Insider Chatter by Donna Bogatin

PayPerPost CEO Ted Murphy is stirring up a “Posties” revolt, spurring “everyday (i.e. PayPerPost) bloggers” to “write Google, and their Congressman.”

Just as Murphy took to the PayPerPost blog to lambast Google for “censorship” and a “monopolistic stranglehold on search and online advertisng,” however, Google’s fave presidential candidate, Barack Obama, was patting Google and its merry band of multi-millionaire Googlers on their backs during a mutual love fest cum personal political rally under the direction of CEO Eric Schmidt and team at the Googleplex.

Obama is the seventh candidate hoping to be the next president of the United States to make his or her campaign pilgimage to Mountain View. Bill Richardson undoubetdly still is sporting his scars from his “ultimate job interview,” as host Elliot Schrage, VP Global Communications and Public Affairs, led a visceral interrogation of the Governor, spurring Silicon Valley media to cheerfully portray Richardson’s performance as “awkward” and “bumbling.”

Schrage was quoted for condescendingly retorting to his guest, Governor Richardson: “Our nutritionist may end up running for president.”

Barack Obama was welcomed as the favorite Google son, though, with the Official Google Public Policy Blog fawning over the Congressman as the defacto honorary Googler in Chief. Obama has himself to thank, he put in a rocket scientist worthy performance, prepared even to “have a ready answer for a standard Google engineering question.”

Obama also proved himself worthy of the hefty Googler political contributions coming his way: The Obama “technology platform” is a shamelessy pro-Google one.

Moral of the Obama-PayPerPost story? Murphy ought to encourage his “Posties” to “write Obama,” rather than their “congressmen” about any evil Google doing!

What are the alleged Google bad deeds, according to Murphy? Google may have revamped its own proprietary way of evaluating Web page quality for its own use in its own proprietary systems, i.e. the mighty PageRank.

Murphy is calling for a revolt against Google because not only does he believe his PayPerPost blog network is potentially impacted by prospective potential changes in “free” traffic referred by private company Google’s search engine changes, but Murphy has himself used Google’s private, proprietary PageRank calculations as currency to sell his own blog advertising products, characterized by him as “attractive alternatives” to Google AdSense.

Murphy may be able to make a case against Google, nevertheless. After all, Google flaunts that its mission is to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and usefull” and “Posties” posts are decidely part of the “world’s information”!

Murphy is not helping his anti-Google campaign, though, by proudly taking advantage of “Google Custom Search” to power the PayPerPost blog.

PLUS: Google’s ‘Dirty Little Secret’: AdWords Inflation AND Google: U.S. Taxpayers To Finance GOOG Riches

PLUS: Paglo CEO ‘Nuts’ Over FREE ‘Google For IT’: INTERVIEW

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

Why are Viacom and NBC Universal seeking to make their DMCA opinions known to Judge Howard Lloyd in the matter of IO Group v. Veoh Networks via a “amici curiae” brief? Because the outcome ”may have an impact on the numerous lawsuits pending against YouTube, Grouper, Bolt, and other Internet Websites that operate similarly to Veoh.”

Viacom has a $1 billion lawsuit in progress against Google’s YouTube for “massive copyright infringement.” NBC has been a good cop, bad cop Google tease; NBC enjoys the fruits of YouTube promotion, while taking every opportunity to attack its DMCA fueled business model, without intitiating a direct lawsuit on its own behalf, however.

Viacom and NBC assert they “have an interest in “the development of the law of intellectual property generally, and particularly with respect ot the DMCA and its application to services such as Veoh”:

Viacom and NBC have a “direct, specific, and tangible interest” in:

Whether Veoh’s activities, and those of Internet Websites that operate in a manner similar to Veoh, are entitled to the protections of the “safe harbor” of Section 513(c) of the DMCA.

They are not, as Viacom and NBC seek to prove:

Many of Viacom’s and NBCU’s most valuable copyrighted works have been copied, performed, and disseminated without authorization by video-sharing Websites such as Veoh, YouTube and others. Viacom and NBCU have a strong interest in preserving the strength and viability of all of their legal rights and remedies in response to such conduct.

In WikiYou to Aaron Cohen: ‘YOU Screwed Over BOLT! Not once but twice!’ I cite my interview with Cohen in Februrary when he believed he could save Bolt from disintegrating due to copyright infringement liability: “2007 will be the year in which the Internet community and traditional copyright holders find economic partnerships that are mutually beneficial,” he told me.

