Category: media

A lawsuit has been filed against Sony for the intrusive software the company embedded on CD’s. “The Texas lawsuit said the so-called XCP technology that Sony BMG had quietly included on more than 50 CD titles leaves computers vulnerable to hackers. Sony BMG had added the technology to restrict to three the number of times a single disc could be copied, but agreed to recall the discs last week after a storm of criticism.”

Sony’s atrocious behavior in subjecting its customers to malicious software code will cost the company plenty. But “while in the short-term one of the world’s best-known brands has suffered enormous damage, the longer-term implications are even more significant – a fundamental re-thinking of policies toward digital locks known as technological protection measures.”

Staff at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting have asked an accounting firm to rewrite sections of a report that questioned some large CPB contracts. “The report’s conclusions questioning the contracts and spending practices of the corporation could be incendiary on Capitol Hill, where conservative lawmakers have often sought to reduce the corporation’s annual budget. In recent weeks, they have proposed cuts in its current $400 million budget to help pay for other programs, like the reconstruction of the South after Hurricane Katrina and an inoculation program against avian flu. Corporation officials said that the request to rewrite the report was made not to prevent the disclosure of embarrassing information, but because some officials had challenged parts of the report as inaccurate.”

Movielink signs up Fox to make available hundreds of movies online. “Movielink was formed several years ago as a joint venture of five Hollywood studios to provide a legal alternative for consumers who want to download movies to personal computers. The studios are concerned that sites offering illegally copied movies will diminish their revenues. But the studios also see the Internet as a lucrative, future way to reach customers directly. Film downloading, unlike music, has been slow to develop as few homes had the high-speed Web connections needed to quickly get movies.”

It will still be a while before video on demand makes it possible to see whatever you want whenever you want it. “With the rise of portable video devices, viewers are starting to change the way they watch television. The networks, meanwhile, don’t want to be left behind. In many ways, TV is where the music industry was five years ago when Napster came on the scene. Having the benefit of those lessons in how to lose the revenues and the attention of a fan base, television networks are seeking renumerative new ways to distribute their programs.”

Hot on the heels of a blistering report charging the former chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting with misusing funds and undermining the agency’s mission, the CPB’s inspector general is “launching an investigation into whether public television and radio stations around the country inappropriately used federal funds to lobby against threatened budget cuts this summer.” Not surprisingly, the request for the new investigation came from 14 Republican members of Congress, who were infuriated by what they saw as a liberal witchhunt to oust CPB chair Kenneth Tomlinson because of his conservative political views. The inspector general says openly that he doubts he will find any wrongdoing by local stations, but will look into the matter, regardless.

32 state attorneys general have banded together in an effort to convince Hollywood to place anti-smoking warning labels on DVDs. The effort comes on the heels of a new study showing that teens are often convinced to take up smoking when they see movie stars doing so. The studios on the receiving end of the warning label request say they will consider the proposal individually, and warn against any move that would take away filmmakers’ “creative rights to depict human behaviors.”

Putting kids on television has always been a reliable way to get a certain demographic chunk of the population to tune in. But these days, the apple-cheeked youngsters featured in prime time are less likely to spew cuteness than blood. “Television has become an extremely inhospitable place for middle-class children, and in some sense, for the demanding ideals by which they are now raised – a gory receptacle for any and all of our collectively sublimated parental ambivalence. Against our new universe of Humvee-inspired strollers, television constructs a parallel one, in which children are routinely maimed, killed, abused, mocked, mistreated and kept central – but according to a contravening morality.”

What’s that? You say watching children maimed and killed isn’t your televisual cup of tea? No problem, says Hollywood, we’ve got plenty of adult women being maimed and killed too!

Editors at the Wall Street Journal defend former Corporation for Public Broadcasting chairman Ken Tomlinson. The WSJ developed a new show during Tomlinson’s watch. “We knew Mr. Tomlinson was pushing for the program from his perch at CPB, but our job wasn’t to dissect the internal debates and politics of public broadcasting. That’s too opaque for any outsider, and even apparently for an insider like Mr. Konz, whose report is laced with such weaselly and inconclusive phrases as “the questions involve whether” Mr. Tomlinson “breached his fiduciary responsibilities.” Well, did he or not?”