Gambling License

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December 7, 2012
  • The world’s leading provider of social game services has begun the process of pursuing a gambling license in Nevada, offering hope for the recently struggling company, writes Wired.
  • Zynga hopes a ruling by the Justice Department last year will help the company obtain the license, as the ruling allows states to legalize online gambling within state borders.
  • “This filing continues our strategic effort to enter regulated R[eal] M[oney] G[aming] markets in a prudent way,” wrote Zynga chief revenue officer Barry Cottle. “We anticipate that the process will take approximately 12 to 18 months to complete. As we’ve said previously, the broader U.S. market is an opportunity that’s further out on the horizon based on legislative developments, but we are preparing for a regulated market.”
  • “Zynga announced a partnership earlier this year to offer gambling in the United Kingdom,” notes the article. “At the time, the social games company indicated the move was part of a broader ambition to offer more gambling globally.”
  • Wired cautions that even if Zynga obtains a gambling license in Nevada, investors should temper expectations. The company is still losing customers rapidly, and would need to apply for other licenses if it wishes to expand to other states.
  • Zynga is struggling in its traditionally successful Facebook market, where its revenues declined 20 percent last quarter, while other game makers saw revenues increase 40 percent.

Facebook Reportedly in Talks to Acquire Microsoft Atlas Ad Platform

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December 7, 2012
  • Microsoft’s ad-serving platform Atlas Solutions has been discreetly on the market for a while, but it recently captured interest from Facebook, according to people familiar with the matter.
  • “Sources said the social networking giant has been conducting due diligence on the media measurement platform, part of its efforts to create its own advertising network for third-party Web sites to compete with Google’s DoubleClick offering,” AllThingsD writes.
  • “Facebook and Microsoft are working on a deal that, if completed, would put Facebook one huge step closer to launching an ad network that could rival Google’s in size, and change the way advertising is done online forever,” adds Business Insider in a related report that details the massive potential of such a deal.
  • Microsoft bought the platform for $6 billion in 2007 and will be selling it for significantly less, the sources say. Facebook has been debating buying versus building its own platform. If the two companies reach an agreement, it could involve a more complex advertising network that leverages the billion email addresses, home addresses and phone numbers Facebook has on file.
  • “While there are some technological issues in taking over Atlas, sources said the prospect of starting from scratch was more daunting than picking up a platform that already delivers billions of ad impressions a day,” explains AllThingsD.

Microsoft Unveils Socl Network with Focus on Images, Video and Captions

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December 7, 2012
  • Microsoft released its new social network called Socl on Tuesday, but VentureBeat suggests the site has “no clear purpose.”
  • Microsoft’s Fuse Labs research team originally designed the site to appeal to those with educational interests (i.e. design students), but then redesigned the site with a larger focus on helping people connect through shared interests.
  • “Socl helps people find and share interesting Web pages by extending the search metaphor, create rich posts by assembling montages of visual Web content and provides rich media sharing and real time sharing of videos,” said a Microsoft spokesperson. “We encourage users to reimagine how everyday communication and learning tools can be improved by researching, learning, and sharing in their everyday lives.”
  • Socl in some ways emulates Pinterest’s concept of collecting pictures around a common interest or topic, but Socl “both simplifies and complicates” the process by bringing search into the equation, writes VentureBeat. Linking the interest to search helps users find pictures, but often users end up with “collages that look a lot like search results pages.”
  • Socl also allows users to participate in online video viewing parties, but the feature amounts to little more than “a semi unique foil for Google+ Hangouts,” according to the post.
  • “The overall aesthetic is quite appealing, but Socl strikes me as more novel than useful,” concludes the reviewer. “People do, as history instructs us, seem to get a kick out of novelty on the Web.”

