Insider Chatter by Donna Bogatin

YAY! The Internet free content ride may be nearing its long overdue end: Nielsen and Digimarc embark on a “Digital Media Manager” copyright enforcement service. 

I spoke with Bruce Davis, CEO of Digimarc Corporation, a NASDAQ company, that fatefull day in March when Plaintiff Viacom International Inc., et al, made it billion dollar crystal clear to YouTube, Inc., YouTube, LLC, and Google Inc., collectively known as “Defendants,” that massive copyright infringement would not be tolerated:

Defendants know and intend that a substantial amount of the content on the YouTube site consists of unlicensed infringing copies of copyrighted works and have done little or nothing to prevent this massive infringement. YouTube has deliberately chosen this approach because it allows YouTube to profit from infringement while leaving copyright owners insufficient means to prevent it.

At Digimarc, Davis spearheads innovation and commercialization in the rapidly evolving field of Digital Watermarking (DWM), as part of the Digimarc portfolio of secure identity and media management solutions.

Davis expressed to me his confidence that DWM will be “increasingly adopted to help manage all forms of media to protect copyrights while enhancing, instead of limiting, consumer experiences” at popular Web 2.0 social media destinations. Digimarc positions DWM as a “sophisticated and balanced paradigm for media distribution and management.”

I asked Davis if DWM is difficult and costly to implement. Davis underscored to me that DWM solutions are readily and efficiently deployable across any media, including online video.

Nine months later, Digimarc is partnering with The Nielsen Company to commericalize a service that will “enforce copyrights and monetize value of online video”:

Nielsen Digital Media Manager will use digital watermarking and fingerprinting to establish an industry-wide rules-based solution to copyright security and to assure copyright compliance. By providing a more reliable way to track content, the service will help clients realize the value of their digital content, promote the expansion of Internet-distributed media and facilitate a number of revenue streams, including ad-pairing, e-commerce, royalty reporting and others.

Nielsen already uses digital watermarking to encode 95% of national television programming for its television ratings service, and the new service will focus initially on the online distribution of television content in the U.S. The companies expect these new solutions to be available in mid 2008.

Nielsen and Digimarc also plan to work with the media industry to digitally watermark DVD’s, movies, music, video games and other content in subsequent phases of the roll-out of the new media identification and management services.

YouTube AND Google beware!

The Nielsen-Digimarc Web video policing initiative announcement comes on the heels of Attributor launching its editorial content policing product. Attributor CEO Jim Brock: 

Search engines should not link to pirated content.
Advertising networks should not profit from infringing content.

SEE: Tom Curley AP Crusade: Google AdSense Lawsuit Near? Thanks to Attributor and Attributor Launch Blasts AdSense Pirating: Google Beware

WITH NIELSEN, DIGIMARC AND ATTRIBUTOR ON THE CONTENT MUST BE COMPENSATED FOR CASE, GOOG MAY NOT BE PROFITING, AS WELL!

MORE: Wikipedia Goes Green: Cash To Lure Professionals

ALSO: Henry Blodget Slams eBay’s Whitman: Yahoo’s Yang Next? and Edgeio $5 million Failure: The Myth of Disposable Startups

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

NBC has a hate-love-hate relationship with YouTube, I noted to NBC Universal Senior VP, Digital Distribution, Ron Lamprecht, at the Ad-Tech conference underway in New York City. Google’s Director of TV Ads, Michael Steib, was at his side.

The two execs shared a stage for a panel entitled “Television 3.0,” moderated by Greg Baumann, Editor, Television Week.

During the Q & A, I underscored the irony of a Television Week editor opening a panel on the future of television by showing a “clip” about TV, running on YouTube! I also asked Lamprecht what NBC intends to do about the rampant unauthorized posting of copyright NBC materials at YouTube.

My Question: NBC has deleted its YouTube channel while semi-launching its would be YouTube killer. NBC content nevertheless continues to boom at YouTube. What will NBC do about the ongoing copyright infringement?

1) Join in the Google Video ID program OR

2) Join in Viacom’s billion dollar YouTube lawsuit?

Lamprecht’s answer: We launched Hulu.com. We continue to talk with Google, Michael and I just spoke before the panel (Google’s TV Ads point man concurred).

I saw, and heard over the open mikes, the two Google and NBC execs joking together as well, before the discussion got underway.  During the panel, NBC’s digital distribution point man even gave Google the thumbs up, underscoring how the tehchnology of the company that wants to control all the world’s advertising, even the broadcast kind, will be indispensable to television advertisers going forward. Robert Leverone, VP Television, Dow Jones, chimed in that partnering is key.

