Streaming Media In A YouTube World

We live in a YouTube world which is one that changes how we interact with all media. We once listened, watched and read media, but today we increasingly adapt, sample, make and recreate it. From sampling music and repurposing it to films, social networking and expressing our views online, we now want to share media at a click and online.

Today the Administrative Office of the US Courts, report that less than 50 people are charged with a criminal copyright offense a year Today the Administrative Office of the US Courts, report that less than 50 people are charged with a criminal copyright offense a year.

However a new US bill, Senate Bill 978 could make the embedding copyrighted videos a crime, punishable by five years jail. The bill extends the existing laws on the reproduction and distribution of copyrighted works with the phrase "public performances by electronic means". Today it is illegal to reproduce or distribute copyrighted works by downloading them, but streaming has been classified as a "performance" rather than distribution and has therefore has been exempt. Under this change streaming copyrighted works will no longer be a misdemeanour and once the video has to be seen by at least 10 people over the course of 180 days and if the value of the broadcast is worth more than $2,500 and the value of the copyright licenses are worth more than $5,000 it will become a felony. Ok let’s accept that the 10 people in 6 months would appear to be a very low, if not ridiculous catch all, bar and we must also question the value threshold as also being so low in comparison to what the RIAA valued a tune in their litigations.

The bill aimed at streaming services, but as we migrate from downloading to streaming media this act could further expose the widening gulf between the media industry and the consumers who are often unable to see the rules with the clarity of others. We could also face the question of those who play the movies at home being at risk. What is also clear is that there is a new generation of users who do not share the same approach to copywrite and maybe the sick approach is not the answer as they potentially are the future.

The irony the route adopted is that it is very likely stimulate demand and make more aware for the already growing number of sites that stream videos and movies legally.

MSN Video Live

Microsoft's has finally launched MSN Video, its BBC iPlayer-style video site, where web users can watch episodes of TV shows.

The free video-streaming service today offers around 300 hours of television programmes and has content partnership deals with BBC Worldwide and All3Media, an independent production company. responsible for shows such as Shamelessand How to Look Good Naked and is currently in talks to sign other content providers such as ITV and Channel 4.

MSN Video will be in beta testing phase for approximately six months while the company tries to perfect the experience. If the service proves to be popular, it will be rolled out across Microsoft’s Xbox 360 video games console, Windows Mobile devices and on to TV screens in the living room via Project Canvas.

MSN To Get Off Their Soapbox?

Microsoft launched the Soapbox video user streaming brand in September 2006, days later Google purchased YouTube. Did you know that through Soapbox MSN Video has 35 million unique users, who watch 250 million video streams each month. No – well perhaps why it was reported today in The Register that Microsoft plans to "significantly scale back" its Soapbox service.

If you are still curious as to what Soapbox gives you today then watch this Cnet video.

Speaking with Cnet, Microsoft vice president Erik Jorgensen said that Soapbox's YouTube-like user-generated video setup is just too expensive considering the state of the economy. But he didn't exactly say how Microsoft plans to cut the service's costs.

Hulu Captures Disney

Hulu, the video streaming site, has now secured Disney, and with it comes ABC. With some 42 million visitors a month Hulu has , in the last 18 months, become the third most popular video site on the Web, behind YouTube and Fox Interactive Media. The only major U.S. TV network not yet in the Hulu loop is CBS, which have ties with Google's YouTube.

Hulu has partnered with 35 sites, including AOL, MSN, MySpace and Yahoo. It gets content from nearly 150 companies, such as Fox, NBC, Comedy Central, Lionsgate, MGM, MTV Networks, National Geographic, Paramount, PBS, Sony Pictures Television and Warner Brothers Television Group.

ABC will give Hulu an exclusive license to distribute its shows on Hulu.com and across the Web on Hulu’s partner sites, like MySpace and AOL .com. Disney will take a 28% stake in Hulu.com, and as part of the deal, NBC and the News Corporation also renewed their commitments to provide their shows exclusively to Hulu for an additional two years.

Amazon eMusic, eVideo, eBooks

Amazon continues to make much noise in the media space and it’s interesting that its not just focused on books or the Kindle.



The Telegraph is reporting that Amazon.co.uk is preparing to launch its DRM free Amazon MP3 service in 2008 in the UK. This will clearly go head to head with iTunes, HMV and Play.com. The DRM free and Amazon pricing will appeal to many and increase the movement towards a DRM free market.

Amazon.com has moved onto streaming video and has announced a new service that is to come on-stream in the next few weeks. The will be based on an a la carte for pay , scheme and again is firmly focused at competing with the likes of Apple in the growing digital marketplace.

We then return to where it all started – books and Bezos’s biggest adventure, the Kindle. Everyone is talking it up or has an opinion on it and today, it only has one serious contender, the Sony Reader. So it’s a two horse race to capture both market and the hearts and minds of the consumer. Or is it? Amazon has clearly got the edge over Sony and Adobe when it comes to getting content and has increased its etitles to some 125,000 whilst its competition lags someway behind. But how do we go from 125,000 to millions? How do we make ebooks ubiquitous? Amazon is in the best place to pull the publishers through the hedge but its not just publishers, authors and rights. Today’s devices are still in their development phase with respect to eInk. We still do not have colour and the devices themselves remind one of the mobile phone ‘bricks’ we saw in the early 80s.


So it was interesting to read in The Washington Post that Pacific Crest analyst Steve Weinstein predicts that global e-book sales at Amazon could reach $2.5 billion by the year 2012. He also assumes that based on this that Amazon’s bottom line benefit will grow with the increased margins and cost reductions available through digital sales.

We have all heard wild predictions on digital media. The predictions themselves are unimportant but what is important is the clear drive towards digital content across all media that can then be rendered and serviced through both existing physical formats and channels, or new digital ones. Music is starting to tackle the thorny issue of DRM, video the delivery channel and books the fact that we still don’t have the content digitised and available when the market is starting to waken! Amazon appears to be nicely positioned to globally control all three channels and is positioning itself as the one stop shop yet again.

Video Killed the .....

As video increases to draw attention, then so does the means of its delivery on the net. Bluray may have won a war over HD DVD, but another battle is looming with respect to digital video downloads and streaming. As more and more clips are generated and quality film on demand looms ever closer video becomes more important. Video is even becoming more important in the book industry is it is now increasingly being used to sell books.

The BBC was reported as considering ditching Adobe’s Flash for the better quality of its iPlayer streams and although they have retracted this they apparently still have quality issues. The quality acceptable for a quick You Tube video is clearly inappropriate to others.

So we have Adobe with Flash and are Microsoft coming along with their high definition ‘Silverlight’ project (Windows Media Video V9 based on VC-1as used by Bluray). Then we have the iPhone and mobile platforms and if players such as the BBC are going to make the iPlayer available on Apples ‘I’ family then there are also bandwidth issues, as O2's EDGE data network is apparently too slow. Then there is the underlying standard MPEG4 and H.264. Enough technology!

When we look at the iPlayer we see a success story. Since its launch service has attracted 2.2 million viewers who have watched a total of 17 million programmes. Currently the audience is about 10% of the live broadcast audience with streaming outnumbering downloads by 8 to 1. However, given you don’t need a licence to watch iPlayer shows, it begs the question whether the BBC has in fact created something that may come back to bite them very hard.