Mereja

Author: Jeff John Roberts

  • Weather Company unveils three new web series, offers “four-screen” ad opportunity

    The Weather Company, eager to expand beyond its usual fare of snow and storms, announced three new original web series on Monday that will feature athlete amputees, virus pandemics and disaster survivors.

    The company says advertisers can be exclusive sponsors of the shows, which consist of six 2 two to four-minute episodes across four screens: smartphone, tablet, web and cable. The shows are titled “I am Unstoppable,” “Virus Hunters” and “Alive,” and will be shown this fall in addition to three other already-announced web series.

    For the Weather Company, the original web series are an attempt to tap digital dollars while also expanding its content offerings — which include the Weather Channel and Weather.com — beyond forecasts and national disasters. Weather’s digital editor-in-chief, Neil Katz, announced the details as part of Newfront, a series of events in New York at which video creators are trying to woo Madison Avenue.

    The web series comes at a time that the Weather Company is emerging as a formidable data and advertising company. Recently, the company has been comparing itself to Google insofar as it allows marketers to sell in real time based on users’ likely intent — an ice cream company, for instance, could display its ads while the sun is out. It has also been hiring veteran data and ad tech executives.

    On the social media front, the Weather Company has been creating personalized products like a custom Twitter forecasts and, as an executive described today, a “social emergency network” that can let people use Facebook to warn loved ones in a given region about an impending weather apocalypse.  It has also been expanding its original TV content.

    The Weather Company’s mass audience makes it attractive to advertisers but its histrionic style — which can feel like tragedy tourism — has also attracted ridicule. After a snowfall this year in the northeast, for instance, Gawker displayed a series of screenshots to explain how “Snow panic has driven Weather.com completely Insane.” The company also gained attention for “Torturing its interns with Twitter” — a social media stunt for “tornado week” that involved high-powered fans aimed at interns.

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  • Court backs artist in Rasta case: less copyright control for image owners?

    An influential appeals court sided with famed appropriation artist Richard Prince in a copyright case that has been closely watched in high art and legal circles. The decision, handed down last week in New York, is likely to have ripples beyond the art world and to provide more grist for the debate over how much control artists should have over their images.

    The controversy turned  on art projects in which Prince incorporated photographs from Yes Rasta, a portrait book about Rastafarians by photographer Patrick Cariou. In some cases, Prince altered the photos so the originals could barely be recognized:

    Rasta screenshots, Richard Prince

    But in other cases, Prince made only minor alterations, such as adding face blotches and a blue guitar:

    Richard Prince, Rasta

    Cariou, who earned about $8,000 from the sale of his book, sued Prince for copyright infringement. Prince, whose individual works fetched up to $2 million, argued that his modifications amounted to a “fair use” exception under copyright law.

    In 2011, a federal judge sided with Cariou and issued an injunction against Prince and an order for any unsold works to be destroyed (they were not).

    Can judges be art critics?

    In her decision, U.S. District Judge Deborah Batts concluded that Prince’s work was not transformative — and did not qualify for fair use — because it didn’t satirize or otherwise comment on the original photographs. On appeal, a unanimous three-judge court wrote that Batts got the law wrong and said there was no such requirement under fair use.

    Citing Andy Warhol’s Campbell Soup cans and the rap group 2 Live Crew’s parody of “Pretty Woman,” the appeals court noted that many fair use cases did indeed comment on the original, but that this was not essential. In the case of Prince, the court said, his works are transformative in part because they are “hectic and provocative” compared to Cariou’s serene and beautiful photographs.

    On a technical level, the “transformative” requirement is just a sub-step in one part of a four-pronged fair use analysis. Increasingly, however, it’s also becoming a shorthand for courts to determine if someone is using an image in a new and legitimate fashion, or just ripping off and devaluing the original.

    In resolving the Prince case, the appeals court found that 25 of the 30 images were transformative but added that it did could not say “confidently” whether five of the others — including the blue guitar picture — were as well. It returned the case to the original judge to mull over the five pictures in more detail.

    One of the three appeals court judges stated, however, that he was uncomfortable acting in the role of art critic and that the original judge should re-evaluate all 30 pictures with the help of expert opinion and other evidence:

    “Indeed, while I admit freely that I am not an art critic or expert, I fail to see how the majority in its appellate role can ‘confidently’ draw a distinction  […]  Certainly we are not merely to use our personal art views to make the new legal application to the facts of this case … It would be extremely uncomfortable for me to do so in my appellate capacity, let alone my limited art experience.”

    So what is “transformative” on the internet?

    The Prince decision could affect not just the art world, but internet culture as well. That’s because the decision comes at a time when images are becoming ever more central to online news and social media platforms — and while the rules for using them are unclear.

    Sites like BuzzFeed, for instance, have taken an aggressive approach to image appropriation, declaring that almost any use is “transformative.” This approach is well-suited to the fast-paced, mash-up style of internet journalism but is also a source of frustration to photographers and others who feel artists deserve more control over their work.