The NBC-Google co-panelist love fest today at Ad-Tech contrasts starkly with the NBC-Google almost showdown I witnessed at the OMMA conference in NYC in September.

As I recount in NBC’s Defense Against YouTube IP Abuse? Carrot, NOT Stick: OMMA Report George Kliavkoff, Chief Digital Officer for NBC Universal, twice lobbed veiled, but pointed, jabs at Google for its scant concern for protecting the rights of content creators at its YouTube juggernaut. HE was sharing the stage with Google’s Director of Media Platforms, sitting side-by-side with Eileen Naughton.

During the OMMA Q & A, I asked Kliavkoff: “You seem to have twice indicated NBC’s unhappiness with Google’s DMCA business model. Isn’t it time for NBC to give Viacom some real support by also suing YouTube for copyright infringement?”

Kliavkoff responded that NBC belives in IP “carrots, not sticks.”

Just weeks later, NBC pulled its YouTube channel. Lamprecht didn’t say today if THAT (anti) YouTube move was the carrot, or the stick, talking!

MORE: Tom Curley AP Crusade: Google AdSense Lawsuit Near? Thanks to Attributor and Hulu.com Debuts: Worth the Wait and  NBC on Why Hulu.com IS a YouTube Killer: OMMA Report

PLUS: Google To World: Give YouTube Your Videos, NOW! and NBC Still Booming on YouTube: Google Lawsuit Next? and OMMA Advertising Cat Fight? Google’s Media Chief Gets Defensive

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

As more readers are deemed to be trading newspapers for Websites, the Associated Press has sued VeriSign’s Moreover Technologies news aggregation unit, claiming it is making improper use of AP’s copyright-protected headlines, stories and photos.

Tom Curley, AP CEO: Our organization “spends hundreds of millions of dollars annually to provide original coverage of vital breaking news that cannot be obtained elsewhere.” Nevertheless, Moreover is wantonly “freeriding on our newsgathering and our reporting of news from around the world.”

Curley has recently made sure another online news aggregation freeloader paid up, Google News!

SEE: What Google News? AP: Google Plays Second Fiddle to Yahoo 

BUT, Did Curley end up negotiating a bum deal for AP with the world’s number one search engine. After all, he advised the Columbia School of Journalism last week that “The portals are runing off with our best stuff, and we’re afraid or unable to make or enforce deals that drive fair value.”

SEE: Associated Press: Smart, or NOT, with Google, Yahoo Deals

What about Curley’s exhortation to Columbia Journalism that if the founders of AP, many moons ago, had seen a Google, a Yahoo or a Facebook, “they would have figured out what to do about them.”

Curley assures HE knows what to do NOW: 

Lest you think we’re going off the deep end and giving it away for free, we have strong new efforts to protect news Web sites from unauthorized scraping through tighter site protocols and content tagging.

SO, will Curley be taking advantgage of the just launched Attributor “Content Monitoring and Analysis Platform” TO SUE GOOGLE FOR PROFITEERING OFF OF ADSENSE COPYRIGHT ABUSE OF AP OWNED PROPERTY? 

The Associated Press has been “tracking the use of AP content across the Internet” with Attributor since May. Now that Attributor has moved from beta to open for real business, will Curley follow-up on his call to monetization arms last week, and his lawsuit against VerisSign for copyright infringement.

In Attributor Launch Blasts AdSense Pirating: Google Beware yesterday, I present the Attibutor sales pitch for its service, it is an anti-Google AdSense one, big time, despite Attributor’s assertion that it does not wish to be a “copyright cop.”

Attributor proudly hails “to safeguard its intellectual property rights, the Associated Press is already implementing Attirbutor’s technology,” to combat the “plagiarist’s paradise” that is the Web.

The Wild, Wild, Web, according to Attributor:

Many sites will repost large chunks of content without any licensing agreement or even attribution. The ability to instantly monetize Web pages has spawned a nwe generation of plagiarists, with millions of splogs (spam blogs) using RSS feeds to automatically scrape content for financial gain.

Attributor underscores it “empowers publishers to send DMCA takedown notices” and seek the removal of copied content from search engines. The benefits to the AP are clear, Attibutor notes: “With greater visibility into where its content goes, the AP can more efficiently track and pursue unauthorized usage of its content.”

HOW WILL CURLEY PURSUE THE UNAUTHORIZED USAGE OF AP CONTENT AT GOOGLE ADSENSE SUPPORTED SPLOGS?

