Amazon.com has announced plans for an international rollout of Amazon MP3, a DRM-free MP3 digital music store, in 2008. Amazon MP3 is currently the only retailer that the four major labels are allowing to offer customers DRM-free MP3s. As a result, it can offer over 3.3 million songs from more than 270,000 artists in DRM-free […]

The Citizen Media Law Project (CMLP) has published an excellent primer on fair use and copyright in the context of new media. These are topics that podcasters, indie video publishers and bloggers continually struggle with. A recent example is the controversy over the Richter Scales unauthorized use of Lane Hartwell’s photos in a video for […]

Barack Obama delivers the Top Ten list on the Late Show with David Letterman: # 4 may be the best fake campaign promise yet!

The Nielsen Company today announced the launch of Nielsen On Demand Reporting & Analytics, a new service that reports on video-on-demand (VOD) usage. The service offers viewing stats based on real time transactions collected at the set-top box level. At launch, Comcast will be providing VOD data for the service. Comcast will also begin using […]

According to research from Accustream, user generated video (UGV) – things like video podcasts, vlogs and YouTube videos – scored 22 billion views in 2007. That’s a 70% increase over 2006. People’s attention is moving to online video fast, limited mainly by bandwidth and the availability of content. Other research highlights: Long tail videos getting […]

YouTube is getting serious about mobilecasting, expanding its mobile service to include virtually all of the videos available on its Web site. Starting today, people with current generation mobile phones can watch tens of millions of YouTube videos. YouTube also is providing mobile access to many of the same features that have become staples of […]

Last week, when Sprint announced that it was laying off 4,000 employees, we suggested that Apple’s iPhone was killing off those jobs. A lot of people took issue with the suggestion, saying that Sprint’s lousy customer service was to blame. Sprint’s customer service IS terrible. We used to be Sprint subscribers, and found that going […]

Vudu is slashing the price of its video-on-demand box. Effective immediately, the Vudu is now $295, down from its original $399 asking price. Customers who’ve purchased the unit in the past 30 days can get a $100 movie credit by calling the company’s customer service line (888-554-VUDU). This move is expected, given the growing strength […]

The IFPI, an organization that represents the mainstream music industry worldwide, has released its take on the state of digital music 2008. According to the report, digital music is booming and the music industry is further along in the transition to digital than other industries. The industry appears to be more focused on P2P file […]

I’ve been catching up on Lost recently with the HD episodes available from Hulu and ABC. The quality is very good, considering it’s streaming HD Internet video, and having all three seasons of Lost available on demand is great, too. Their advertising implementation is terrible, though. Here’s why: Before you watch the show, you have […]