    The Prince ruling, while not a green light for anyone to use photographs as they see fit, appears to provide broader legal cover to appropriation artists and experimenters. Here’s the decision itself with some of the more significant passages underlined:

    Cariou v Prince, 2nd Circ


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  • North Korea asked for Android — Google chairman on good tech and bad governments

    When Google chairman Eric Schmidt visited North Korea, party officials asked him to describe future updates to the company’s Android phone system. Schmidt refused but said this incident and others — including Iran’s plans for a “Halal internet” with no Israel — show how despotic leaders want to embrace technology even as they try to deny it to their citizens.

    Speaking on Friday at the Google Big Tent, free speech event in Washington, Schmidt said he is “worried” about a “balkanized” internet as governments try to chop up the web just as people in places like Burma are discovering it for the first time.

    Schmidt also offered examples, drawn from his just-published book The New Digital Age, of how the internet is helping in some of the world’s most benighted places. He cited women in Pakistan with faces and eyes burned by acid, who could nonetheless have lives as “virtual people,” earning a living and connecting with the world online. He also described smuggling systems for micro SD cards in South Sudan to show how people will go to desperate lengths to get information.

    Schmidt’s anecdotes come partly from his extensive tours of scary countries, which included a stop in North Korea that brought criticism from the State Department.

    For Schmidt, his travels reinforced how sinister governments are casting a growing shadow over the mobile phone revolution.

    “We’ll hear the distinct voices of the citizens of these countries that we haven’t heard before,” he said. “These people are just like us but their governments are not like ours.”

    The situation creates moral dilemmas for companies that make technology that connect people but that can also be co-opted as tools for oppression. As Google’s head lawyer, David Drummond, explained at the outset of the event, the most important battles over free speech have shifted from books and newspapers to technology. Drummond warned that bad governments are now turning to the United Nations and international treaties in an effort to exercise control over the world’s telecommunications infrastructure.

    The event, which was hosted by Google and Bloomberg and included media executives discussing Chinese censorship, took place a day after the company’s latest update to its Transparency Report on global censorship.

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  • Banned in China: Bloomberg and New York Times say they had no choice

    Media outlets operating in China face an unpleasant dilemma: self-censor or else lose access to millions of readers and a valuable market. Both the New York Times and Bloomberg News chose the second option, and don’t regret the decision.

    Last summer, the news organizations published stories that described the billions in wealth held by the family of the Chinese premier. In response, China shut down the Times’ Mandarin news service and blocked Bloomberg entirely — a block that remains in place today.

    Speaking at the Google Big Tent event in Washington on Friday, Bloomberg’s Chief Content Officer, Norman Pearlstine, explained the decision to publish.”We would lose our credibility [if we didn’t],” said Pearlstine. He added that, in China, “information is perceived as belonging to the state” and said he doesn’t anticipate this view changing in the near future.

    Bill Keller, a former editor-in-chief and current columnist for the New York Times, echoed Pearlstine’s views that news publishers can’t rationalize censorship by saying they would lose money and influence in China. ”They can make life miserable for you,” Keller said of the Chinese government, adding that “this will cost money.”

    There may, however, be a bright side to being shut out of China. According to Keller, many Chinese are aware that the Times and Bloomberg deliberately took a financial hit to preserve their brands — and in the long run, this will earn them loyalty and trust.

    Keller and Pearlstine spoke on a panel with media executive Mark Whitaker and Google’s Chief Legal Officer, David Drummond, at a Google “Big Tent” event about security and free speech in the digital age.

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  • NYT says new products to be profitable by late 2014

    The New York Times Company remains focused on the long game even as digital subscription growth flattens and advertising shows ongoing weakness. On a Thursday earnings call, executives described new products that it hopes will bring in multiple revenue streams, but cautioned that they would not yield a profit in the near future.

    The new offerings will include digital subscriptions that cover niche topics like food and travel for a lower price than the standard subscription. The company is also planning to expand its conference business, develop games and bolster its crossword franchise.

    On the call, analysts pressed for details about the new low-priced subscriptions and asked if they would cannibalize the company’s existing digital offerings — which are regarded as essential to the Times‘ future but whose growth has stalled. Times VP Denise Warren said the company had “identified many people interested in a lower price point” but that cannibalization was not an issue because these people “come in at a differeent part on the demand curve.”

    CEO Mark Thompson did not provide any price details, but suggested the company could be in a position to charge more to devoted digital subscribers who enjoy getting full-access entirety of the Times’ content. He added that the new niche products could bring in revenue this year but that it “will take till late 2014″ for the new initiatives to result in an operating profit.

    For the near future, the Times continues to face serious financial headwinds. The company has recently relied on major increases in its print subscriptions to increase revenue, but may be unable to do so much more. Meanwhile, advertising remains bleak (digital dropped 4 percent last quarter) with executives on the call offering only tepid explanations — like a weak Oscar race — when analysts questioned the Times’ ad sales strategy. The strategy may get an overhaul as when the company fills a new position to head up its ad sales.

    An analyst, citing the Times’ large cash reserves, asked if the company had an intention to go private. Thompson, who has just completed his first full quarter as CEO, said no. Executives also said the company would continue to suspend its dividend which provides income to the families that own the Times.

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    • Google: government censorship requests jumped 20% in last six months

      Google has published its latest Transparency Report and the results are not encouraging for free speech advocates: governments around the world are asking it to remove more content than ever before.

