Category: media

When Kazaa agreed this week to pay $115 million in damages to the recording industry and relaunch itself as a legal music download service, it perpetuated a business model that many observers see as shortsighted and seriously flawed. “Aside from the fact that there’s no clear mechanism for getting this money to the artists who are supposedly losing their livelihoods due to all of this downloading, what’s really shocking is how little it all adds up to in comparison with how much the record labels might have made by agreeing to Napster’s proposed plan, which would also have solved all of the device compatibility issues that still plague us today.”

Indian politician Sonia Gandhi and her ruling Indian National Congress Party have threatened legal action against the producers of a new biographical film focused on Ms. Gandhi. “Alarmed, the producer [has] halted the project. It was the second time in less than a decade that Gandhi and her political advisers had taken legal action to prevent the making of a film about her life.”

“The death of Kazaa as an illegal service is notable – the $100m damages payout represents half of the entire value of the European legal download market in 2005… Kazaa is not the people’s favourite it was several years ago, and, furthermore, the introduction of various filters to protect illegal downloading on the site could well see a mass migration making the site a has-been anyway. Those that have migrated to the likes of iTunes are the law abiding easy sell. Filesharers are tougher nuts to crack.”

The Venice Film Festival is taking a risk this year, presenting nothing but world premieres among the films vying for the fest’s top prize. “Twenty one films will compete for the Golden Lion, which was won last year by Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain… Competing films include Bobby, written by actor Emilio Estevez, about the final days leading up to Senator Robert Kennedy’s assassination, and Alfonso Cuaron’s sci-fi thriller Children of Men. Brian De Palma’s The Black Dahlia, also in competition, will open the 63rd festival.”

A couple of years ago, Kazaa was the poster child for illegal file-trading services, and found itself on the receiving end of a blistering legal assault by the recording industry, which is determined to stamp out music piracy online. Now, Kazaa has agreed to pay out millions of dollars in penalties, and is hoping to follow in the footsteps of Napster, reinventing itself as a legal music downloading service.

The head of PBS is firing back at the FCC over the agency’s new no-tolerance policy governing profanity on television, saying that it is “important for public broadcasting not to just roll over, but to be very clear that in order to tell some stories, we may need to use language that, at the moment, the FCC is not sure that they feel is appropriate for broadcast television.” PBS is worried that it will have to cut or digitally obscure certain words in the latest Ken Burns documentary, focusing on World War II, in order to avoid heavy FCC fines.

“The thing about television used to be that once you saw it, it was gone. It was disposable, and it was mostly dispensed with—the old signals, from what we used to watch, streaming out past the Oort Cloud, carrying Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp away into infinity. Suddenly, via YouTube links, those lost moments click back into view, as if a telegram from your great-grandfather were showing up in your e-mail.”

“FilmL.A. on Tuesday reported a 6.8% drop in second-quarter film, TV and commercial on-location production days compared with the same period a year ago. The decline follows modest but steady gains of 4.1% during first-quarter 2006 and an annual growth rate of 4.3% in 2005, according to the nonprofit group, which facilitates permits for on-location production in the region.”

The Da Vinci Code movie is being credited in part for a surge in traffic on the Eurostar train between London and Paris. “Eurostar said the partnership with the movie – whose cast included French actress Audrey Tatou – helped generate ‘strong interest in overseas markets’, with travel agents reporting increased sales on the London-Paris route.”

“Most stations have yet to modify their transmitters to support the technology, and the tuners, which can run from $300 to $3,000, exist almost exclusively for car stereos. But as traditional radio competes fiercely for listeners’ attention with CDs, MP3s and satellite radio, the industry is betting on HD to keep it relevant.”