Spotify Overhaul to Debut Music Discovery, Collection and Follow Features

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December 7, 2012
  • Spotify has announced a complete overhaul of its music service, which includes a Collection for users’ music, a Discover feature for finding new music and a Follow section for tracking celebrities. The update will be available in beta soon and then roll out to all devices early next year.
  • “The new features are not only meant to please users, but also to increase discovery as a whole on the platform, which could help artists gain traction,” writes The Verge.
  • “The recommendation engine works based on music you’ve listened to in the past, as well as based on artists you follow. There also appears to be a recommendation engine for showing you artists that are touring near you,” the post explains.
  • Spotify’s Collection feature gets rid of the plethora of playlists in the sidebar and brings all users’ music to one place.
  • “A fundamental behavior on Spotify is that people listen to whole albums,” says CEO and founder Daniel Ek. “A third of all playlists on Spotify are just albums people have saved. It was clear people want to listen to albums and wanted an easy way to save them, so for us [Collection view] is just about making it easier for users to save music the way they wanted.”
  • The third addition, Follow, enables users to follow friends and celebrities. “In order to keep fans on the right track, Spotify, like Twitter, displays Verified checkmarks on their profile pages,” The Verge writes. “Additionally, new push notifications can alert you as soon as albums drop inside Spotify by your favorite artists.”
  • At an event in New York City, Ek also announced that the service has 20 million monthly users and 5 million paid users, twice as many as a year ago. “We’ve paid out over half a billion dollars to musicians… over 70 percent of the money we make,” he added.

Study Indicates Mobile App Usage Challenging Time with TV and Web

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December 7, 2012
  • The use of mobile apps is quickly catching up with television, and has already surpassed time spent on the Web.
  • A new study conducted by mobile analytics company Flurry tracked a trillion “events” within apps — finishing a game level or making restaurant reservations, for example — and found the numbers have grown exponentially in the last two years, Business Insider reports.
  • “In the U.S., time spent on the Web has stagnated at 70 minutes per day. Television watching has grown slightly, from 162 minutes to 168 minutes,” the article states. “But app usage has almost doubled from 66 minutes to 127 minutes a day. At current growth rates, it should catch up with television within a year.”
  • “And since we’re not getting more hours in the day, it’s pretty clear that the increased usage of apps must be happening simultaneously with other activities — like, yes, watching television,” the article continues.
  • The increased mobile use isn’t inherently bad for television producers. The “second screen” phenomenon could actually change the way shows are produced and consumed.
  • “We believe that, with the introduction of connected TVs, TV shows will behave like apps,” Flurry CEO Simon Khalaf states in the report.

Google Puts Emphasis on Original Channels with YouTube Redesign

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December 7, 2012
  • YouTube has redesigned its site with a new focus on subscriptions, original content and individual channels.
  • The site now resembles the “white and grey color scheme and sparse layout found in apps like Google+ and Google Now,” writes The Verge. Google encourages subscriptions and says it is “just like adding your favorite shows to your DVR,” underscoring the shift towards a more personalized YouTube experience.
  • “YouTube is even better when you subscribe,” suggests the video site on a page titled YouTube Is Getting Better. “Now when you subscribe to your favorite channels, we will add them to your Guide and make them available on every page of the site, and on your mobile device, tablet, and TV.”
  • The actual viewing experience is also a bit different, as the video plays closer to the top of the screen and playlists have been moved to the right of the screen to make it easier to find videos on the same channel rather than just related videos.
  • “This is no ordinary channel guide,” the site explains. “The YouTube Guide puts the channels you love at the top of the list and always shows you how many new videos are waiting for you.”
  • “With YouTube investing heavily in its own original channels, it only makes sense that it would try to make that content as easy as possible to access and navigate through, and the new design is a big step in that direction,” writes The Verge.