Google also profits from the AdSense-supported plagiarism plague via its sale of high-priced AdWords at  Google.com, as Attibutor’s evidence of top SERP ranking of splogs illustrates.

Curley laid down the copyright infringement gauntlet last week, will he soon fire the next AP lawsuit against AdSense-supported, unauthorized online resuers of AP content, thanks to Attributor?

After all, Attributor advises ”Google is unacceptable to publishers” and is suffering from a “prisoners dilemma.”

MORE: Attributor Launch Blasts AdSense Pirating: Google Beware

PLUS: Google To World: Give YouTube Your Videos, NOW! and NBC’s Defense Against YouTube IP Abuse? Carrot, NOT Stick: OMMA Report  and NBC Still Booming on YouTube: Google Lawsuit Next? 

ALSO AP Sues VeriSign: News Aggregation ‘Business Model’ at Risk and Ad-Tech: BuzzLogic Latest to Push Google AdSense 

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

Attributor changes its status today, and its attitude.

A stealth-mode startup in May, co-founder and CEO Jim Brock told me the $10 million VC backed “online content originality” play was determined to provide “visibility” on the Web’s copyright content DNA. As Attributor unveils its Web-wide content monitoring and analysis platform to the public today, Rich Pearson, of the Attributor Biz Dev team, described to me how publishers of copyright material may soon be fighting for their rights, for links.

In pitching its services to Web content creators, Attributor rallies around the Web’s economy, the link-based one, reiterating the Web’s question du jour: “How can I get links that drive traffic and help my rank in seach engines?”

Attributor promises, “with just a dew clicks, you can answer questions like”:

Who is putting ads on my content, and can I share in the profit?
How can I get more links to my site when my content shows up on other sites and social networks?
Which of my articles or images are being used most?
And which of them create the most links and clicks to my site?

Attributor monitors the Internet for copies of orignal publisher content, scanning billions of Web sites, blogs and social networks so publishers can “learn how and where their content moves across the Internet.”

The Attributor value proposition: “At any time, view your dashboard to see who is copying your content.” Once the offending copied content is identified, Attributor is ready to launch automated, remedial link policing campaigns:

INCREASE TRAFFIC TO YOUR SITE BY ADDING LINKS TO YOUR SITE
Links are part of the attribution you are entitled to from sites that copy your content. Here’s how we help build links to your site: First, we identify all pages copying your content but don’t link back to your original. Next, we automate the request process so you can send Link Requests to all sites that fail to link to you. The end result? More traffic to your site through the links that you secure plus improved rankings with the top search engines.

If Attributor’s link carrot approach doesn’t work, escalation to a DMCA stick is but one click away: Web sites, AND Google, beware:

Occasionally, a site copying your content refuses to add a link back to your site. Or you may not want your orignal content to appear anywhere other than on your site. You can use Attributor to send DMCA takedown notices to unauthorized sites, the companies hosting their content as well as the search engines and ad networks.

Attributor CEO Brock is firm:

Search engines should not link to pirated content.
Advertising networks should not profit from infringing content.

In fact, Attrinbutor has fighting words for Google, the proud owner/operator of both the number one search engine AND the number one online ad network: GOOGLE IS UNACCEPTABLE TO PUBLISHERS!

BUT is Google really in a “prisoners dilemma”? Quarter by quarter, does GOOG not reach for the clouds, along with CEO Eric Schmidt. Google is NOT fretting about whether it should “monetize or monitor,” but plotting about how to monetize MORE and monitor LESS!

Is there really any reason for Google to change its DMCA umbrella ways now? After all, how strong is a “Google is unaceptable to publishers” argument, if the very same publishers nevertheless worship the all mighty Google SEO/SERP/LINK Gods?

UPDATE: Tom Curley AP Crusade: Google AdSense Lawsuit Near? Thanks to Attributor

READ MORE: Associated Press: Smart, or NOT, with Google, Yahoo Deals and Google’s Gadget Ploy: The Web, Owned by GOOG

PLUS: Google To World: Give YouTube Your Videos, NOW! and NBC’s Defense Against YouTube IP Abuse? Carrot, NOT Stick: OMMA Report  and NBC Still Booming on YouTube: Google Lawsuit Next?

AND Ad-Tech: BuzzLogic Latest to Push Google AdSense

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

The blogosphere delights in dissing NBC Universal because giving away copyright content for free is not part of its business model!

Liz Gannes, NewTeeVee/GigaOm, labels the entertainment conglomerate “hot-tempered,” Mike Masnick, TechDirt, lobs the “hate” word, knowingly declaring that NBC will “piss off more (non-paying) fans,” and Om Malik asserts that when “big media” ignores YouTube in favor of their own profitable (and legal) business models, they not only reveal themselves as retrograde “inward looking” old media, but are “lining up against YouTube and Google” to boot!

Malik is on the eve of his first real-world conference, which he hails as “helping the online video industry’s evolution,” but GigaOm has been rooting for NBC Universal, and subsequently News Corp, to fail in their own (rather than on behalf of Google’s YouTube) joint try at “the Web video revolution.”

Before Malik’s conference date neared, the GigaOm homepage gleefully counted down to a Malik assumed NewCo (now Hulu.com) “wreck,” as the bright red graphic illustrates. NBC Universal is NOT scheduled to speak at the Malik conference.

Malik, et al, are off the mark.

Since June, I have reported and anlayzed the impending NBC-Universal/News Corp. joint venture following first-hand presentations and Q & A with top NBC Universal execs at diverse media and tech conferences in Manhattan. SEE: NBC: Millions in Upfront Video Ad Sales andWho Needs YouTube: Good NBC, ABC Stuff Free AND Legal!

In NBC on Why Hulu.com IS a YouTube Killer: OMMA Report last month I cited a confident George Kliavkoff, NBC Universal’s Chief Digitlal Officer, in laying out an intelligent Hulu.com business model strategy based on the premise that “quality” always wins out.

I also asked Kliavkoff point blank about NBC’s intentions with YouTube (see NBC’s Defense Against YouTube IP Abuse? Carrot, NOT Stick: OMMA Report). Here is the exchange:

BOGATIN: “You seem to have twice indicated NBC’s unhappiness with Google’s DMCA business model. Isn’t it time for NBC to give Viacom some real support by also suing YouTube for copyright infringement?”

KLIAVKOFF responded that NBC belives in IP “carrots, not sticks,” without seizing the opportunity to point out to his Google Media co-panelist, Eileen Naughton, what it is that NBC wants YouTube to do! 

NBC had been stradling the YouTube copyright infringement fence for more than a year, playing a good cop, bad cop routine designed at maximizing “free” YouTube promotion for NBC content while at the same time publicly needling Google with pointed anti-YouTube business model commentary and serving as a supportive “friend” in YouTube copyright lawsuits brought by others.

To date, NBC can not bring itself to go all out against YouTube, as Viacom has. Perhaps that day is nearing though, as the NBC YouTube “channel” is now history.

The NBC YouTube problem lives on, of course, due to the Google DMCA fueled copyright content should be free for the taking, as long as Google can profit from it, “business model.”

In Google To World: Give YouTube Your Videos, NOW! I point out Google’s latest “anti-copyright infringement” YouTube charade.

ALSO: How Google Library Hamstrings Librarians: Book Search (not so) Fine Print and Click Forensics CEO: Click Fraud Hits 28% for Google AdSense, Yahoo Publisher Network

PLUS: Google Nielsen TV Ads STILL Blurry: NOT AdWords for Television

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

While the blogosphere rallies that Associated Press “doesn’t get” how the Internet “works,”  VeriSign is getting a renewed lesson in how business law works.

The AP reported that it filed a lawsuit last week in the U.S. District Court in New York against VeriSign’s Moreover Technologies, a company that “aggregates and redistributes news online, claiming it is making improper use of AP’s copyright-protected headlines, stories and photos.”

Tom Curley, AP CEO: Our organization “spends hundreds of milions of dollars annually to provide original coverage of vital breaking news that cannot be obtained elsewhere.” Nevertheless, Moreover is wantonly “freeriding on our newsgathering and our reporting of news from around the world.”

YOU GO, TOM! I have long noted: If ‘We the Media’ Poaches Content, Who Pays for News Production?

Last month, I underscored:Does Huffington Post Exploit Bloggers AND Mainstream Media?

At the end of the new media, “citizen journalism” day, who will pay to produce the news that everyone seeks to aggregate without paying for?

Moreover, will there continue to be original news to aggregate? After all, news may be a commodity, but valuable commodities cost dearly.

Whatever the legal merits of AP v. Moreover, or its outcome, it is a good thing that the who needs to pay for the content of others news aggregation “business model” is at risk.

ALSO EXCLUSIVE: NBC’s Defense Against YouTube IP Abuse? Carrot, NOT Stick: OMMA Report and CNET Founder Latest to Jump on Web 2.0 Aggregator Bandwagon: Political Base 

PLUS: Local Ad Sales War: Why Google is a Guaranteed Winner

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN