Posts tagged Fox at Switched

TV Networks Criticized for Blocking Election Videos on YouTube

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Oct 26th 2008 at 3:02PM

Networks Attacked Over Blocking YouTube Election Videos

Despite having signed off on User Generated Content (UGC) principles, which endorse fair use of copyrighted content in protected free speech, several networks have sent takedown requests to YouTube over politically-themed videos that use short clips from copyrighted broadcasts.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) earlier this week sent letters not only to YouTube, but also the networks involved: Fox, NBC, CBN, and CBS. The open letter to the networks requests that they stop sending takedown requests based on short news clips used in election-themed videos. The McCain-Palin campaign has recently been targeted by CBS, CBN, and Fox, and the Obama-Biden ticket had at least one video removed based on a request from NBC.

Fred von Lohmann (senior intellectual property attorney at the EFF) said,"The videos at issue include clips of news footage that last only a few seconds, used as part of constitutionally-protected political speech. This is not piracy, but fair use, no different from what Saturday Night Live and The Daily Show do every night."

In a separate letter to YouTube, the EFF asked the video hosting site to protect users from unfounded takedown requests. The nonpartisan public interest group asked YouTube to immediately respond to counter-notices filed by posters against takedown requests and restore videos that are clear cases of fair use.

Other groups have joined the EFF in protesting the networks heavy handed enforcement of copyright laws, including the ACLU, Citizen Media Law Project, the Center for Social Media, School of Communication, as well as American University's Program for Information Justice & Intellectual Property and their Law School. You can read the entire letters to the networks and YouTube online. [From: EFF Press Room]

NBC Clips Back On YouTube, Courtesy of Hulu

by Terrence O'Brien, posted May 2nd 2008 at 2:33PM

You might remember Hulu, the video streaming service backed by most of the major networks, being touted as the legitimate answer to watching episodes of your favorite shows (in 6 pieces) on YouTube. Now in some sort of delicious, cosmic irony, Hulu has dragged the networks back to YouTube where it has created its own channel and is hosting clips from shows from Fox and NBC that can be seen in full on Hulu.

Right now, we only saw about 70 videos of clips from shows like '30 Rock,' 'Arrested Development,' 'Saturday Night Live,' 'Moment of Truth' and 'Family Guy.' We're still waiting for more, but it's a start in getting NBC clips, at least, back on our favorite online destinations . Next stop for NBC's return? iTunes, we hope. [Source: NewTeeVee]

Movie Rentals Finally Coming to iTunes

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Dec 27th 2007 at 3:49PM

Those long-rumored movie rentals are finally coming to iTunes. Reports have been coming in that Twentieth Century Fox and Apple just signed a deal that will put content from the movie studio up in the online media outlet for rent (in addition to straight out purchase).

Details are slim at the moment, but it is reported that Fox has been granted some flexibility with pricing, meaning newer films may be priced higher than those from the current iTunes movie catalog.

In addition to the availability through iTunes, the deal will also allow Fox films to be easily transfered to a computer or iPod using Apple's FairPlay DRM scheme.

The deal is expected to be officially announced at the January 14 MacWorld Expo.

From Engadget

Related links:

MySpace Games Launching in January

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Oct 23rd 2007 at 1:32PM

News Corp has its hands in just about everything these days, it owns the Fox film and TV outlets, including Fox News and National Geographic, it has significant holdings in DirecTV and the UK's SKY TV, an absurd number of newspapers including the New York Post, and soon, the prestigious Wall Street Journal, mega publisher Harper Collins. It also owns popular online destinations Rotten Tomatoes, and, of course, MySpace.

It's the last property in that list that has been one of our constant targets for both well deserved and occasionally frivolous reporting. MySpace is trying to become a one-stop portal for everything you could possibly need on the Web. What began as a simple social-networking site has expanded to cover music, video, comedy, news, ringtones, Internet telephony, and even past episodes of Fox television shows.

Now you can add video games to MySpace's list of offerings that you won't have to go anywhere else to find. MySpace Games is set to launch in January of 2008 as part of a partnership with casual-games publisher Oberon Media. The target audience, naturally, is casual gamers who play Flash versions of word, puzzle and board games on sites like PopCap and AOL Games.

MySpacers will be able to play games with other MySpacers on the Games channel, as well as embed scaled down versions on their MySpace profiles for instant gaming and even slower load times!

From GigaOM

Related Links:

Anti-Piracy Coalition Forming on Friday Includes CBS, Disney, Fox

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Oct 18th 2007 at 12:13PM

Companies Join Forces to Form Anti-Piracy Coalition

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal (subscription required) today, several major media and technology companies are joining forces to form the Masters of Evil! Wait... sorry, they are just joining forces to form an anti-piracy ring, no plots for world domination... yet.

This coalition of super companies will be working together on copyright-related issues, including video piracy and the technology needed to stop it.

Coming together to form this super team of anti-pirates are: CBS, Dailymotion, Microsoft, NBC Universal, Fox and MySpace units of News Corp, Viacom and Disney. The coalition is due to launch Friday. Google is still in talks to join the anti-piracy ring.

From Tech Crunch

Related Links:

Watch Fox Repeats Free on iTunes

by Tim Stevens, posted Sep 21st 2007 at 10:22AM

Fox just inked a deal with Apple that will let you download its repeats over iTunes for free. You'll be able to check out back episodes of shows like 'Prison Break' and 'Bones' poised for season debuts. Fox's strategy is that viewers are more likely to tune in to current episodes on TV if they have last season's (or last week's) cliffhanger fresh in their minds.

This comes not long after NBC pulled its entire collection of shows from iTunes amid rumors that Apple was pushing for $.99 episode downloads. NBC, however, went on to offer free downloads of current episodes via their own video download service, NBC Direct. The catch is that NBC's downloads have ads embedded in them.

From TechCrunch

Related Links:

How to Find Out Who Is Editing Wikipedia Entries

by Tim Stevens, posted Aug 15th 2007 at 1:21PM

Wikipedia is one of the most impressive social experiments to come out of the Internet, but there will always be a cloud of doubt hanging over the user-generated-encyclopedia site in the minds of those who don't trust its open nature. Anyone can log in and make changes and, of course, everyone does, including employees of Fox News, who saw fit to make a slight change to the entry about the decidedly conservative-minded news source.

The change involved removing a quote from Al Franken that was captured on NPR's 'Fresh Air.' The original Fox News article included this line: "Franken said that Fox's case against him was 'literally laughed out of court' and that 'wholly (holy) without merit' is a good characterization of Fox News itself." After the edit by someone from within the Fox News organization, the entry read thusly: "Franken said that Fox's case against him was the best thing to happen to his book sales."

Oops.

The means to find these questionable edits comes from a tool called WikiScanner, which lets anyone browse article edits and find their source. This, of course, has resulted in a slew of entertaining finds, many of which are listed at Wired's Threat Level blog. Here are a few of our favorites:

From O'Reilly Radar

Related Links:

'The Simpsons' On Your Cell Phone

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Jul 13th 2007 at 10:59AM

The marketing blitz and fan hysteria surrounding the new Simpson's movie is gearing up to go mobile. News Corp., Rupert Murdoch's media juggernaut, after pushing Simpson's paraphernalia via 7-11 (pictured above) is enlisting Jamba, a mobile entertainment company it aquired, to push ring-tones, screen savers, wall papers, and even a game for cell phones.

These are not half-assed recycled bits from the show either: The writers and actors were directly involved in the creation of the product line. The content will be available in 35 countries across 5 continents for a subscription fee of $9.99 a month.

The "Yellow Plan" as, it's called, may seem overpriced, but this is 'The Simpsons'. Other brands would kill for the level of dedication that even "casual fans" have.