Netflix Exec Describes Television World Without Ratings and Schedules

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December 7, 2012
  • “It’s gonna look nothing like we’re seeing today,” said Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos in a discussion of what TV will look like in five years, noting that Netflix wants to lead that transformation.
  • For one, the streaming service aims to make ratings irrelevant. Even though Netflix’s original TV show “Arrested Development,” coming in February, is expected to attract millions, Sarandos says the company won’t be releasing numbers.
  • He explained that ratings are irrelevant for subscription services that don’t have to sell audiences to advertisers. Moreover, the numbers create unreasonable comparisons of shows’ immediate success when audiences may discover the content over time, GigaOM writes.
  • Although Sarandos acknowledged the necessity for time schedules for time-sensitive content like sports or talk shows, he says Netflix will not create time schedules that reduces on-demand flexibility. This model could have reverberations among other pay TV providers.
  • “After all, if Netflix is successful with its no-schedule strategy, should other TV networks stick to the schedule as their viewing is shifting towards an on-demand world?” the post asks.
  • Similarly, Netflix will offer complete seasons of TV shows all at once. Viewers don’t want to wait for the next episode, and creators will be able to spend less time recapping in each episode.
  • Netflix also places value in personalization and has worked to fine-tune its recommendation feature. The company is taking it one step further with Just for Kids, a UI that separates children’s content. Sarandos says Netflix aims to one day use voice and visual recognition to “be able to pull up a user’s personalized recommendations as soon as that person walked into the room,” the post states.

Following Game-Changing Disney Deal, Netflix Talking with Other Studios

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December 7, 2012
  • Netflix just secured exclusive rights to new Disney titles after their theatrical releases, and the streaming service hopes to make similar deals with other studios.
  • For the Disney deal, Netflix outbid premium channel Starz, and will get exclusive access for a specified time window starting in 2016, as reported earlier on ETCentric.
  • “The deal, estimated to cost Netflix $350 million a year, was seen as a major coup,” the New York Post writes. “It marked the first time a big Hollywood studio had picked a Web rival for that crucial pay TV window over a premium channel such as HBO, Showtime and Starz.”
  • Netflix content boss Ted Sarandos discussed the company’s content strategy at the UBS annual media conference in New York. He said Netflix is also talking with Universal to get movies, and suggests the service might even look into a deal with Warner Bros.
  • Netflix is trying to “accelerate the windows and get fresher content,” according to Sarandos. “Warner’s deal [with HBO] is up in 2014. This gives Warner the opportunity to do other things, to look at this.”
  • “Sarandos pointed out that Netflix was working with Universal to get movies on the streaming service that perhaps HBO didn’t want,” explains the article. “He cited animated film ‘The Lorax,’ as an example, saying that family programming was high on Netflix’s agenda but less so for HBO.”
  • That said, Time Warner owns both HBO and Warner Bros. so the likelihood seems slim, the article suggests.

Copyright Act Leads to Studios Censoring Legitimate Links to Own Media

By
December 6, 2012
  • A recent automated request has asked Google to take down links to legitimate sites that reference studios’ films in addition to other links that seemingly have no connection to the films.
  • Although Google has left many of the links up thus far, the appeal is just one example of the numerous Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) requests that Google has to sift through.
  • According to The Next Web, the request was sent by a company called “Yes It Is – No Piracy!” on behalf of several major Hollywood movie studios.
  • “Victims of the takedown requests include sites where the content is hosted legally (Amazon, CBS, iTunes, Blockbuster, Verizon on demand, and Xfinity), newspapers discussing the content in question (the BBC, CNET, Forbes, The Huffington Post, The Guardians, The Independent, The Mirror, The Daily Mail, and Wired) as well as official Facebook Pages for the movies and TV shows and even their Wikipedia entries,” the post explains.
  • While takedown requests for copyright violations are reasonable, these automated requests put unnecessary strain on Google, the article suggests. One such request from Microsoft asked Google to censor BBC, CBS, CNN, Wikipedia, the U.S. government, and even its own Bing links.
  • “We have no problem with companies asking Google to censor webpages in its search engine because they are either illegally hosting or linking to copyrighted material,” comments TNW. “That being said, automated requests that don’t get a final check from human eyes result in mistakes, and it’s frankly quite sad that Google has to sift through them all. Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time this has happened, and it likely won’t be the last.”

Lucasfilm Engineers Explore Unlikely Echo Chamber to Capture Audio

By
December 6, 2012
  • Skywalker Sound, the audio division of Lucasfilm, sent sound effects engineers below the San Francisco Bay to record the unique sound chamber of the recently reconstructed Bay Bridge.
  • After clambering down ladders, stairs and a crawl space, the crew set up expensive recording equipment to capture the resonance of the concrete chasm. And then they fired blanks. And banged trap doors. And yelled.
  • “The pistol gives off a ‘full frequency event’ — that is, the sound covers the full range of audible frequencies, giving a complete impulse response,” Wired explains. “Back at Skywalker, the editors will use Altiverb to digitally remove the sound of the shot.”
  • “Then we can run whatever sound we want through that program, and it’ll sound like we’re in here,” says Casey Langfelder of Skywalker Sound.
  • “Each microphone they have, called mid-side mics, houses two units — a front facing element to capture the event, and a figure-eight shaped one that records stereo,” the article explains. “Because the sounds reaching the side mic have bounced off the surroundings, they helps give a sense of ambient space, says [assistant effects editor Benny] Burtt. Together, they allow the sound engineers to adjust the width of the sound, making it project a sense of space.”
  • The crew took advantage of the recording opportunity before the bridge was reopened.
  • “Now that we’ve recorded the Bay Bridge tunnel span, we can create an impulse response for it at each distance we recorded,” says Burtt. “Any time we need some sort of subterranean cave or super-echoey location, we can plug an effect into this and have the response without actually going back out to the bridge.”
  • “You never know where these sounds might wind up,” Langfelder says. “They could wind up on ‘Star Wars,’ or they could end up on other things… our library is always growing.”

Excite 10 SE: Toshiba Releases 10-Inch Jelly Bean Tablet for Only $350

By
December 6, 2012
  • Toshiba’s new 10-inch Excite 10 SE tablet will be available starting tomorrow for $350.
  • The new tablet will ship with Android 4.1, a Nvidia Tegra 3 quad-core processor, an AutoBrite HD screen featuring 1280 x 800 pixel resolution and stereo quality speakers.
  • “Our Excite family of tablets continues to grow with options to suit a wide range of consumer needs, from portability and gaming to versatility and power,” explains Carl Pinto, VP of marketing for Toshiba America. “We designed the Excite 10 SE to be a full featured tablet that offers a pure, Android Jelly Bean experience, while maintaining an attractive price point.”
  • The Excite 10 SE is 0.4-inches thick and weights 22.6 ounces. Additional features include a 3-megapixel rear-facing camera with auto focus and digital zoom, a front-facing HD camera, microSD and Micro USB ports, Bluetooth 3.0 and 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi capability.
  • “Toshiba touts its Excite 10 SE to offer the best 10-inch tablet experience for that price, as most larger-sized slates begin at around $400,” reports Digital Trends. “Asus’ Transformer Prime is one of the few 10-inch tablets that fall in that price range, sporting a price tag of $345.”
  • “The low price will certainly give Toshiba an advantage, but in an industry so saturated it can be tough to compete with the likes of Apple or Google.”

Amazon to Offer Kindle Fire Subscription Service Featuring Content for Kids

By
December 6, 2012
  • Amazon has announced a new subscription service aimed at children who use the Kindle Fire. The service is scheduled to roll out as part of a software update in the coming weeks.
  • FreeTime is a feature that offers parental controls for how children use the tablet. Amazon is adding a subscription service to FreeTime, that offers unlimited access to kid-friendly content.
  • “FreeTime Unlimited, announced Wednesday by the e-commerce giant, will bring together all the child-friendly content available for the Kindle Fire tablets — encompassing books, games, educational apps, movies and TV shows — into the walled garden of the existing FreeTime feature, offering unlimited access for $4.99 per child or $9.99 per family,” reports Digital Trends. “Prime members can sign up for slightly less: $2.99 and $6.99 respectively.”
  • Parents can create a Kindle Fire profile for their children based on their age and gender. FreeTime also creates time limits “so their eyes don’t turn rectangular through overuse.”
  • FreeTime Unlimited will feature content from providers such as Chronicle Books, DC Comics, Disney, HIT Entertainment, Nickelodeon, PBS and Sesame Workshop.

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