      In the second half of 2012, the number of government requests to remove content from services like YouTube and Blogger increased from 1,811 to 2,285, and the number of items targeted for censorship increased from 18,070 to 24,179. As this screenshot shows, government requests have been rising steadily for years:

      Google transparency screenshot

      Many of these requests appear to have come from politicians who invoke defamation laws to remove content that was damaging or embarrassing. In a section of the report that breaks down requests by country, Google notes it received a request to remove a YouTube video that allegedly showed the President of Argentina “in a compromising position.” (Google did not comply with the request but did impose age restrictions on the video.)

      Google also noted a spike in requests from Brazil where electoral law permits candidates to ban “offensive” material, and from Russia where a controversial law allows the government to remove content it seems harmful to young people. The company also received requests from multiple countries to censor the “Innocence of Muslims” video.

      The content censorship report is part of Google’s ongoing effort to shed light on how governments seek to access its data and suppress content. In the last year, the company has begin issuing the report in two parts — one devoted to content takedown and another dedicated to requests to identify users. Under the content section, Google also shows copyright takedown requests from private companies.

      Twitter has recently followed Google’s example by creating transparency reports of its own. Other prominent social media and content providers, including Facebook, have remained largely silent on the issue.

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    • New York Times issues soft earnings, plans “new strategy for growth”

      The New York Times Company posted its latest earnings on Thursday morning, and the results show the company moving forward at a plodding pace. Its earnings per share came in at $0.04, excluding special items, which was slightly below the $0.05 analysts had predicted. Operating profit for the quarter was $22.9 million.

      Overall advertising declined 11.2 percent — 13 percent in print and 4 precent in digital — from the same quarter a year ago, while circulation revenues rose 6.2%. As in previous quarters, the company did not break out how much of this increase was the result of digital income versus increases in the price of its print products.

      The Times’ total number of digital subscribers, a figure closely watched by investors and media observers, rose from 668,000 to 708,000 across the company. This number includes totals from the International Herald Tribune and soon-to-be-sold Boston Globe.

      The company also announced a “new strategy for growth,” in which CEO Mark Thompson says the Times will begin offering lower-priced products to attract a broader paying audience. The release suggests the company will begin breaking out certain speciality segments like food and travel as standalone paid offerings. A few bullets:

      • “A lower-priced paid product designed to allow access to The Times’s most important and interesting stories in a convenient, media-rich package for consumers looking for an efficient way to stay informed.”
      • “Other new products, also at lower price points, that would offer deep access and additional content and other new features in specific content areas such as politics, technology, opinion, the arts and food.”

      The Times will discuss the results and the new strategy on an 11:00 AM ET earnings call. We will post highlights from the call.

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    • Internet sales tax: who’s for it, who’s against & what comes next

      Congress, retailers and the tech community are buzzing about a so-called “Internet tax” that will pass the Senate any day now. The proposed law has made for strange allies (Amazon and conservative Republicans are both supporters) and confused consumers. Here’s a plain English explanation of the tax, the debate and how it could all turn out.

      Is this a new tax on the internet?

      No, the proposed Marketplace Fairness Act simply provides a practical way for states to collect sales tax for goods sold on the internet. Right now, if you live in Ohio and buy something online from a New York merchant, you ‘re the one who is supposed to tell Ohio and pay the tax . But few people actually does this — so the law makes the out-of-state merchant responsible instead for collecting the tax.

      The law would only apply to businesses that sell more than $1 million a year (so don’t worry about those bobble-heads you sold on eBay). It also requires states to provide free software to merchants to help them collect tax from more than 9000 state, county and local taxing authorities.

      Very popular, so far. The Senate voted 70-24 to pass an early version on Tuesday — a final version is expected to pass by the same margin this week.

      Sounds like more taxes. Why is it so popular?

      State governments say they are losing billions on taxes they would collected if people had gone to the store instead of shopping on the internet. Same for county and city governments who argue that “show-rooming” — where people go to stores just to look before buying online — is killing local communities.

      Brick-and-mortar stores like Wal-Mart say online retailers have an unfair advantage because they can charge lower prices since they don’t collect tax. Amazon an online retailer, is surprisingly on Wal-Mart’s side (likely because Amazon already has to collect tax if it has a physical presence in a state — and its warehouse are in more and more states.)

      The White House, anxious for a win after blowing the gun control bill, is all in favor too.

      Who’s opposed to it?

      Senators from the few places that don’t have a sales tax (Oregon, Montana, Delaware and New Hampshire) say the law will force businesses in their states to set up an expensive tax-collection system for the benefit of other states. Oregon’s Sen. Ron Wyden is leading the opposition.

      Anti-tax crusaders like Grover Norquist and a few Tea Party Republicans oppose on the grounds the law will lead to bigger government. The Wall Street Journal editorial board doesn’t like it either.

      eBay says the law will hurt millions of people who have home-based businesses, and wants the exemption to be raised to $10 million a year. Tech lobbyists  like TechAmerica worry about the effect on e-commerce, although giants like Google, Apple and Facebook have stayed largely silent.

      The financial industry is quietly opposing the bill too, worried that Wall Street haters in other states will start taxing securities transactions.

      How will this end?

      The bill appears to be a sure thing in the Senate but still faces a fight in the House. For now, the law’s supporters appear to have the upper hand but this could change as opponents build a coalition to shift momentum.

