A Cuckoo Time to Release Hulu

The News Corp. - NBC site Hulu.com has launched in public beta, reports Variety. It's an ad-supported web site for viewing TV shows and movies, with non-skipable commercials included in the video stream.

The timing's not great though: the studios and networks are busy trying to persuade the Writers Guild that new media is irrelevant as source of income. A new and exciting Internet platform is scarcely persuasive.

Online Pirate Faces the Music

A women found guilty of sharing 24 songs, out of 1,700 she had on offer through her Kazaa account, will have to pay $222,000 in damages for copyright infringement to a group of record labels, reports the Los Angeles Times.

That's a jury verdict of $9,250 per song. Under the copyright act, the Minnesota woman, Jammie Thomas, could have been forced to pay as much as $150,000 per infringement. The record labels involved were Arista Records, Capitol Records, Interscope Records, Sony BMG, UMG, and Warner Bros. Records. The RIAA issued a statement hailing the decision. The industry has brought 26,000 lawsuits over the past four years. 10,000 of those cases have settled, typically at less than $5,000 each.

I think the industry's victory will have some deterrent effect, but not enough to sink all the pirate ships a' sail. Ultimately - sooner rather than later - all online music will probably be unprotected MP3's, and price points will probably have to come down as well, for individual songs or for monthly subscriptions.

Radiohead Sings "OK Consumer"

Rock band Radiohead is selling its next album as a £40 ($82) special edition - and as a name-your-price set of MP3's available online, reports Reuters via the Los Angeles Times. The special edition includes a CD, a supplemental CD with music not (legally) available online, and two vinyl albums for the truly low-tech.

Radiohead can afford to sell its music for potentially close to zero because of its huge fan base. And it has the freedom to experiment because it's currently unsigned. There'll be a traditional CD available next year, for those whose tastes are material, but modest.

Nokia Unstacks the Deck in Mobile Video

Nokia has been embedding video links in its new-ish N95 handset pursuant to a deal with News Corp., Sony Pictures, and CNN, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

This allows video to be streamed from those companies' sites without being included on the carriers' decks, or menus. Content companies find those decks to be expensive, and crowded, pieces of real estate.

In separate news, Nokia is buying mapping data company Nav-teq, a major player in that field.

Possible Free Tabloid from LA Times

The Los Angeles Times may start a free daily tabloid, in a bid to up its circulation, reports Reuters via Yahoo! News. Sister paper Chicago Tribune already has such a paper, called Redeye, which reaches 600,000 readers - a large number for a newspaper - many reportedly in the desirable 18-34 demographic.

Several newspapers publish such freebie papers to counter loss of subscriptions and paid ads resulting from popularity of the Internet.

No Honey for Pooh Family

An appellate court upheld a ruling from 2004 dismissing a suit by the owners of Winnie the Pooh against Disney, reports the Los Angeles Times. The suit had claimed that Disney had failed to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties for merchandising, software, and home video.

The ruling, against the heirs of Stephen Slesinger, who obtained the rights to the famous bear from the stories' author, A. A. Milne, was based on a finding of misconduct against the family - specifically, that they had hired an investigator who broke into Disney offices and rifled through the company's trash.

Sony Starts Digital Studio (2)

See other post. (This post is a placeholder because there were too many keywords to all fit on the other post.)

Sony Starts Digital Studio

Sony has started a studio called Deca to identify, develop, finance, market, and distribute new media content on various platforms, reports Online Media Daily. The division/entity received $5 million in outside funding. It's unclear why Sony sought outside money.

Deca is one of a number of such ventures (name, key founder and key financing, per the article):

Deca - Sony Pictures - Mayfield Fund, General Catalyst Partners, and Atomico Investments (started by Skype and Joost co-founder Niklas Zennstrom)

Vuguru - Michael Eisner (former head of Disney)

FunnyOrDie.com - Will Ferrell - Sequoia Capital (large VC)

60Frames Entertainment - United Talent Agency (UTA) and Spot Runner (digital agency partly owned by WPP Group, huge ad agency conglomerate)

Worldwide Biggies - Albie Hecht (producer) - NBC Universal

BermanBraun - Gail Berman (former Paramount Pictures president) and Lloyd Braun (former Yahoo Media Group head) (both are experienced TV execs)

Unclear whether any of them will be able to bridge the gap between user generated content (UGC) and Hollywood, and whether they can make a lot of money doing so.

Oracle v. SAP Trial Date Set - in 2009

Oracle's lawsuit against SAP accusing SAP of unlawfully downloading thousands of pieces of copyrighted code and documents from Oracle's servers continues to work its way through the legal process. The latest development is that a trial date was set -- for approximately 1-1/2 years from now -- reports CRM Buyer.

The long lead time probably stems from the fact that this is a very complex dispute, with thousands of downloads alleged and both sides wanting to interview a large number of witnesses. The case may not settle until significant discovery has occurred, and both sides have educated themselves as to the strengths and weaknesses of their case. For more, see previous post.

Disney's MVNO is N.O.G.O., Again

Disney is shuttering its Disney-branded cellphone service, reports Variety. The service ran on the Sprint network, which meant that Disney was an MVNO, or Mobile Virtual Network Operator.

Last year, Disney closed down its ESPN-branded MVNO operation. In sports terms, that's 0 for 2. Seems like outside content brands just don't translate into the mobile network world.