Cohen was unable to find such financial harmony for Bolt, after all; His turnaround vision unraveled. Bolt.com is history. Bolt has “ceased” operations and its creditors are being redirected to a third party advisor of  “secured and unsecured creditors.”

All online video sharing sites fueled by no need to pay for content, DMCA driven business models, risk the same fate as Bolt, even YouTube.

ALSO: Google Demands NBC Universal Spread YouTube Fair Use Gospel

PLUS: How Google Abuses DMCA, NOT Universal Music: Sorry EFF & ‘Mom’ and Zuckerberg Message: Facebook Resistance Futile, Billions of Stubborn Email Accounts Targeted

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

Henry Blodget can NEVER live down the tough lessons he learned “back in the first Internet boom.” the one HE helped fuel!

Nevertheless, he won’t stop trying.

At his “old” blog, “The Internet Outsider,” Blodget comes clean on his NOT welcome in the securities industry, EVER, status:

Internet Outsider provides informal analysis of Internet companies, finance, trends, and third-party research. The site is edited by Henry Blodget, a former Wall Street Internet analyst.

IMPORTANT!: Internet Outsider is a publication, not an investment advisory service. We do not offer personalized investment advice.

Henry was a Managing Director and Senior Analyst at Oppenheimer & Company and Merrill Lynch & Co.Henry was a party to an industry-wide regulatory complaint about conflicts of interest between the research and banking divisions of brokerage firms. He participated in the global settlement and is precluded from working in the securities industry.

Not so, however, at his new blog, co-founded with fellow Internet 1.0 veterans Kevin Ryan and Dwight Merriman, “Silicon Alley Insider.”

Blodget not only no longer advises readers that he “is precluded from working in the securities industry,” he cockily aims to rewite “first Internet boom” history; Handily ignoring the havoc he helped wreak, Blodget seeks to paint Eliot Spitzer the villain:

From 1994-2001, Henry was a technology analyst at Prudential Securities, Oppenheimer & Co., and Merrill Lynch. He ran Merrill’s global Internet research practice and was ranked the No. 1 Internet and eCommerce analyst on Wall Street by Institutional Investor. He was later keelhauled by then-Attorney General Eliot Spitzer in a wide-ranging complaint about conflicts of interest between the research and banking divisions of brokerage firms (for details, please see sec.gov.)

It is not surprising that Blodget is trying to live down his Intertnet past. Even Blodget, though, can not rewrite history.

Tracy Pride Stoneman, securities lawyer, on Blodget, Meeker and Internet booms:

With Henry Blodget and Mary Meeker pushing tech and Jack Grubman pumping telecom to their brokers and the investing public, it is not happenstance that millions of investors ended up concentrated in volatile, speculative securities. The sad reality is that millions of investors not only paid for this advice in the form of commissions and fees, but they also paid for it with their life savings.

Blodget is now giving Internet boom “advice” to public corporations, free of charge. In response to New York Times reporting on NBC-iVillage, Blodget offers NBC a handy four-step lesson in how to realize its dreams:

1. Viewers don’t visit web sites just because you promote them on TV.
2. Don’t decide to move Manhattan staff to New Jersey.
3. Don’t create bad TV shows to promote web sites–viewers hate bad TV shows.
4. Don’t panic and buy web properties just because Rupert Murdoch hit a home run with MySpace.

Pithy perhaps, but not productive.

The promise of integerated TV to Web and vice versa promotion is yet to be fully realized, but it is a real, driving force behind YouTube AND the networks. CBS Interactive’s recruitment of top Google exec, Patrick Keane, case in point.

Keane was named Executive Vice President, Chief Marketing Officer at CBS Interactive, in February, after serving as Head of Advertising Sales Strategy at Google.

Keane’s role at CBS Interactive is to “implement systems to market and sell its content on a growing variety of emerging media platforms and expanding the CBS roster of advertisers.”

Specifically, Keane helps CBS “monetize new inventory generated by next-generation platforms.”

While a vice president, Jupiter, Keane extolled “the value of TV promotion in building a Web media business.’ While at Google, however, he helped spread an opposite gospel, preaching the value of YouTube promotion in building a TV network business.

Don’t aspire to be Rupert Murdoch, either, Blodget concludes. REALLY?