      Ultimately, it will be about which narrative prevails: that the bill is a commonsense measure to create a level retail field and allow states to collect the money they’re owed (as supporters say); or, that it’s a burdensome new tax that will harm small businesses and ecommerce (as opponents say).

      To read more, see the New York Times’ overview and this Bloomberg editorial.

      (Image by Keith Bell via Shutterstock)

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    • AP returns to Twitter after hack — but where are its 2 million followers?

      The Associated Press is back on Twitter after yesterday’s hacking incident, which roiled financial markets with a fake tweet about explosions at the White House. But something is still amiss — the news agency has almost 2 million fewer followers than it did before the hacking.

      In case you missed it, the AP’s Twitter account was suspended yesterday afternoon after the fake tweet — possibly posted by the Syrian army — caused a temporary shock to stock markets, which rely on news wires like the AP for up-to-date information.

      On Wednesday morning, the AP announced its Twitter feed had returned and began tweeting ordinary news items (though initially forgetting to delete the hoax tweet):

      Most of the account’s followers, however, appear to have disappeared. At the time of the hacking incident, the AP had nearly 2 million followers:

      Screenshot of AP tweet

      As of Wednesday morning at 9:30 ET, however, the AP account had fewer than 100,000 followers:

      AP Twitter screenshot

      I’ve asked the AP for an explanation and am still waiting on a response. At this point,Twitter may be adding the followers back gradually; the 85,454 figure is almost double the number from earlier this morning.

      If the followers have indeed been wiped out, this would represent a serious blow for the AP. Like other news organizations, the AP relies heavily on social media outlets to disseminate its stories, and an organization’s (or person’s) number of Twitter followers can stand as proxy for influence.

      The AP hacking incident has also led to calls for Twitter to introduce a security feature known as 2-step authentication.

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    • AP’s Twitter account suspended after hacking incident roils markets

      Hackers published a fake tweet from the Twitter account of the Associated Press Tuesday morning, describing explosions at the White House and an injury to President Obama. The White House quickly refuted the tweet but the news briefly caused stock markets to plunge 1 percent before recovering. Here’s how the Dow looked today:

      Dow Jones screenshot

      Twitter has since suspended the account and the AP issued the following statement: “Advisory: @AP Twitter account has been hacked. Tweet about an attack at the White House is false. We will advise more as soon as possible.”

      The episode shows again, as it did during the Boston tragedy, the mischief that can occur as a result of huge number of people instantly relaying false information through false tweets. The Anonymous hacker news account, for instance, saw its reporting of the message retweeted almost 500 times:

      In the last year, Twitter has become an essential news source not only for news outlets but for the financial community. This month, Bloomberg incorporated Twitter feeds into its terminals while the SEC gave companies the green light to use it for relating market moving news.

      Update: The AP has since issued this tweet from a separate account associated with its political news outlet:

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    • Google gets serious about toolbar scams with new ad policy, forcing AVG to retreat

      A cryptic blog post from Google last week took aim at “bad apples” among its advertising partners, and required pre-approval for certain software offerings that wanted to use Google advertising services. It was hard at first to discern the target of the mysterious message, but now it’s pretty clear that Google fired a shot across the bow of security site AVG and others that might be tempted to trick people into installing unwanted products.

      The dispute between Google and its “bad apples” involves technical details but, fundamentally, it’s about crummy products designed to force feed ads.

      In the case of AVG, it worked like this: when people downloaded its free security software, they automatically received a “safe search” product (unless they were alert enough to uncheck a box during the download process). The unwanted product then installed itself on their browser toolbars as a default search engine. It also — and this is the critical part — served as a platform for AVG to collect money by showing ads, and proved about as easy to uninstall as resigning from the French Foreign Legion.

      Veteran tech writer Emil Protalinski was first to report AVG’s hijinks last summer, calling it the “worst foistware I’ve ever seen.” Since then, investor site Seeking Alpha warned that AVG’s aggressive tactics to get ad revenue would lead Google, which supplies ads to AVG through its AdSense program, to take action. The search giant apparently decided it could do without AVG and, in its new policy announcement, explained:

      For example, in the last 90 days, we have seen over 100,000 complaints about software that changed users’ browser settings or about toolbars that they couldn’t uninstall.  We want to avoid these kinds of bad user experiences.

      Seeking Alpha also warned that if Google jilted AVG, the site would be forced to live on Yahoo ad revenue — which would bring in less money. This prospect appears to have had its intended effect on AVG.

      The outgoing CEO of AVG, JR Smith, explained in a Monday phone interview that its “safe search” product was no longer bundled in a way that forced consumers to opt out. He added that AVG recently signed a new two-year deal with Google and said it complied with all the company’s conditions.

      “They’ll send you default letters and kick you off the network,” said Smith, adding that Google takes tough lines to promote a clean ad ecosystem.

      Google, in response to a request for comment, only repeated its policy announcement. Yahoo did not respond at all.

      Tough line or just tip of the iceberg?

      Google’s new policy aims to reign in AVG-style tactics by forcing software that uses its ad services to provide “one-click uninstall” and to go through a Google approval process. In the bigger picture, the policy appears to be part of a bigger effort by Google to clean up scammy ad practices involving toolbars.

      While toolbars have legitimate uses, they can also be a vehicle for mischief. In addition to AVG, other public companies like Babylon have acquired a reputation for malware; the latter offers a translation program but the installation process can also lead to browser hijacking. Some techniques are even more nasty.

      Certain scams typically invite users to download a program like “Find out who unfriended you on Facebook” but really serve to inject unauthorized ads. One example is Sambreel, a notorious ad outfit that forced its way onto the webpages of the New York Times and other prominent publishers last year; the hijacked ad space likely cost the Times and others millions in lost revenues. Even Google itself has been a victim through its YouTube video site.

      An executive at a major publisher forwarded new screenshots this month like the one below which shows how a “Browse to Save” toolbar device (which claims to find deals for shoppers as they search the web) has used a Sambreel product to take over YouTube’s ads:

      Sambreel on YouTubeAccording to the executive, who did not want to be named, Google is doing the right thing but faces an uphill battle. While it can whip sites like AVG into line, unlike companies, sleazy actors will simply shop around for another ad exchange to do the dirty work. He said that some exchanges — which act as trading houses for digital ad inventory — often turn a blind eye to bad advertisers so long as they bring in money. In this bigger picture, Google appears to be trying to raise the bar in the industry in order to prevent a crisis of confidence in the online ads that are its lifeblood.

      The toolbar policy comes at a critical juncture for the online display ad industry. On one hand, the industry recently suffered another black eye from a botnet scandal and may also be losing ground to the current mania for native advertising. On the other hand, Google, AOL, Facebook and others are developing a sophisticated suite of programmatic ad tools that could make the industry more efficient than ever before.

      (Image by  BMJ via Shutterstock)

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    • New York Times lifts paywall for video, plans ‘franchises’

      The New York Times announced on Tuesday that it will no longer count video views as part of the 10-article limit it imposes on non-subscribers who visit its website. The move comes as part of a plan by the Times to increase its overall video investment and to develop video franchises around its writers and columns.

      The free videos, which can be viewed on all desktop and mobile devices, are for now being sponsored by Acura and by Microsoft.

      “We have a desire to grow and invest in our video content,” said NYT executive vice president Denise Warren in a phone interview. “Part of the reason we’re doing this is because we’re already distributing on other channels like YouTube. Since it’s already available […] it seems inconsistent to keep it behind the gate.”

      Warren added that the Times is still in the process of ramping up its video strategy but that its eventual plan is to build franchises around brands associated with the paper. One hypothetical example she cited is the Times’ “36 Hours” travel New York Times paywall videocolumn. Prominent writers may also become video brands (bloggers like Nate Silver seem likely candidates, though Warren refused to name names).

      The plan comes at a time when newspapers like the Times and the Wall Street Journal are still learning how to translate their famous brands into a video format. The task is a challenge because the bulk of their editorial staff consists of text-based journalists who don’t necessarily possess the aptitude or charisma for video. In response, the Times has so far adopted a go-slow approach, producing about 60 short videos a week, though Warren says streaming rates took off during the November election and have remained high.

      Warren suggested the Times‘ video output will go into high gear in response to the extra advertising investment, and the February arrival of Rebecca Howard from the Huffington Post, who occupies the new position of general manager of video production.

      The Times’ decision to offer unlimited video is intriguing because it will test the paper’s ability to master the format, but also because it contrasts with the company’s recent efforts to make its paywall less porous. In recent months, for instance, it has blocked easy tricks that let readers circumvent the article limit.

      Here’s a recent example of the Times’ video efforts:


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    • New social sports site For The Win aims for non-fans too

      Just when you thought sports media couldn’t get more crowded, along comes For The Win. The site, which launched on Monday, wants to reach fans and non-fans alike through social media and a focus on sports stories with a heavy human interest feel – like the 7-year old cancer patient who ran for a touchdown in a Nebraska scrimmage.

      According to executive Jamie Mottram, For The Win is the first sports site designed specifically to reach readers on viral networks like Facebook or Twitter. Owned by USA Today, the site is staffed by veteran sports writers from outlets like Deadspin and the New York Times who are tasked with finding sharable content.

      “You don’t have to be a sports fan to laugh at the ridiculous new logo of the New Orleans Pelicans or openly weep at the 30 year old bat boy with Down Syndrome’s reaction to a Reds home run,” said Mottram, in a phone interview.

      Mottram, whose pasts gigs include creating Yahoo! Sports’ blog network and AOL’s Fanhouse, is fond of using terms like “viral lift” and “social currency” to explain For The Win’s plan to build an audience through social media.

      For The Win’s social-first approach follows the playbook of viral powerhouse BuzzFeed and newcomer Upworthy. Both these sites, which rely heavily on analytics and A/B headline testing, have acquired enormous audiences by looking to social media, rather than their homepages, as a primary source of traffic. Mottram thinks such tactics can give For The Win an edge as it competes with traditional outlets like ESPN and CBS Sports, and with popular digital natives like Deadspin, SB Nation and Bleacher Report.

      “I think a lot of those sites are catering to legacy behaviors and technology,” said Mottram. “SB Nation was born on online communities — message boards around each team. Bleacher Report is a search-oriented content farm. For The Win is produced on a basis of really sharable content.”

