archives

o Web Radio Royalty Discussions Under Way in Washington
o BMG to Test CD Encryption Technology from SunnComm
o Yahoo Tests "Pop-Under" Web Ads
o Briefly Noted: Princeton Video Image - RespondTV, DALiWorld, Naked News
auditions, Cinema Presents, Blogdex, Sonic Foundry, Satellite radio, IPO
class-actions, Post-Napster pirates, KaZaa - TOPtext
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> Job Postings: Sr. Business Development, iTV Producer, Listings Editor,
Director of Sales, Sr. Director of Q/A

> Events/Services: "SHORTSPAN Film & Video Festival - Pacific Northwest
Tour," "Digital Rights Management," "New England Tech Wire -
Free Email News Service"

Full Job/Event/Services descriptions listed below "Briefly Noted" section
or at http://www.digitalmediawire.com/postings.html

To Post a Job: http://www.digitalmediawire.com/jobs.html
To Post an Event/Service: http://www.digitalmediawire.com/events.html
_____________________________________________

o Web Radio Royalty Discussions Under Way in Washington

Washington, D.C. -- Webcasters and the recording industry began what will
be a six-month long arbitration process with the U.S. Copyright Office to
determine what royalty rate webcasters must pay record labels to use their
copyrighted music on Web radio stations. Appointed mediators for the
Copyright Office are Eric E. Van Loon, Jeffrey S. Gulin and Curtis E. von
Kann. Witnesses testifying for the recording industry will include
representatives of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
Both traditional radio broadcasters like Clear Channel and NPR -- which
are battling in court to be exempted from webcast royalties -- will
testify, as will webcasters including Launch.com, MTVi, Comedy Central,
Listen.com and NetRadio. Representing artists' interests will be David
Fagin from The Rosenbergs and Alanis Morrisette. Each side has widely
varying opinions on what rate should be set for music webcasts, which when
agreed upon will be retroactive to 1998. In its analysis, CNET noted that
under the RIAA's proposal, a webcaster like AOL -- which streams about 160
million songs each month -- would pay $640,000 a month, or $7.68 million a
year in royalties. Under the webcasters' proposal, submitted by the
Digital Media Association, the same usage would amount to $21,000 a month,
or about $256,000 a year in royalties.
http://www.loc.gov/copyright/fedreg/2001/66fr38324.html
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-6700029.html?tag=mn_hd
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o BMG to Test CD Encryption Technology from SunnComm

Phoenix, Az. -- Major record label BMG Entertainment, a division of
Germany's Bertelsmann AG, said on Monday that it has entered into an
evaluation agreement with SunnComm, a developer of anti-piracy technology
for CDs. Under the terms, BMG can test Phoenix-based SunnComm's MediaCloq
technology -- which purports to inhibit illegal copying or "ripping" of
CDs through encryption -- on commercially-released albums by its artists.
"We have been studying ways to manage CD copying for a year now and are
pleased with our initial experiences with SunnComm," said Sami Valkonen,
senior vice president of new media and business development for BMG
Distribution. "We are focused on ensuring that we improve the consumer
value of CDs with a drag-and-drop digital access of the music while at the
same time taking the appropriate steps to safeguard our artists, copyright
holders and publishers against piracy." BMG did not say which artists or
on what albums the technology will be tested. SunnComm's technology was
previously tested on the commercial release of an album from Fahrenheit
Entertainment artist Charley Pride.
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/010730/2270.html
http://www.hitsdailydouble.com/news/newsPage.cgi?news02524m01
http://www.sunncomm.com
http://www.bmge.com 
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o Yahoo Tests "Pop-Under" Web Ads

Santa Clara, Calif. -- Yahoo has begun testing the "pop-under" ads brought
to Web users' attention by a wireless camera company called X10, CNET
reported Monday. The company has started serving the ads -- which launch a
new browser window pointing to the advertiser's website underneath the
current window -- to visitors to its news and travel webpages. "The fact
that Yahoo is running [the pop-under] is pretty significant validation of
its use," said Dave Gross of Fastclick.com, which sells the ads. X10, the
company that blanketed the Web with its ads for a wireless camera, saw its
website propel to be the fourth-most visited site in June, according to
Jupiter Media Metrix. Despite the substantial increase in hits, some
dispute the effectiveness of pop-unders as an advertising medium. "They're
not beachfront property; they are like buying the back of the magazine or
an infomercial running in the middle of the night," said L90 CEO John
Bohan.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-6700236.html?tag=tp_pr
http://www.fastclick.com
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o Briefly Noted:

(Lawrenceville, N.J.) Princeton Video Image, a developer of virtual TV
ads, said on Monday that it has partnered with interactive TV firm
RespondTV on an iTV ad that will air during WGN-TV's Tuesday broadcast of
a baseball game between the Chicago Cubs and San Diego Padres. Viewers
with set-tops and a service like UltimateTV, WebTV or AOLTV will be able
to interact with the ads to win a free, branded baseball.
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/010730/2394.html
http://www.pvi-inc.com
http://www.respondtv.com

(Los Angeles) Distributed Artificial Life, Inc. (DALi), a developer of
massively-networked entertainment, on Monday announced its DALiWorld
"virtual ocean." The ocean is a distributed network environment where all
users can create their own "fish," which then "swim" across the network of
other users' computers. Life forms are free to eat, mate and breed on
their own, allowing the ocean to organically grow and mature. DALiWorld is
available as a free download from Los Angeles-based DALi.
http://www.daliworld.net/
http://www.dalilab.com