While Blodget is precluded from working in the securities industry for conduct unbecoming, Murdoch continues to work his media magic in the world of publicly traded media conglomerates.

SEE: Norman Pearlstine ‘Excited’ by a Rupert Murdoch Led Dow Jones and Qmecom Mass Personalized Video Ad Platform: Yahoo SmartAds, Digitas Beware

ALSO: Why Google Will NEVER Pay For a Local Ad Sales Force

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

Don Dodge likens Google’s YouTube months long who cares about video copyright owners stance to Lindsay Lohan’s prediliction for flaunting drunken driving laws: How can we just forgive and forget? Morevoer, is rehabilitation even in the cards?

I decline opining on Lohan’s difficulties in obeying motor laws, but I will speak, loud and clear, to the Google CEO’s inability to respect the copyright ownership of others and to his disdain for standard content licensing protocol.

I asked yesterday: Google DMCA Game: Viacom Gets Last $1 billion Laugh?, underscoring that Google has not met any of its prior publicly declared timetables for YouTube “filtering” technology, originally promising it for December 2006.

What’s more, Google comments in court on Friday about the latest supposed impending cure for “massive copyright infringement” at YouYube were not consistent with how Schmidt has long characterized his position regarding a possible YouTube proactive blocking of unauthorized uploads of copyright videos: NOT a Google option.

It has always been, and will always be: Google’s DMCA way, or the highway. UNLESS Viacom prevails in its $1 billion lawsuit against YouTube.

In March, I anlayzed what the Google CEO really thinks about the YouTube business model, after listening in to his Morgan Stanley Technology Conference discussion in San Francisco and his talk to the Bear Stearns Media Conference in Palm Beach.

When Schmidt approaches a video content company about working with YouTube he begins by declaring YouTube has the “fans” that the video producers want to reach, no matter that they are uploading copyright content without authorization.

Google starts its YouTube pitch to media content owners with an almost ultimatum: Users are going to make copies of your copyright content, so you may as well get used to it and embrace it.

Is Google oblivious to copyright ownership rights then? Of course not, Schmidt is careful to note, by referencing what he deems to be the Google and YouTube unalieanable right to host any videos it wants to, thanks to the DMCA.

What about the Google YouTube “Claim Your Content” plan, is it a copyright protection program? Think of it more as a fast-track to DMCA takedowns, Schmidt advises.

Schmidt resommends that video content companies make it even easier for “fans” to use unauthorized copyright content uploads, rather than try to deprive them of the content they are “fanatics” about.

What will the video content owners really get out of their “fans” exploiting unauthorized uploads of their copyright content? That is “unclear,” even to Schmidt; He oozes confidence, however, in the millions of YouTubers as “potential monetizable targets.”

How else does the leader of the $160 billion market cap number one search engine in the world REALLY feel about the $1 billion legal pickle it finds itself in, due to Viacom standing up for its copyrights and Viacom shareholders?

IN A NUT SHELL: Google CEO Schmidt–Anti-Microsoft Lawyers Good, Viacom Lawyer in Chief Bad

ALSO: How Google Abuses DMCA, NOT Universal Music: Sorry EFF & ‘Mom’ and Eric Schmidt: Google Cures What Ails the World

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

The Google Public Policy blog touts the Googler in chief’s “summer of public policy.”

Translation: The top Google pitch man, CEO Eric Schmidt, is on a whirlwind Google rules road show.

Cisco’s John Earnhard and myself were on the Google money when we pegged the launch of the Google Public Policy blog last month as the latest, greatest propaganda tool for Google speak; SEE Cisco to Google: Get Real!

Google is living up to the its Google way or the highway tradition; Alan Davidson, Google’s DC lobbyist in chief, shares with the world today how his boss, “Eric,” is touring the country to spread the Google gospel on how it intends to not only rule the Internet, but the actual world, really.

Education: Who needs reform, just do more Google searches in the classroom, thanks to the “Google Certified Teacher” indoctrination program; SEE Google on Government, Schools: Google Search to the Rescue

Video Diplomacy: Who needs humanitarian aid for “children in Africa,” thanks to Chad Hurley’s snack-sized clip culture legacy; SEE Africa NOT Online: Will ‘Open’ Google ‘Put Up or Shut Up’?