      The site’s distribution and content strategy will also rely on the sprawling sports network of USA Today parent, Gannett Company, which controls properties like MLB Trade Rumors and Black Sports Online. For The Win’s content will also appear in legacy properties like the paper edition of USA Today.

      For The Win is opening shop with 10 writers and editors and, for the first two months, is relying on Right Guard as an exclusive sponsor. Down the road, says Mottram, the site will rely on a dual revenue stream of display and native advertising.

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    • America’s Digital Library launches — without a peep from Google

      The Digital Public Library of America opened shop this week, offering access to a rich repository of books, photos and more. The collection, drawn from libraries and archives across the country, also contains rare historical footage like Kentucky women marching for the vote and news clips of civil rights Freedom Riders.

      The DPLA also offers a dynamic map, a timeline of exhibitions and app-building tools to build up the cultural collection even further.

      Is there anything the DPLA doesn’t have? Well, we could start with the 20 million or so digital books that Google has scanned at hundreds of libraries in the last decade. This collection — which is much larger than the 2.4 million records at the DPLA — has gone unmentioned in the course Tom Sawyer screen shotof the new library’s launch this week. Instead, Google’s trove is gathering digital dust as a ceaseless copyright case between the company and the Authors Guild grinds on.

      This is a shame. While the DPLA is a beautiful and important endeavor, it also feels woefully incomplete. Its library collection does’t include institutions like Stanford and Michigan (alma mater of Google CEO Larry Page), and is drawn from only six states — this can hardly be described as “of America.” More seriously, the holes in the DPLA’s catalog show how a once-unified effort to digitize the country’s knowledge has become a patchwork affair.

      As I described in Battle for the Books, Harvard librarian Robert Darnton not only pulled the university out of its one-time partnership with Google, but also led an intellectual campaign to stop the company’s scanning plans. Darnton’s actions not only drove legal opposition to a proposed settlement, but also produced lasting resentment within the librarian community — some of whom regard Darnton as a spoilsport and a demagogue.

      The result is that the U.S. now has multiple, unconnected repositories that represent a digital fracturing of its culture heritage. It’s worth noting that DPLA also comes in addition to the Internet Archive, a long-time pioneer in digital scanning (I found the image at right by searching the DPLA; the results led me to a Connecticut library and then the Internet Archive).

      This is in part due to copyright issues. While Google has made a strong case that its scanning activities are fair use, authors fear they will lose control over their works — and many people oppose granting Google or any other private company a role in the country’s library systems.

      For now, the DPLA, which is funded by governments and foundations, is not in discussion with Google Books. It has, however, been talking to the Hathi Trust, a network of university libraries that have connected their digital collections (they obtained the collection as part of the agreement under which Google scanned their books).

      “We’re just getting started and are in talks with many large content hubs; yes, we have spoken to HathiTrust and can imagine a very complimentary collaboration with them.” wrote Executive Director Dan Cohen.

      Google did not return a request for comment.

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      • Court sides with YouTube for second time in major Viacom copyright case

        A New York court has again rejected claims that YouTube should be held accountable for unauthorized videos that appeared on the site during its early years of operation.

        In the latest twist in a long and closely-watched copyright case brought by Viacom, U.S. District Judge Louis Stanton granted summary judgment to YouTube after finding executives at the video site did not have “red flag” knowledge that made them liable for content uploaded by users.

        The ruling comes one year after the Second Court of Appeals reversed Stanton’s earlier decision in 2012 to dismiss the case, and ordered the judge to revisit his ruling in light of emails that suggested the YouTube founders had knowledge of copyright infringement. In his new decision, issued on Thursday Stanton rejected Viacom’s legal theory as “extravagant” and stated that “its foundation is an anachronistic […] concept.”

        On its surface, the case turned on whether YouTube had to pay damages to Viacom for thousands of unauthorized clips of shows like South Park and Seinfeld that appeared on the site. But on a deeper level, the case is significant because it is helping to determine what digital technology companies must do to protect copyright.

        Under a law known as the DMCA, online services like YouTube are not responsible for the copyright infringement of their users. The law, which was crafted to ensure that new digital platforms didn’t get smothered by copyright claims, grants “safe harbors” to sites provided they provide a way for owners to take down their content, and so long as the site is not complicit in users’ copyright violations.

        Viacom and the entertainment industry, which believes that YouTube have unfairly profited from copyrighted content, had hoped to shrink the scope of the “safe harbors” by drawing attention to the DMCA’s so-called “red flag” provision — a part of the law that means a site is liable if those controlling it are willfully blind to copyright violations.

        In deciding to reinstate the case, the appeals court agreed that YouTube was not responsible for most of the clips for which Viacom was claiming over $1 billion dollars. However, it said the potentially incriminating emails required the lower court to examine if YouTube knew or should have known about specific pieces of infringing content.

        In the new decision Stanton said Viacom, in its legal arguments, had conceded that it was unable to identify specific examples of specific copyright clips of which the YouTube founders should have been aware. He added that Viacom had tried to solve the situation by claiming that it was YouTube’s responsibility to show they did not know, but that this was a misinterpretation of the law.

