YouTube to keep user details away from Viacom July 15, 2008
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentSOURCE STORY HERE
Viacom has backed off its demands to gain access to the viewing habits and personal data of YouTube users, information it had originally asked for in its copyright infringement lawsuit against the video-sharing website.
The two sides agreed on Monday that any material YouTube was ordered to hand over would be stripped of personal information, including user ID, IP address and visitor ID.
“We are pleased to report that Viacom, MTV and other litigants have backed off their original demand for all users’ viewing histories and we will not be providing that information,” YouTube wrote on its company blog Monday. The company also posted a copy of the stipulation to the order on its website.
Viacom, which owns several U.S. television networks including MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central, had originally asked for the information as part of its $1 billion US lawsuit against YouTube, which is owned by internet search giant Google Inc.
Other plaintiffs in the lawsuit include the English soccer Premier League and music publisher Bourne Co. Viacom and the other plaintiffs alleged in the suit, launched in March2007, that almost 160,000 unauthorized clips of its programming are available on YouTube. Those clips have been viewed more than 1.5 billion times, Viacom charged.
It argued Google wasn’t doing enough to keep its copyrighted videos from television shows such as The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report off YouTube.
It had originally asked for access to the user histories to prove that copyright-infringing material is more popular than user-generated videos on YouTube.
Two weeks ago a U.S. federal judge ordered YouTube to hand over this information, a decision San Francisco-based privacy advocacy group The Electronic Frontier Foundation said was “a setback to privacy rights.”
Viacom issued a statement Monday, saying it never asked for personally identifiable information and only wanted the data as evidence in its case.
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Viacom and Microsoft Sign Advertising and Content Deal December 19, 2007
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentBy Kenneth Li
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Microsoft Corp won an estimated $500 million, 5-year Internet advertising deal with MTV Networks owner Viacom Inc, giving the software giant a boost against rivals Google Inc and Yahoo Inc.
Microsoft will help Viacom place advertising on its network of entertainment Web sites in the U.S., such as MTV.com. Microsoft will also be the exclusive seller in the U.S. of remnant display advertising, which is ad space that Viacom has been unable to sell, company executives said on Wednesday.
The deal replaces online ad firm DoubleClick, whose services Viacom currently employs among other partners. Google, which Viacom sued for $1 billion for copyright infringement, is set to purchase DoubleClick for $3.1 billion.
The broad agreement involves Viacom’s online games, television shows and films. Microsoft will license long- and short-form television and movies from Viacom for Microsoft’s MSN Internet network and its Xbox 360 game system’s online network.
The deal is seen as a coup for Microsoft’s Atlas advertising platform as it makes inroads against Google Inc and Yahoo Inc in the overall online advertising business, which Microsoft has estimated at $80 billion by 2010.
Each company has raced to purchase new advertising businesses and lock in exclusive agreements.
Yahoo signed a deal in April with Viacom to provide search advertising for 33 of its Web sites, which remains in place. Viacom’s properties include the Paramount movie studio, and MTV and Comedy Central cable television networks.
Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft in August made its biggest purchase ever in the $6 billion acquisition of digital ad firm aQuantive in an effort to transform into one of the Web’s top two players in the online ad market in three to five years.
About 50 Web publishers have signed on to use Microsoft’s ad platform since it announced the aQuantive deal in May, said Kevin Johnson, Microsoft’s president of platforms and services. “This deal is another milestone in our quest to build a world-class advertising platform,” he said in a phone interview.
In October, Microsoft sealed the exclusive rights to sell ads outside of the United States for Facebook, and it also purchased a small stake in the popular Internet social network.
As part of the Viacom deal, Microsoft also agreed to buy ads on the media company’s broadcast and online networks over five years and to help Viacom establish itself as a publishing partner on Microsoft’s casual Internet gaming sites.
“We are always in discussion with Microsoft,” Viacom Chief Executive Philippe Dauman said in a phone interview. “This broad-based relationship will lead to conversations in other business areas.”