From Reuters

Related Links:

MySpace TV: A Better YouTube Competitor?

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Jun 27th 2007 at 3:15PM

In a bid to better compete with YouTube for the eyes and ears of Web users (but not in a creepy, serial killer kind of way), MySpace is re-launching the less than impressive video component of its site. Tomorrow, MySpace Videos will be torn down like the Stardust Casino to be resurrected as a separate site, MySpace TV.

The most important change, other than the new URL, is that you no longer have to be a member of MySpace to share and watch video. Another update changes how video is integrated into the pages of MySpace members. A user's video will now be stored on a separate MySpace TV channel, which the user will have the ability to customize (to death) to match his or her MySpace page. The third shift is that MySpace TV will put much more focus on professionally produced content (though user-generated content will still be there), such as the five minute Webisodes of '80s sitcoms MySpace began hosting through an exclusive partnership with Sony. As the newly adopted son of Rupert Murdoch and the Fox Corporation, MySpace is also already trumpeting the new site's respect for copyright in order to position itself as an attractive alternative to YouTube for major media companies. Finally, later this year, the company will introduce online editing tools, just as YouTube did very recently.

Meanwhile, as MySpace tinkers with video to compete with YouTube, YouTube is playing around with social networking with the hopes of taking a bite out of MySpace. On YouTube's "Test Tube" product development page, users can now share their favorite videos and even chat while they watch the same clip.

And round and round we go. It'll be interesting to see if these two massive online destinations will co-exist as the Coke and Pepsi of the Internet, or if things will turn sour. As of now, you can still embed YouTube videos in MySpace pages -- but how long is that going to be allowed, especially once Google starts piping advertisements into YouTube vids? Let's not forget the spat back in April in which MySpace blocked all content users embedded on their pages from the photo- and video-sharing site, Photobucket. This, after Photobucket sponsors began showing up in slideshows hosted on MySpace pages. Of course, MySpace went on to absorb Photobucket for lots and lots of money, which only raises more questions. For example, will Photobucket images now be blocked on Facebook, a MySpace competitor?

Only time will tell.

From The New York Times

Related links:

This Wednesday: Bird, bear, backpack join forces on XBLA Joystiq hands-on: Skate 2 The Behemoth still tinkering with that Castle Crashers patch	WinFlog powers up your Windows context menus Pownce gets pwned: Six Apart acquires and plans to shutter service Mount remote storage, use web apps as local apps with Gladinet
Mac internet share hits record 8.87% Pixelmator releases 1.3.1 'Welcome to Macintosh' DVD available for pre-order	Waiting for the other shoe to drop: The looming credit crisis Way Off Wall Street: Retirement dreams fade for younger workers Next target for fear mongers: Credit cards
Rumor: LEGO: Harry Potter in construction Video: Epic Prince of Persia gameplay Banjo and Kazooie head to XBLA this week	Mulally driving to Washington, but what car should he drive? Fiends sample Superformance Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe, GT40 MKI Could you paint a Car-A-Day?
Two former Flagship Studios members form Gravity Bear Atlantica Online publisher working on new FPS title Download: Need for Speed Undercover HD Texture Pack Mod	Deja Vu, Again: Dusty Dvoracek Likely Out For the Season a Third Straight Year MNF Live Chat: Jaguars vs. Texans Eric Moulds Will Punch You* for Offering Compliments or Asking Him for an Autograph

Categories

Resources

Hot Topics

Switched Questionnaire

Hype Check

Web

Paranormal

Time Wasters

Just Tell Me What To Get

TUAW

Most Commented On (7 days)

Viagra Video Game Pulled By FDA (83)

Tennis Star Boris Becker Dumped by Text Message (57)

McCain Supporters Duped by 419 Scam? (24)

Switched Video

How to Avoid ID Theft

Featured Galleries

AOL Tech Network

Latest Reviews from CNET.com

Top Product Reviews