        Viacom is entitled to appeal Stanton’s decision a second time but its safe harbors argument may be running out of steam. In a similar case involving defunct video service, Veoh, a California appeals court emphatically concluded that the safe harbors applied.

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      • Google hands in average earnings as CEO Page talks up future

        Google’s results came in near expectations on Wednesday with core revenues of $11 billion and earnings per share of $11.58. The numbers, which don’t include the company’s Motorola division, also showed a slight decline in Google’s “cost-per-click” revenues which is a key barometer of the company’s advertising business.

        Google share price was up about 1 percent in after-market trading to $772. The company’s consolidated revenue, which includes Motorola and traffic acquisition costs, was $13.97 billion. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters predicted $14.09 billion, and earnings per share of $10.66.

        On an earnings call following the release of the results, CEO Larry Page talked up the company’s highly experimental products of the future such as driverless cars, the secret Google X lab and Google Glass. He said products like Gmail were at one time considered to be far from the company’s core search business, but eventually became everyday features. He also cited the fiber-to-home networks Google is unrolling in Kansas, Austin and Provo, Utah.

        “That’s why we’re investing in what appear to be speculative products to you today,” said Page, adding in reference to Google Glass, “I get chills when I use a product that is the future.”

        Analysts on the call were not entirely persuaded, with one asking if the company would shift the resources it devotes to core versus experiment products. Page said the company would continue doing what it was doing.

        In response to a question about whether Facebook’s Home screen for cell phones could marginalize Google software, Page did not address the issue directly but emphasized the company’s overall strength.

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      • Native advertising: winners, losers and a lot of hype

        “Native advertising” is catnip to the publishing world these days. For believers, the ad format offers a marketing trifecta: a boost for brands, extra income for websites and a better experience for readers.

        Felix Salmon, a popular and acerbic Reuters journalist, attempted to pour some cold water on the hype at paidContent Live Wednesday, where he spoke with a panel of native advertising apostles that included BuzzFeed President Jon Steinberg and Forbes COO Lewis D’Vorkin.

        “So one percent of the time I’ll immerse myself in this beautiful listicle of cats?” asked Salmon, in reference to BuzzFeed’s promise to create ads that look and feel like the content surrouding them. Steinberg, who retorted that a very small percentage of BuzzFeed’s branded content contains cats, emphasized that native ads are superior because readers not only like them, but share them too. D’Vorkin offered a longer view.

        “This is has been going on for 10-15 years … Marketers want to be seamlessly intergrated into a native product,” he said, adding that corporations spent lots of money to attract readers to their own websites before realizing it was more effective to integrate with famous media brands.

        “Media partners give us credibility we can’t get on our own,” said Kyle Monson, the third member of the panel and chief creative at Knock Twice ad agency. He added, however, that native ads “can be shady sometimes” and said agencies should try to protect their publishing partners.

        “Chef Boyardee put native ads on the Food Network. It’s a horribly bad deal … it’s way too downmarket for them.”

        And what about the fear that native ads are deceptive? Nonsense, Steinberg said, noting that no reader will be confused since the ads are clearly marked and even a different color.

        He also claimed the banner and programmatic ad industry has cooked up false tales of reader confusion on the fear that they are losing ground to native advertising. (Steinberg may have to be taken with a grain of salt — he also tossed out a few exaggerations, including that 25 percent of automated ads are fraudulent and that the U.S. government is buying ads on pirate site, Megaupload).

        Salmon had the last word in the native advertising debate.

        “We’ve run out of time, so you get to talk English right now,” he joked, ending the panel.

        Check out the rest of our paidContent live 2013 coverage here, and a video embed of the session follows below:


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      • How the public is reshaping media at Reddit, Vox and LinkedIn

        Digital technology is transforming not just how media is made, but who is making it. At elite digital brands, readers and the general public are having an unprecedented role in shaping media and content creation.

        At a paidContent Live session hosted by Slate editor Jacob Weisberg, three media companies described a new breed of creators who are equally at ease with content and technology. This has led to the emergence of non-traditional media influencers such as comment communities at Reddit, and at Vox Media sites The Verge and SB Nation.

        “In the day, if you wanted to create media, you had to start as an intern making coffee,” said Vox CEO Jim Bankoff, adding that now anyone with $100 can make a movie. He explained that this democratization of content creation has resulted, in some cases, of Vox hiring people on the basis of their comment contributions.

        This has led to a culture of empowerment in which everyday people are as fluent in media as many traditional journalists. More and more, they are taking to public platforms to not just report, but to take part in the news.

        Erik Martin, GM of Reddit, cited “random acts of pizza” — a community on the site that sends pizza as a gesture of report, most recently to emergency workers in Boston.

        But does this new culture of public participation also has a dark side? Slate’s Weisberg pointed to Reddit’s current efforts to identify the Boston bomber, including posting a suspect’s photo on the site, as approaching vigilante justice.

        “Is Reddit about to be Richard Jewell?” asked Weisberg, referring to a police officer who foiled an Atlanta Olympics bombing plot only to be falsely accused as a suspect in a traumatizing “trial by media.”

        Martin said he regarded the role of Reddit employees as “groundskeepers” who helped discrete communities determine their own standards.

        Dan Roth, a former Fortune editor who now oversees news on LinkedIn Today, offered a further example of how non-journalists are creating media. He described how executives like Virgin Airlines CEO Richard Branson are now writing regular columns in their own voices. While such contributions in traditional media typically amounted to no more than press releases, Roth said that readers’ ire at inauthenticity has forced even corporate executives to reevaluate how they write.

        Check out the rest of our paidContent Live 2013 coverage here, and a video embed of the session follows below:


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      • Broadcasters file Aereo appeal, warn of ‘havoc’ and ‘massive disruption’ to TV industry

        Fox and other broadcasters are asking a New York appeals court to reconsider its decision to give a green light to Aereo, a controversial start-up that uses tiny antennas to retransmit over-the-air TV to mobile devices for $8 a month.

        In a new court filing (embedded below), the broadcasters claim the decision “threatens to cause massive disruption to the television industry” and “will wreak commercial havoc,” and request a full panel of the US Second Circuit Court of Appeals to revisit the ruling.

        The start-up Aereo has been at the center of a storm in recent months because its technology threatens to blow-up the existing model of pay TV, which is based on selling viewers a bundle of channels, that include over-the-air stations like NBC, ABC, CBS and Fox. Aereo is backed by a $58 million investment from media mogul Barry Diller and others, and lets customers watch and record TV without a subscription for $1 a day or $8 a month.

        In the past, other companies have retransmitted TV signals over the internet but broadcasters quickly smashed them for copyright infringement. Aereo, however, has survived two major court challenges thanks to its technology which assigns a mini-antenna (see pic below Aereo antennas) to each subscriber; the service is now live in New York City and is slated to arrive imminently in 22 more markets.

        In the new filing, broadcasters howl that Aereo’s individual antenna system is just a loophole to get around a copyright regimes that requires any company that plays over-the-air signals, including cable and satellite firms, to pay retransmission fees. The brief also cites a paidContent story to warn that Aereo wants to team up with distributors like Dish network and Time Warner Cable to expand its reach.

        On a broader level, the legal manœuvreing is part of a great game between Aereo and the broadcasters over the future of TV that could end up at the Supreme Court. In the coming battle, the broadcasters are pinning their hopes on a recent California court case, which shut down an Aereo clone and rejected the theory that a private antenna means a transmission is not “public” under copyright law – a theory accepted by two out three judges on the Second Circuit court.

        In the new filing, the broadcasters rely heavily on the opinion of dissenting judge Denny Chin, who described Aereo’s technology as a “sham” and a “Rube Goldberg” device that “over-engineered” to dodge copyright.

        While the dissent and the California case provide the broadcasters with ammunition, the request for a review by all of the judges on the New York court is a long shot. This is because, unlike other appeals courts, the Second Circuit almost never agrees to hear so-called “en banc” appeals; in the event it did rehear the case, the judges would be reluctant to accept the broadcasters’ invitation to declare that they were wrong on an earlier case that formed the basis of their opinion for Aereo.

        This means the Supreme Court — or Congress — is the broadcasters’ best hope. Time is not on their side, however, because it would take years for the legal case to be heard and decided. By that time, technology and consumer habits for TV may have changed dramatically.

        The CEO of Aereo will offer his two cents on the bigger picture of TV at paidContent Live which is taking place on Wednesday in New York City.

        Legal types — here’s a marked up version of the broadcasters’ very well drafted legal brief:

        Aereo en Banc Petition


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        • What should Twitter do when people exploit an emergency?

          The Boston bombings, like so many public emergencies, saw heroes who risked their lives. But the tragedy also produced jerks like the person who created @_bostonmarathon, a fake Twitter account claiming to raise money for victims. Here’s a screenshot (via CBS):

          Twitter boston screenshot

          The episode is the latest example of how Twitter has become a critical source of information in a crisis — but also shows how people are able to abuse the service’s role as an emergency channel. Recall that a similar situation arose during Hurricane Sandy, when a hedge fund trader named Shashank Tripathi spread panic by tweeting fake news that was retweeted thousands of times.

          What should be done with these people? In debating Tripathi’s actions, most of our readers at the time agreed that his action were immoral but not illegal. Now, though, it’s clear that a Tripathi may emerge on Twitter any time there’s an emergency — raising the question of whether the company should adopt a more hands-on policy to quell potential panic.

          Fortunately, that may not be necessary. In the case of the fake Boston Marathon handle, a flood of warnings caused Twitter to suspend the account within hours. A Twitter spokesperson later explained that the company can rely on its own users to police bad behavior:

          “We don’t mediate users’ content. Users have the ability to flag accounts as spam or block accounts, and those actions are signals that feed into our automated systems,” said the spokesperson by email.

          This automated system promises both efficiency and autonomy — it permits a high degree of free speech while also weeding out bad or dangerous actors. And it’s proven durable. Twitter has relied on it even as the company has become the central news outlet for everything from the Osama Bin Laden killing to the Arab Spring.

          But can the company continue keep up this hands-off approach as it becomes ever more important as a news source? In a recent post, my colleague Mathew Ingram argues that it can. He writes, persuasively, that asking Twitter to step in is like “a little like asking AT&T to eavesdrop on phone calls in order to figure out who is a terrorist.”

          For now, the system works on auto-pilot. It will be interesting to see if it holds up during future emergencies.

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