Responding to a question of what other areas, Dauman said video games development could be one arena in which the two companies could work together.
Viacom, which also announced on Wednesday a splashy development deal with “Pirates of the Caribbean” and “Top Gun” producer Jerry Bruckheimer, sees online games and those played on game systems as a major pillar of growth.
“What impressed me was the extent to which Microsoft is making the commitment, technological, financial and otherwise to be a winner in this space,” Dauman said.
Microsoft shares were up 20 cents to $34.94 in early trading on the Nasdaq, while Viacom shares were up 1.8 percent, or 76 cents, at $43.83 on the New York Stock Exchange.
(Reporting by Kenneth Li; Editing by Steve Orlofsky and Derek Caney)
NBC widgets let other Web sites link to videos June 7, 2007
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentNBC to let other Web sites link to NBC video
Reuters
Wednesday, June 6, 2007; 3:11 PM
NEW YORK (Reuters) – General Electric Co.’s (GE.N) NBC Universal said on Wednesday it will allow personal Web sites to link to video snippets of NBC programs such as “Access Hollywood,” underscoring the Internet as a growing destination for video entertainment.
Independent Web site and blog owners can embed software widgets — small bits of code that function as dynamic applications when installed on a Web page — linked to text and video clips from its shows.
Other media companies including Viacom Inc., (VIAb.N) CBS Corp. (CBSa.N) and the New York Times Co.(NYT.N) also let Web enthusiasts post their programs or content.
Widgets based on television shows initially offered include “NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams” and “Dateline,” as well as programming from NBC Sports, DotComedy.com and iVillage.com, NBC Universal said.
NBC’s widget system is being supported by Clearspring Technologies.
Previously, NBC let users post some of its video shows such as “Saturday Night Live” and “Heroes” onto their own Web sites as part of an overall media industry move to seek new viewers wherever they spend time — even if it is on a friend’s blog.
To add a particular widget — also sometimes called a “gadget” — to a Web page, users can with a few clicks locate the HTML source code of the program and insert it into their own Web sites using standard Web publishing tools.
Widgets have been popularized by Web companies such as Google Inc. (GOOG.O), Apple Inc. (AAPL.O), Yahoo Inc. (YHOO.O) and Microsoft Corp. (MSFT.O)
ouTube's Far Too Useful To Be Shunned — Even By Viacom Chief May 8, 2007
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a comment| Just An Online Minute… YouTube’s Far Too Useful To Be Shunned — Even By Viacom Chief |
| by Wendy Davis, Tuesday, May 8, 2007 3:00 PM ET |
| VIACOM MIGHT STILL BE FEUDING in court with YouTube, but Viacom majority owner Sumner Redstone apparently doesn’t bear hard feelings toward the video-sharing site. Another company overseen by Redstone, CBS Corp’s Simon & Schuster, plans to develop a new video channel on YouTube, Bookvideos.tv, to promote authors. The book publisher will create about 40 clips that will offer glimpses into the lives of writers like Mary Higgins Clark and Sandra Brown, according to The Wall Street Journal. The move once again shows that, despite the anti-YouTube bluster, companies are realizing that the site offers a convenient route to millions of viewers seeking entertainment.In fact, several weeks after Viacom filed suit against YouTube, CBS created an NCAA channel on the site. If it’s true that YouTube built its audience on copyrighted content, including clips of Viacom programs like “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” that audience now makes the site more valuable to CBS and other companies seeking eyeballs for marketing purposes. Without YouTube, Simon & Schuster and other companies that want to distribute video clips might have to deal separately with dozens, if not hundreds, of video-sharing sites. Yes, for this project, Simon & Schuster is also syndicating the clips out to some other video sites, as well as allowing users to link to or embed the clips at will. But it’s YouTube that offers the biggest numbers — proving that the site’s tremendous audience doesn’t just profit YouTube, but other marketers and media companies that want to reach Web users. |
NBCU Joins Viacom in YouTube Piracy Suit… May 8, 2007
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentNBCU Joins Viacom in YouTube Piracy Suit…
NBCU Joins Viacom in YouTube Piracy Suit
NBC Universal has joined Viacom in filing a piracy-related court statement regarding YouTube, reports Reuters.
The media giants submitted a friend of the court briefing in a case pitting YouTube against owners of the footage of trucker Reginald Denny being beaten during the Los Angeles riots of 1992. Los Angeles News Service, which owns the footage, decided to sue YouTube when the video appeared on the popular video-sharing site.
The brief alleges YouTube engages in practice that violate the rights of copyright holders. Media companies also argue YouTube manipulates videos to encourage illegal dissemination.
NBC is currently taking part in a test of YouTube’ copyright monitoring system.
Just An Online Minute… Viacom's Dirty Hands? Google Responds To Big-Bucks Suit May 1, 2007
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a comment| Just An Online Minute… Viacom’s Dirty Hands? Google Responds To Big-Bucks Suit |
| by Wendy Davis, Tuesday, May 1, 2007 1:30 PM ET |
| GOOGLE THIS WEEK FILED PAPERS arguing that Viacom’s $1 billion copyright infringement lawsuit is meritless. While Google raises a variety of arguments, the company, as expected, relies heavily on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which generally provides Internet companies with a safe harbor from copyright lawsuits based on user-submitted content, as long as the companies remove such content when the owner complains. “Viacom’s complaint in this action challenges the careful balance established by Congress when it enacted the Digital Millennium Copyright Act,” Google states in its response. “By seeking to make carriers and hosting providers liable for internet communications, Viacom’s complaint threatens the way hundreds of millions of people legitimately exchange information, news, entertainment, and political and artistic expression.” Yet, despite Google’s rhetoric, legal opinion differs about whether courts will decide that the DMCA protects the company. That’s because the DMCA safe harbor provisions have some exceptions — one, notably, is that companies that directly profit from copyrighted content can’t claim the protection. For now, no one knows how courts will determine whether YouTube has directly profited from pirated clips. But if the company steps up efforts to monetize itself with ads, it’s plausible that the courts will conclude that YouTube is profiting from pirated material. Google’s response also asserts a host of additional issues, including the intriguing allegation that Viacom has “unclean hands.” While the document is maddeningly short on detail, it indicates that Google intends to cast at least some blame on Viacom should the matter go to trial. |
Viacom signs on Intel, Pepsi as mobile advertisers March 29, 2007
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentViacom signs on Intel, Pepsi as mobile advertisers
ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) – Media conglomerate Viacom Inc. said on Wednesday its MTV Networks signed on Intel Corp. and Pepsi-Cola North America as the first advertising sponsors for its programs delivered on cell phones.
Viacom Chief Executive Philippe Dauman announced the deals at the CTIA wireless showcase in Orlando, Florida.
Wireless and media companies are betting that mobile entertainment will gain momentum among subscribers in 2007, offering advertisers a new way to reach consumers and cell phone companies an additional revenue stream.
“We believe advertising can work on the wireless platform. Indeed we view it as a critical medium,” Dauman said during a keynote speech at the conference.
Viacom sends 1 million video streams to mobile phones every month, Dauman said.
Intel and Pepsi brands will be featured on mobile channels dedicated to MTV’s music and youth programming as well as the content of Comedy Central. Viacom said it was the first time it had offered advertisers the opportunity to link their brands to its mobile programming.
The company said it had also expanded a deal to show its programming on Sprint Nextel wireless service, with 14 live and video-on-demand channels.
MTV aims to launch new mobile Web sites for its Nickelodeon, Spike TV and TV Land channels starting in the second quarter.
Viacom’s Comedy Central will also offer a mobile video game based on its popular “South Park” cartoon series. “South Park 10: The Game” will be available on most major wireless carriers in the United States and Europe in the first week of April, the company said.
Viacom Class B shares fell 42 cents, or 1 percent, to $40.48 in midday trading.
Viacom’s Full-Court Press for Online Ads March 19, 2007
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentViacom’s Full-Court Press for Online Ads
A Viacom advertising sales executive, Jim Tricarico, performing at a Nickelodeon presentation in New York.
Justin Timberlake did not attend Nickelodeon’s annual advertising presentation this month, but one of Viacom’s own ad sales executives, Jim Tricarico, took the stage to perform a rendition of the singer’s “SexyBack.”
A screen image from YouTube showing a clip from “The Colbert Report,” the sort of thing that has set off complaints by Viacom.
“Nicktropolis, Nick at Nite, cool Web sites,” he rapped to advertising executives gathered at the Nokia Theater in Times Square. “Come to the Nick and get your sales on.”
Nickelodeon was the first of many television networks that will be rapping about their digital assets this spring as ad executives determine how to spend their clients’ money at the annual advertising previews, known in the trade as the upfronts.
Video advertising, while less than 5 percent of online spending, is the fastest-growing advertising category online, generating $410 million last year, an increase of 82 percent from 2005, according to eMarketer, an online advertising research firm.
While all television networks have seized upon online video, few invested more aggressively than Nickelodeon’s parent company, Viacom. MTV Networks — the division of Viacom that oversees 28 networks in the United States including MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, Spike and Country Music Television — manages 44 domestic Web sites and was among the first to put video from its TV shows online, posting MTV video in 1994.
And Viacom has been aggressive in different ways. Last week, the company sued Google, asking for more than $1 billion in compensation for its clips from shows that have been uploaded by users to its YouTube site. Other networks have negotiated deals with YouTube privately while Viacom executives have openly criticized the video site when Viacom owned-shows like “The Colbert Report” appeared there.
“Every day we have to scour the entirety of what is available on YouTube, so we have to look for our stuff,” Philippe P. Dauman, Viacom’s chief executive, said last week. “It is very difficult for us and places an enormous burden on us.”
Other major media companies have accused YouTube of copyright infringement, but Viacom’s lawsuit underscores its particular vulnerability in the face of the popularity of video site.
First, Viacom has been adamant about maintaining its own relationship with advertisers, in part because it is trying to sell ads across platforms, using the popularity of its Web properties to bolster its television ad revenue. That is leverage the company would lose if it cannot draw enough viewers to its own Web properties.
According to Hank Close, executive vice president for ad sales at MTV Networks, advertisers will get a spot online at events like the “Kids Choice” awards program on Nickelodeon and the MTV Music Awards show only if they agree to buy commercials on the television broadcast, as well.
“These are exclusive properties, and you’re not going to get into them unless you do television too,” Mr. Close said. “We’ve got the ability to connect with consumers and move with them from screen to screen.”
Viacom also has a enormous amount of content aimed at younger viewers, the kind most likely to click on YouTube or other sites. More than 80 percent of Nickelodeon’s and MTV’s audiences are under 34, as is 57 percent of Comedy Central’s, according to Nielsen. (Viacom says that clips of its programs have been viewed more than 1.5 billion times on YouTube.)
Advertisers like Internet commercials linked to online video because it allows them to communicate their brand messages with sight, sound and motion. And Web sites like video ads because they are paid more for each viewer than they typically would be with simple text or banner ads.
Google, thanks to YouTube, remains the colossus of online video, with 1.167 billion videos streamed for viewing in January by 54.7 million people, according to data from comScore to be released publicly this week. By comparison, Viacom Digital had less than a quarter of the streamed videos — 264 million — and just over a third the number of people, or 18.9 million, making it the fifth most popular online video company in terms of video streams.
Nickelodeon, MTV and VH1 sites account for more than 70 percent of those streams. A user-generated video site that Viacom acquired last year, iFilm, represents about 15 percent of the streams and Comedy Central about 1 percent, comScore figures show. (MTV Networks says comScore Media Metrix does not capture video viewing on some of its sites.)
To close the gap with Google, MTV Networks last year hired several new executives who had digital expertise. Mika Salmi, now head of the networks’ digital media, had been chief executive of Atom Entertainment, which Viacom acquired in August. Nada Stirratt, the networks’ executive vice president for digital ad sales, was hired from Advertising.com, a large third-party ad server.
And Adam Cahan, formerly a member of Google’s strategy team, was named executive vice president for strategy and business of MTV Networks. W
hile television also falls under his authority, video distribution online is a large part of Mr. Cahan’s focus. That has brought him into competition with his former employer.
In the last year, Viacom spent about $1 billion buying Web sites specializing in games, user-generated content and other entertainment likely to be popular with its young audiences.
Nickelodeon, in particular, has been expanding. In the fall, it acquired AddictingGames.com. Last month, the network created Nicktropolis, a virtual site like Second Life where young users can interact online. It recently introduced MeTV, a site where viewers post their own video creations, and some of those videos are later shown on television. And Neopets, the network’s virtual pet site, is moving into mobile phone offerings. Nickelodeon executives said they have learned how to reach younger viewers on multiple screens at all times of the day.
“Kids are now in the driver’s seat,” said Jim Perry, executive vice president for MTV Networks’ Kids and Family ad sales, “determining when and how they want to interact with us.”
Viacom is not entirely opposed to sharing its content with others, if paid for it. Last month, the company said it would allow Joost, an online video site now being developed, to show some of its clips. And in the fall, MTV Networks participated in a video distribution test of Google’s AdSense program, which distributes video to thousands of sites, sharing the revenue with the media companies.
But in contrast to other companies like Condé Nast, which allowed Google to sell the ads that accompanied their videos, MTV Networks insisted on selling theirs.
“From a strategic perspective we deeply value our relationships with our advertisers,” Mr. Cahan said in discussing the AdSense test. “It’s very important that we maintain those relationships, regardless of platform.”
At last year’s upfronts, Viacom executives talked at length about the digital space at MTV Networks’ presentation at Madison Square Garden, where the lobby was filled with an array of computers, iPods and other devices displaying the company’s Web content. The approach seemed to work. MTV Networks landed a deal with OMD, an ad-buying unit of the Omnicom Group, that bundled $300 million worth of digital and television ad sales.
But the emphasis by Viacom and other networks on digital media caused confusion at many agencies. Ad buyers traditionally purchase only one medium, and many large advertisers hire separate agencies to handle their digital and television ads, so many television buyers were unsure if they could purchase online video ads. In the last six months, several large agencies have responded by consolidating all video ad buying, including television and Internet, under one person.
Other media companies have been making similar changes, signaling a sea change in the ad-selling business, as well. Last month, for example, NBC placed all ad sales, including television, under its digital chief, Beth Comstock.
“The networks are putting their stakes in the ground to grow that side of the business so they don’t lose it,” said Jason Maltby, president and co-executive director for national broadcast at MindShare North America, a WPP Group unit that buys ads.
Viacom Gets Support From Media Rivals Against YouTube March 15, 2007
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentViacom Gets Support From Media Rivals Against YouTube
By Cecile Daurat and Jonathan Thaw
March 14 (Bloomberg) — Viacom Inc.’s legal effort to stop Google Inc.’s YouTube video-sharing site from posting copyrighted materials drew support from media rivals such as Time Warner Inc.
Viacom, owner of MTV Networks, said yesterday it is seeking $1 billion in damages for almost 160,000 clips it said were posted to YouTube without permission. New York-based News Corp. said companies are justified in asserting copyright claims, while Time Warner called on YouTube to clean up the site.
“This is a key issue for our industry,” Keith Cocozza, a spokesman for New York-based Time Warner, said yesterday. “It is time for YouTube to remove unauthorized material from its site.”
The world’s largest media companies are ratcheting up pressure on YouTube at the same time they negotiate agreements to get their content in front of the site’s more than 100 million users. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., owner of the MySpace social networking site, and Viacom, which is chaired by Sumner Redstone, said last week they are working at creating YouTube rivals.
