Seth Gilbert, 06-25-2007
While late to the party, Bill Gates’ owned photo stock agency, Corbis, is launching its new microstock agency site Snap Village today.
As discussed in extensive detail on Metue earlier this month, microstock is growing phenomena in the stock photo industry that takes advantage of user-generated content to create a pool of inexpensive images available for royalty-free license. As a photographer, microstock services allow me to post my images and allow their use on websites, in product literature and elsewhere (even earning me, the amateur photographer, revenue). As a web developer, through microstock, I can license images (non-exclusively) for display on Metue, or other sites.
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Seth Gilbert,
In the first of what may be many announcements regarding change in practice or personnel, Yahoo has announced further management restructuring; this time in its advertising sales organization. In the works for many months, the organization will see the departure of current chief sales officer Wenda Harris Millard and the combination of Yahoo’s search and display ad businesses into a group led by a single executive.
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Seth Gilbert,
Sci Fi channel got slapped in 2004 when it publicized a supposed rift with film director M. Night Shyamalan over an un-authorized biography when in reality no biography existed, nor did the rift. Both were fictionally created by marketers.
In December 2006, Sony got itself in similar hot water when it created a fake fan website to support its PSP game platform.
Marketers have learned there is a fine line to walk between maintaining the trust of their customers and promoting their products with newly emerging online techniques. In the Internet publishing world, an online world where everyone has a voice, where anyone can be an author, or a journalist, a videographer or otherwise, credibility is sometimes assumed before its earned but its ongoing maintenance is essential.
Over the past few days the value systems of the developing blogosphere and Web 2.0 world have been thrown again in the spotlight as Internet Ad publisher Federated Media and some of its higher profile publishing clients from Tech Crunch to GigaOm have been drawn into a heated debate over related issues. (Though, this time, unlike with Sony or Sci Fi channel, its been the appearance of impropriety, and not any actual wrong doing, that’s raised discussion Click to Read More
Seth Gilbert, 06-24-2007
Net TV, Net Video, Video on Demand, MP3s ,peer to peer, streaming, decentralization of content, self-publishing tools, blogging, DRM, digital fingerprinting …all this convergence between entertainment, media and technology is changing the world. It is also making Copyright Law issues like the rights of authors (creators), Fair Use, and distribution of content, increasingly relevant.
Copyright law, domestically and internationally (from Common Law, to the Copyright Act of 1976, to the Digital Millennium Act (DMCA), to the Berne Convention) is a complex patchwork of overlapping and frequently contradictory statutes. Like many laws, the statutes have been woven together through countless legislative horse-trades in an ongoing effort to both anticipate and keep up with the way changing technologies do (and might) influence the rights and control of intellectual property. Despite best efforts, the legislative process, even streamlined to its most efficient ideal, can’t begin to keep pace with the innovations of our digital age and changing communications technologies. Much of Copyright law’s tenets were written before the digital age, and even those written recently, are hard pressed to keep up with the pace at which technology is changing.
Navigating the laws can sometimes feel like walking through a minefield while blindfolded and on crutches. As the ever observant Mark Twain once said of the subject: “only one thing is impossible to God: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet.” (Mark Twain’s Notebook May 23, 1903). Click to Read More
Seth Gilbert, 06-22-2007
Late last night fans gathered in Fairbanks Alaska for the 102nd annual Midnight Sun baseball game. There, under the near all-day sun of the summer solstice, baseball rang in the start of summer. Summer brings baseball, and with baseball comes statistics. It’s a sport that records and tracks everything. In the same spirit, though unrelated to baseball, here are a few interesting recent stats from the media and entertainment world:
Apple is now the 3rd largest retailer of music in the United States. The Top 3 according to NPD Group are: Wal-Mart (15.8%), Best Buy (13.8%), Apple (10%), Amazon (6.7%)
72% of US online adults now listen to audio on their home computers according to a CEA survey. But only 9% of the same survey respondents connect their PC to home audio systems.
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Seth Gilbert,
The commercial race to digitize the World’s libraries has, for the most part, been a two horse race with Microsoft and Google battling to sign up the worlds libraries and gain the rights to archive and index their rare, obscure or out of print titles.
Yesterday, in what seems like a natural fit, online retailer Amazon (which started famously as an online book store) joined the race. In partnership with high-speed scanning company Kirtas Technologies (the same company that has helped Microsoft), Amazon will begin to archive rare titles from public and university libraries special collections.
Unlike Google and Microsoft, which are largely focusing on making the literary content available freely, Amazon will use the archives it creates to offer reproductions for sale.
The project will be administered through Amazon’s print-on-demand publishing service BookSurge which specializes in printing and selling out of print titles. Amazon bought BookSurge in 2005.
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Seth Gilbert, 06-21-2007
Sometime today, underwriter Morgan Stanley is widely expected to price the initial public offering of shares in private equity firm Blackstone Group (with trading to begin Friday under the symbol “BX” on the New York Stock Exchange).
A lot could happen over the next few hours, or day, (tax issues and the questionable applicability of an exemption loom) but assuming the deal does move ahead as expected, the 133.33 million common shares to be sold (at an anticipated price of $29 to $31 a share) could raise as much as $5b.
With an additional 20 million share over-allotment available for Morgan Stanley and Citigroup to place if there is excess demand, it will likely be one of the ten biggest IPO’s in US history. The deal will be so large, in fact, it will likely give Blackstone a market-cap equal to about half the value of Wall Street institutions Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley.
A lot of people will make a windfall. Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman personally stands to make about $677 million as a selling shareholder and his retained holdings will have a worth upwards of $7b. (He earned a staggering $400m in 2006).
While the deal is huge, and will unquestionably be the biggest offering since MasterCard Inc’s $2.4b offering about a year ago, it is interesting not just for its size but for bringing the focus onto private equity in general. (Not that private equity is lacking the spotlight these days) but one of the world’s largest firms opening its books to SEC filings and the reporting requirements of being public will make for interest reading.
The focus on Private Equity from the offering, legislative concerns and other factors (including fears of what might happen to global economies if a Private Equity firm defaults on a loan) begs some questions:
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