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The Digital Watermarking Alliance, launched in September of 2006 by a number of technology companies, has officially announced its support for the idea of selling music in the MP3 format, which Yahoo and others have been experimenting with recently.

Thomson, which owns the right to license the MP3 format, is a predictable member of the alliance (if the labels end up using MP3 to sell music, they would end up owing Thomson money). Other members include companies that make watermarking technology, one that specializes in monitoring broadcasts, and others that use a combination of the two to prevent copyrighted maps and films from being distributed illegally.

The digital watermarks from DWA member companies are apparently inaudible, despite being embedded directly into the audio signal. They survive digital-to-analog conversion, as well as most bit rate conversions — as long as the resulting bit rate isn’t low enough to obscure the watermark. (I assume the watermark is found in the upper frequencies, since low bit rate songs typically sound worst in the upper registers.)

Looking at the list of member companies, a blurry picture begins to emerge of what a digital music market for watermarked MP3 music might look like (in addition to what we’ve already seen from eMusic). Sites with some sort of blanket license could sell open, watermarked MP3s serially with unique identifiers. Music software already keeps a tally of how many times you play a given track in order to create smart playlists of popular songs; perhaps the software could communicate to this tally to whoever sold you the MP3, who would then use that information to figure out how much to pay each of the artists/labels in its catalog, just as BMI and ASCAP do for radio stations and restaurants.

OA is here

For anyone that wants to see the lgislation that Napster et al tried to use in their defence, its here: www.copyright.gov/legislation/dmca.pdf

The Act is divided into five Titles, the one being most relevant to UGC and SN sites is this Title 2:

Title II, the “Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation
Act,” creates limitations on the liability of online service providers for
copyright infringement when engaging in certain types of activities.

TITLE II: ONLINE COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT LIABILITY LIMITATION
Title II of the DMCA adds a new section 512 to the Copyright Act3 to create
four new limitations on liability for copyright infringement by online service providers.
The limitations are based on the following four categories of conduct by a service
provider:
1. Transitory communications;
2. System caching;
3. Storage of information on systems or networks at direction of users;
and
4. Information location tools.

… and it continues here

Traffic and Stats
YouTube is currently serving 100 million videos per day, with more than 65,000 videos being uploaded daily. According to Hitwise, YouTube videos account for 60 percent of all videos watched online and people are spending an average of 17 minutes per session on the site. According to Nielsen NetRatings, YouTube has nearly 20M unique users per month.

We continue to grow exponentially month-to-month, so check back in for the latest metrics.

Timeline
YouTube was founded in February 2005 from a garage in Menlo Park, and development began immediately. We started a public preview in May of last year and officially launched the company and service in December 2005. YouTube has already grown to serve more than 100 million video views per day and is receiving more than 65,000 video uploads daily.

Demographics
Our user base is 18-49, spanning all geographies. With such a large and diverse user base, YouTube offers something for everyone.

Funding
YouTube announced its first round of funding in November 2005 for $3.5 million from venture-capital firm Sequoia Capital. In April 2006, YouTube received an additional $8 million in a second round of funding from Sequoia.

Business Model
YouTube is pursuing advertising as its business model, and is exploring a range of possibilities including promotions, sponsorships, contextual-based advertising, traditional banner advertising, etc. But more than anything else, we’re committed to providing the best consumer experience to watch, upload, and share videos. When building a community, it is critical to get the model right.

Market Size
The online advertising market continues to grow and has increased by about 30% to an estimated $12.5 billion in 2005, according to the IAB/PricewaterhouseCoopers. With the explosion of Internet video in 2006, the increase in home broadband access (more than 60% of homes have broadband), and with consumers spending more time on the Web, companies are shifting their advertising budgets from traditional TV advertising to the online video market. This presents a significant market opportunity for YouTube.

Overview and Features
YouTube is a consumer media company for people to watch and share original videos worldwide through a Web experience.

Everyone can watch videos on YouTube—both at YouTube.com and across the Internet. People can see first-hand accounts of current events, find videos about their hobbies and interests, and discover the quirky and unusual. As more people capture special moments on video, YouTube is empowering them to become the broadcasters of tomorrow.

Some of the site’s features include:

• Video embedding, which lets users insert a YouTube video into MySpace accounts, blogs, or other Web sites where anyone can watch them
• Public or private videos—users can elect to broadcast their videos publicly or share them privately with friends and family upon upload
• Subscriptions allow users to keep track of their favorite users’ new videos
• By registering, users are able to upload and share videos, save favorites, create playlists, and comment on the videos. YouTube is building a community that is highly motivated to watch and share videos. The YouTube service is free and will be supported by advertising.

The YouTube Community
YouTube is a place for people to engage in new ways with video by sharing, commenting on, and viewing videos. YouTube originally started as a personal video sharing service, and has grown into an entertainment destination with people watching more than 100 million videos on the site daily. Our users determine what is popular on the site, and can unleash their creativity and broadcast their talents to a global audience.

YouTube is creating a community for personal video, musicians, amateur filmmakers and comedians, and professional content owners. Our service is extremely viral, so if someone has a lot of talent and their content is really creative, users will be more likely to share the videos.

The explosion in consumer devices with video capability is giving users control over the videos they record, watch, and share, and YouTube is dedicated to making their experience as easy and entertaining as possible.

Unlike traditional broadcast channels, which have set windows for their programming, people can watch what they want, when they want on YouTube. We are focused on building the best user experience and the best platform for people to share their videos around the world. Anyone can broadcast themselves by creating content and distributing it through YouTube. And the community decides what is popular through their ratings and comments.

Gathered from YouTubes own factsheet which is here

Skype founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom have invested part of their $2.6bn Skype sale windfall in developing a broadband P2P TV service to rival the broadcast networks.

The Venice Project, as it is called, claims to deliver near high-definition quality programmes supported by advertisers with tools for users to personalise channels, discuss programmes with others and do things like pause, record, rewind, etc.

Mr Friss said peer to peer technology used buy the service would make it poissibls to serve “tens of millions of users” while overcoming the content owners’ security concerns. Frederik de Wahl said programmes would not require DRM protection because “the bits and bytes being collected on your computer are fragments of the stream”.

For me this underlines the fact that DRM and content producers themselves have to move on an embrace new business models. Its no longer viable for them to try to tehcnically or legislatively block distribution of their content (its a losing battle). Instead they need to find new ways to allow this redistribution WHILE ensuring they get paid.

Also they say they are behaving within the bounds of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (see this), but that is exactly the piece of legislation that companies like Napster tried to use in their (failed) defense, particularly the “safe harbour provision” which says that they are just the ‘dumb carrier’ (my words) of the data traffic and not the one doing any bad.

Pete Cashmore at Mashable writes…

DivShare, which launches today, is a super-simple file hosting solution ala ImageShack or Photobucket. Created by a two-man team, it allows you to upload any safe file type, create galleries and thumbnails and view all your uploads at the member dashboard. I hope they have some decent servers, since users receive free, unlimited hosting - the only catch (and it isn’t even a catch) is that files expire if they aren’t downloaded or viewed within 30 days. If you’re posting to MySpace, hi5, Piczo or your blog, that probably won’t be an issue.

Once you’ve uploaded your files, DivShare creates 3 things: a direct link, a thumbnail and a forum link. They also provide a Facebook Share button for your image link and the ability to insert that link into an AIM message. It’s a simple, no frills service, and it’s really impossible to tell at launch whether these things will succeed or not - what we do know is that these sites experience viral growth, since people host files on whichever service their friends use.

OA is here

Hollywood is evaluating proposals for a “digital fingerprint” that it can implant into online films in order to make it impossible for purchasers to share them with other internet users.

Discussions with technology companies come as the film industry braces for the development of a string of new movie-download sites that could transform the business, and which many fear could unleash a torrent of internet piracy.

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has quietly asked a number of established and start-up tech companies for proposals to help forestall a big increase in peer-to-peer file sharing. It believes fingerprinting technology is necessary if studios are to agree to let more of their films go on sale as digital downloads.

Hollywood is desperate to avoid the fate of the music industry, which saw widespread file-sharing eat into sales of CDs, turning a generation of internet users on to the idea that music is free.

It has been encouraged by innovative partnerships with formerly renegade technology companies such as Guba, whose website allows users to search for content on peer-to-peer networks. Earlier this year, Guba agreed to filter out copyrighted material by marking it with a digital fingerprint. The electronics giant Philips and a little Silicon Valley firm, Audible Magic, are among those that have fingerprinting technologies that could be used by websites, college networks and internet service providers to filter out illegal content. The MPAA is currently evaluating some early proposals.

OA is here

Dion Hinchcliffe says…

“One of my favorite Internet stats to check out are the mashup and open API trendlines on the front page of Programmable Web. Consistently, month after month this year and right up until present day, we’ve seen the mashup stats climb intriguing steadiness. And along with hundreds of available Web APIs, we’ve also maintained a sustained rate of approximately three brand new mashup applications being released per day. Interesting growth, but is it the start of a major trend?

It’s too early to answer these questions though the broad outlines do seem to be coming together.”

OA by Dion Hinchcliffe is here

US mobile carrier T-Mobile has launched a Wiki site for its Sidekick users. The Wiki style of software is most commonly known for its use in the online encyclopedia called Wikipedia. The Sidekick Wiki site, located at Sidekick.Wetpaint.com, is a community based website where all of the content will be written and maintained by Sidekick customers. While T-Mobile will not be creating the content on the site, they say that T-Mobile reps might occasionally “pop” onto the site’s discussion forums to answer some questions.

The site offers a number of features to Sidekick owners, such as “Me & My Sidekick” and “Pimp My Sidekick”, where people can create personal profiles as well as swap tips for customizing their devices. As is the case with other Wiki sites, users can add their own pages as well as make changes to existing pages on the Wiki site.

OA by Michael Oryl is here

MySpace Mobile is going live on Monday, allowing Cingular subscribers to add photos, blog posts and comments to their MySpace pages for $2.99/month. You’ll also be able to send and receive your MySpace mail. The mobile version will be more lightweight, they say - it won’t have many graphics, banner ads or access to MySpace Video. MySpace Mobile will also be optimized for use on wireless handsets.

If 2006 was the year of video, then 2007 will most likely be the year of mobile. But a lot of barriers still stand in the way (the carriers, compatibility across hundreds of devices), and it seems less likely that we’ll see the “YouTube of Mobile” - a startup that comes from nowhere to take the crown. Instead, we’re seeing launches like YouTube Mobile and MySpace Mobile - existing networks moving into the mobile domain. What’s more, the stats from M:Metrics show that European teens are far more mobile-savvy than their US counterparts when it comes to creating content and using social networks on mobile devices - this is one space where European entrepreneurs could get a head start.

OA by Pete Cashmore is here