“It’s the classic Hollywood-Silicon Valley divide,” said Annette Hurst, a copyright lawyer with Heller Ehrman in San Francisco, who represented Napster Inc. founder Shawn Fanning. “The balance is slightly out of whack and the consumers are not benefiting.”
YouTube, bought by Mountain View, California-based Google for $1.65 billion last year, says it removes copyrighted material when owners protest. In February, the site agreed to remove more than 100,000 Viacom clips after the companies failed to agree on payments for use of the shows.
“YouTube has become even more popular since we took down Viacom’s material,” Google General Counsel Kent Walker said yesterday in a statement. “We think that’s a testament to the draw of the user-generated content on YouTube.”
Google’s Defense
Shares of Google, the most-used search engine, rose $4.97, or 1 percent, to $448 at 4 p.m. New York Times in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. Class B shares of Viacom gained 39 cents to $39.87 in New York Stock Exchange composite trading.
Time Warner, the world’s largest media company and owner of TBS and the Warner Bros. movie studios, is in licensing talks with YouTube, Cocozza said.
“We are hopeful that we can work together toward a solution that will effectively identify and filter out unauthorized material and license copyrighted work for an appropriate revenue share,” Cocozza said.
Case-by-Case
“We have always been supportive of content companies protecting their copyright,” said Andrew Butcher, a spokesman for News Corp., the third-largest media company after Time Warner and Walt Disney Co. “We took a different approach on YouTube and asked them to take down content on a case-by-case basis.”
Disney spokesman Jonathan Friedland didn’t return messages seeking comment on Viacom’s lawsuit, while Shannon Jacobs, a spokeswoman for CBS Corp., declined to comment.
“There are conversations with YouTube and Google going on of course,” Disney Chief Executive Officer Robert Iger said in an interview last month. “I’m pretty confident that we’ll reach a meeting of the minds.”
CBS Corp., the TV network owner that split off from Viacom at the beginning of last year, has an agreement to show clips on the site. YouTube also has deals with NBC Universal Inc. and British Broadcasting Corp.
The complaint by Viacom, whose shows include “South Park” and “The Daily Show,” adds to Google’s other legal tussles, including lawsuits over its program to scan library books. The company hasn’t retreated, said Alexander Macgillivray, Google’s associate general counsel for products and intellectual property.
“We’re confident about our legal position and we won’t let this case distract us,” Macgillivray said in an interview. “Lawsuits are generally not a very good negotiating tactics with us.”
To contact the reporters on this story: Cecile Daurat in New York at cdaurat@bloomberg.net .
Viacom to Lay Off 250 at MTV Networks March 2, 2007
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentViacom to Lay Off 250 at MTV Networks
Viacom’s MTV Networks will lay off 250 employees this week as the entertainment property reallocates resources toward interactive properties and new networks.
“Our industry is at an inflection point and many companies are going through the process of adapting their business models and organizations to the new realities,” MTV Networks Chief Executive Judy McGrath said in an internal memo.
She said the layoffs should be complete by the end of the week.
Count the sudden market dominance of Google’s YouTube as one of factors in the high-flying music video network’s latest cutback.
Viacom entered 2006 with a relatively competitive video-sharing platform, iFilm. According to Nielsen//NetRatings, both iFilm and YouTube had unique audiences under 5 million during January 2006. But by the last month of the year, YouTube had a audience of 38 million to iFilm’s 2.3 million.
Since then, Viacom has taken notice.
On February 2, Viacom alleged copyright infringement and demanded YouTube take down 100,000 clips, including content from MTV, Comedy Central and other networks.
At the time, Viacom said “it has become clear that YouTube is unwilling to come to a fair market agreement” on content distribution.
But a Viacom spokesperson told internetnews.com the company has also begun an internal initiative to make their own digital media properties more competitive.
He said Viacom plans to hire at least another 500 employees and spend close to $1 billion on juicing up its Internet-related businesses.