Government: Who needs independent public servants, thanks to Google and YouTube dependency; SEE The Next President of the U.S. Answers to Google

Public Libraries: Who needs librarians, thanks to the Google Library; SEE How Google Library Displaces Librarians

Censorship: Who needs free speech, thanks to Google AdWords for sale; SEE Google to World: AdWords Need Political Freedom

Healthcare: Who needs to rely on doctors, thanks to Google Health; SEE Google Sicko Timeline: Attack, Retract, Pander

Wireless: Who needs real openness, thanks to Google hypocricy; SEE Google Wants Openness? Start With NYC Googleplex!

WHO NEEDS GOOGLE (to rule the world) IS WHAT THE WORLD SHOULD FINALLY WAKE UP TO!

ALSO: Cloud Illusions: Microsoft, Google, Facebook Battle for Computing Heaven

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

Google’s “head of special initiatives,” Chris Sacca, declares at the Google blog that he and many other Googlers “have been working to identify the obstacles that prevent the Internet from being available to everyone on the planet.”

OPEN BROADBAND PLATFORMS! Google declares. Wow! Google will finally be putting its billions to good use, financing open broadband Internet access “to help insure that as many Americans as possible can access the Internet.”

NO. Under the incredulous spin that it is “putting consumers’ interests first,” Google announces it is ready to deploy $4.6 billion in cash reaped from its Google manipulated black box AdWords auctions so that IT can manipulate the federal government’s upcoming auction of wireless spectrum in the 700 MHz band, to Google’s great mobile business plan advantage.

Google waxes poetic on openness:

• Open applications: Consumers should be able to download and utilize any software applications, content, or services they desire;
• Open devices: Consumers should be able to utilize a handheld communications device with whatever wireless network they prefer;
• Open services: Third parties (resellers) should be able to acquire wireless services from a 700 MHz licensee on a wholesale basis, based on reasonably nondiscriminatory commercial terms; and
• Open networks: Third parties (like internet service providers) should be able to interconnect at any technically feasible point in a 700 MHz licensee’s wireless network.

Google claims it is putting its money where its open mouth is:

It strikes us as unfair that some people should enjoy such abundant access to this rich resource while billions of others aren’t so lucky.

REALLY? Is Google levelling the playing field by sharing its billions to subsidize broadband access fees for billions all over the world? NO.

Google has other disingenuous “open” pitches going on, at both the events it underwrites and within its own facilities.

Can the CEO of the world’s most powerful Internet company corporate underwrite an “open” conference touting “Personal Democracy,” acquire keynote rights to address attendees on the importance of “communication” and “transparency,” AND then take questions from the audience, EXCEPT for questions from those in attendance who also happen to be members of the press, AND keep a straight face all the while?

NO, in fact. At the sponsored by Google Personal Democracy Forum held in downtown Manhattan in May, Schmidt was unable to keep a straight face. I know, I was in the first row, directly in front of the Google CEO, and I believe he may just have had a subtle Googley wink in my direction.

Irony of ironies: The question I had hoped to pose to Schmidt concerned just such a Google communications hypocricy underway at the NYC Goolgeplex!

In his keynote, Schmidt pushed all the “right” politically correct buttons:

Do not shut down communication, Enable democratic expression,
18 months ago we made a decision to be more transparent,
Criticism is healthy.

Right out of Schmidt’s Q & A gate, however, the stage was set so that only non-press attendees would be given a microphone.

Google has taken to prohibiting press from attending its purported open speaker series at the NYC Googleplex, denying media access to hear the likes of Vint Cerf evangelizing about the future of the “open” Web, that he is deemed to have “fathered.”

What’s more, any “civilians” lucky enough to gain access to public events at the NYC Goolgeplex are subject to oaths of silence, under the name of “openness”!

Google will be holding an “open” session at the NYC Googleplex on the not so confidential theme of “Is there a career path in test engineering?” with a panel of Google “rocket scientists.” Attendes must submit to Google’s silence is golden, for GOOG, however:

In order to support the free and open exchange of information at this event, we kindly ask that attendees refrain from recording or reporting on these meetings, their content or Google. Please contact our communications team if you have any questions regarding this policy.

What questions. Google’s inherent operating philosophy hypocricy has long been a given: We will “organize” all of YOUR information, but YOU can not organize any of ours.

ALSO: Google, Yahoo Click Fraud Audit Minefield Looms: Look to the IAB?

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN