Chinese authorities are considering new rules to regulate blogging and podcasting in China.

Long Xinmin, director of China’s General Administration of Press and Publications (GAPP), said March 12 that his administration, together with several other departments, is working on new rules on Internet publishing activities. Long said the rules will help guarantee freedom of speech ,while regulating and standardizing publishing activities.

“We aim to maintain the healthy and easiest environment of web publishing on the premise of netizen’s freedom of expression being fully fulfilled,” Long said, adding that the rapid expansion of Internet use, especially the blogging and podcasting differing from traditional media, poses great pressure on the administrators.

via China Daily

Media conglomerate Viacom, parent company of MTV, Comedy Central, BET, TV Land and Nickelodeon, has filed a $1 billion lawsuit against Google and its Internet video sharing site YouTube over unauthorized use of copyrighted entertainment.

The suit accuses Web Google and YouTube of “massive intentional copyright infringement” of Viacom’s entertainment assets and seeks an injunction against further violations.

According to Viacom, nearly 160,000 unauthorized clips of its programming have been uploaded onto YouTube’s site and viewed more than 1.5 billion times. Viacom recently demanded that YouTube take down over a hundred thousand videos, accusing the site of violating its copyrights.

MTV has announced record traffic and video streams for mtv.com since the beginning of the year. January and February were consecutive record-setting months for the site. The site delivered a record 84 million streams in January, only to beat that number in February with 85.1 million streams.Year-to-year comparisons are even more striking: January 2007 streams were up 258 percent over the previous January, while February streams were up 228 percent over the year prior.

The announcement adds fuel to the fire over the issue of Viacom’s YouTube takedown requests. While some argued that Viacom (parent company of MTV) was shooting itself in the foot by asking for its videos to be removed from YouTube, their numbers argue otherwise.

In January, mtv.com attracted 24.2 million unique visitors, an all- time-high and a 56 percent increase over January 2006. In February, the number of daily unique visitors grew another 10 percent to 1.1 million a day, up from 1 million a day in January. March also is roaring in like a lion. mtv.com earned 7.1 million unique visitors for the week ending March 4, second only to the week ending Aug. 28, 2006, which featured exclusive behind-the-scenes and show content from the Video Music Awards.

“Viewers are constantly telling us they want to dig deeper into the content they see on-air, and they are obsessive about following our programming from one platform to the other — and back,” said Christina Norman, President of MTV. “When the TV show ‘The Hills’ inspires a community of fans to connect with their favorite cast members and devour exclusive content online and on the handset, the payoff for viewers is a more immersive experience all the way around.”

Bagir Ltd., a manufacturer of tailored clothing, has introduced the Play List Jacket, a design which is exclusive to Express Men, that offers iPod support integrated into a blazer.

“It’s the only tailored jacket in the world that has been specifically designed to be compatible to iPods,” says Offer Gilboa, CEO of Bagir, which has been given a “Made for iPod” authorization from Apple for tailored clothing.

A strategically placed pocket has been designed to hold an iPod, while earphone wires can be set in place via hidden loops on the inner lapel. Want to change the music, pause, rewind, or adjust the volume? You can adjust the iPod through soft touch controls that are built into the inner lapel.
The jacket will be available at Express later this month and will retail for $248. Coordinating pants are will also be available.

“Our company has targeted this unique jacket collection to the customer who is in the business world, likes stylish clothing, and is in step with the newest electronic innovations,” adds Gilboa.

March 13: It’s 31 Days of Free Music month at Podcasting News. Every day in March, we’re going to do our best to hook you up a great free music podcast.

Previously, we’ve highlighted podcasts with free guitar music, free jazz videos, free soundtrack music, and some brutal, harsh noise. And we’re not even halfway through the month yet!

It’s easy to find great music in podcasts, and it doesn’t get any greater than the majesty of Beethoven. Deutsche Welle has several free classical music podcasts that fans of symphonic music will want to check out.

The Classical Masterpieces podcast features the music of Brahms, Beethoven, Bruckner and others. You can subscribe to this podcast by adding this URL to iTunes or other podcast client:
http://rss.dw-world.de/xml/podcast_classical-masterpieces

If that’s not enough Beethoven for you, Deutsche Welle’s Beethoven podcast offers a massive sturm and drang fix. You can preview the podcast, below, with Beethoven’s Symphony #6 in F Major, aka The Pastoral.

You can subscribe to the Beethoven podcast by adding this URL to iTunes or other podcast client:
http://rss.dw-world.de/xml/podcast_beethovenfest

Rain Recording has introduced the Element Pro, the first in a series of Quad Core-based Element digital audio workstations. Element Pro is designed to ensure optimum performance of all components, providing maximum audio throughput in the most demanding digital audio applications.

If you need to or prefer to use Windows for audio work, Rain’s computers look like they deserve a place on your short list.

The “Professional Quad” series comes in two models the PQ1 and PQ2. Both systems are based upon Intel’s Core 2 Quad technology taking advantage of four physical processing cores with a combined level 2 cache of 8MB to give unparalleled real-time performance in recording, mixing and effects processing.

Specifically for Lancashire (UK) dog owners, the 25-minute “Paws on the Moors” audio play follows the adventures of six dogs on the moors through their fictitious blog.¬† (PodcastingNews cannot resist a story that lets us say something catchy like “Dog Blog.”¬† Try typing that three times, really quickly: dog blog, dog blog, dog blog…).

The podcast has been developed by the Moors for the Future Partnership to encourage responsible dog ownership on the moors, particularly during the bird nesting and lambing season, which spans the period March 1 to July 31.

The UK Kennel Club, the governing body for dogs and their humans, supports the podcast. Access Advisor Stephen Jenkinson said: “This entertaining, informative approach gives people excellent advice about keeping their dogs happy and safe on the moors, while protecting rare birds and wildlife. A pet roaming off-lead at the wrong time or place can cause distress and serious injury for dogs, farm animals and wildlife alike.”

The podcast tells the story of Barney, a young collie-cross, over the course of a year.¬† He learns about the delights and dangers a dog can find on and around the moors. Through his “blog”, Barney makes new friends, including two experienced working dogs that help to reform the mischievous Bingo, a Lakeland terrier who likes to bite off more than he can chew.

The podcast was launched at Crufts, the world’s biggest and best dog show, and can be downloaded from the Moors for the Future website www.moorsforthefuture.org.uk by following the links to “Paws on the moors” pages. There is also a wealth of information for dog owners, including information on pet friendly accommodation and local vets.

via Burnley Today

March 12: It’s 31 Days of Free Music month at Podcasting News. Every day in March, we’re going to do our best to hook you up a great free music podcast.

Today’s podcast is the Jon Hammond Show – a video podcast that focuses on the music of aptly named jazz organist Jon Hammond. The production values are pretty basic on the Jon Hammond Show – but the videos capture the groove of Hammond and his band’s playing perfectly.

If you’re a fan of jazz music, you’ll want to check out the sample show, below, or subscribe to the podcast by adding this feed URL to your podcast client software:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/JonHammondCast

March 11: It’s 31 Days of Free Music month at Podcasting News. Every day in March, we’re highlighting a free music podcast.

So far this month we’ve highlighted podcasts with lots of nice music:

• Nice piano music
• Nice guitar music
• Nice americana music
• Nice Irish and Celtic music
• More f***ing nice music

They gotta lotta nice music – a haw, haw, haw, haw. But enough of that.

Today we want to introduce you to something different. A podcast that offers brutal, unrelenting noise.

Ever wonder why your iPod seems to play certain songs over and over?

According to recent research, Apple wants you to listen to Lionel Richie, but not Led Zeppelin or John Mayer, on your iPod.

Researchers set up Apple’s iTunes to create multiple random playlists of songs that were purchased from iTunes or ripped from CDs. Then they counted up how many times each tune was put on a playlist.

Here’s what they found:

• Pop singles were rotated onto playlists far more frequently than would be expected. Some artists, having just one song in the iTunes Library, were played more often than the entire 5-song collections of other artists.
• Artists and singles purchased through iTunes were played more frequently than those that were not.
• Four songs — Christina Aguilera’s At Last, Creed’s What’s This Life For, Crowded House’s World Where You Live and Led Zeppelin’s Nobody’s Fault But Mine — were in the iTunes Library but were not chosen for any of the 40 playlists generated during this exercise.
• Lionel Richie (Universal) was iTunes’ favorite artist.
• Def Leppard (Universal) was iTunes’ favorite artist among songs ripped from CD.
• John Mayer (Sony) was iTunes’ least favorite artist among iTunes downloads.
• Oasis (Sony) was iTunes’ least favorite artist.
• Songs from Universal and EMI showed up in more play lists than their share of the iTunes Library would suggest.
• Songs from Warner and Sony showed up in fewer play lists than their share of the iTunes Library would suggest. The disparity was striking in Sony’s case, with the company’s songs accounting for 34.18% of the songs available, but chosen for just 18.8% of possible playlists.

Results like this seem to indicate iTunes favors music purchased through the iTunes store over music ripped from CDs. It also appears that iTunes favors Universal’s music over hardware rival Sony’s music.

Larger studies are probably needed to determine if these conclusions are valid, or if they are just random variations in a relatively small pool of data. .