(Toronto) Naked News, a website that offers news webcasts delivered by
nude anchors, said on Monday that it will hold auditions for new
correspondents in Los Angeles on August 1st and 2nd. Chosen male and
female applicants will go through a brief training period and then begin
broadcasting on Toronto-based NakedNews.com in September.
http://www.businesswire.com/cgi-bin/f_headline.cgi?day0/212110256&ticker=
http://www.nakednews.com

(Los Angeles) Cinema Presents, a provider of satellite-delivered
entertainment to local movie theaters, announced on Monday that its first
offering will be the live broadcast of a concert by Atlantic recording
artists Sugar Ray and Uncle Kracker to 44 theaters nationwide. Los
Angeles-based Cinema Presents has installed projectors in participating
theaters and will broadcast a six-second delay of the concert, as well as
interviews and behind-the-scenes footage. The company also plans to offer
sporting events, motivational programming, Broadway-style theatrical
productions and independent cinema.
http://www.prnmedia.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=107&STORY=/www/story/07-30-2001/0001543921&EDATE=

(San Francisco) MIT's Media Lab last week launched Blogdex, an index of
the most popular hyperlinks included on over 9,000 users' personal
weblogs, Wired News reported Monday. A weblog, or "blog," is a site
created by an individual user that contains links to interesting sites
that he or she has visited on the Web, often with commentary. Weblogs are
usually updated more frequently than search indices like Google. MIT is
billing Blogdex as a resource for the mass media.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,45546,00.html
http://blogdex.media.mit.edu/

(Madison, Wisc.) Sonic Foundry, a developer of professional music editing
software, on Monday released its Super Duper Music Looper, an editing
program designed to let children edit together musical compositions on
their computers. The program comes with pre-recorded sounds such as piano,
guitars, horns, percussion, special effects, voices and drums to which
kids can add their own vocal track through a microphone to create songs,
which can then be sent to friends via email.
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/010730/0018.html
http://www.musiclooper.com
http://www.sonicfoundry.com

(New York) The New York Times on Monday featured an article on the
satellite radio market, and its attempts to capture listeners who are
dissatisfied with the current offerings of commercial radio. Listenership
in corporate radio dropped 11 percent during the '90's, according to
Arbitron, and commercials now take up one-third of each radio hour. Both
XM Satellite Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio plan to offer an array of
commercial-free channels.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/30/technology/ebusiness/30RADI.html
http://www.xmradio.com
http://www.siriusradio.com

(San Jose, Calif.) The San Jose Mercury News on Monday offered its take on
the slew of IPO-related class-action lawsuits being filed against
investment banks and Internet firms like IBeam, Liquid Audio, MP3.com,
InterTrust and DoubleClick. The article postulates that the alleged
wrongdoings -- such as bankers collecting excessive commissions -- might
amount to no more than common market practices that in effect did end up
inflating stock prices to the detriment of inexperienced individual
investors.
http://www.siliconvalley.com/docs/opinion/herhold/sh073001.htm

(Los Angeles) The Los Angeles Times reported Monday on how hackers have
begun to illegally place copyrighted movie and music files on corporate,
university and private computers. The hackers then invite their friends or
the general public to visit these sites and download the copyrighted
content using the stolen bandwidth. Most recently, the website of the New
York City Board of Elections was hacked into and became an unwitting
Napster clone.
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-073001party.story

(San Francisco) The San Francisco Chronicle ran a feature story Monday on
how some emerging file-sharing networks are helping to fund themselves by
including other companies' software as part of the total download package,
and how this trend is affecting some users. One man's website was suddenly
filled with unexplained yellow hyperlinks to other sites from normal text
on his site. It turned out that the hyperlinks were inserted by a program
called TOPtext from EZula, which came bundled with file-sharing software
called KaZaa.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/07/30/B
http://www.kazaa.com
http://www.ezula.com
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> Correction:

A story in Friday's Digital Media Wire incorrectly described
Streamload.com's pricing structure. The service lets all users upload
unlimited content, but charges fees starting at $4.95 per month to stream
or download up to 500MB per month of their files from Streamload.com. For
$49.95, users can access up to 20,000MB per month.

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Job Postings:
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To Post Jobs: http://www.digitalmediawire.com/jobs.html

> Roxio, Inc., Sr. Business Development Position - Silicon Valley, CA

Hey… are you a closer? Can you cut a great deal? If you answered yes to
these questions and you are an experienced dealmaker, we have the dream
job waiting for you at Roxio, Inc., the leading digital media software
company. The ideal candidate will have a solid understanding of the
digital media industry and is a self-starter capable of identifying,
analyzing, developing and closing new businesses opportunities. The ideal
candidate will possess a JD or MBA from a top school and have 5+ years of
deal-making experience. Send resumes to: opportunities@spencerstuart.com
http://www.roxio.com
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> Sony Pictures Digital Entertainment, iTV Producer - Los Angeles

Develop interactive content concepts; create product requirements,
functionality UI and design documents; manage design and technology
vendors for creating user interfaces and applications; and manage ongoing
production of interactive content. Must have experience working in the iTV
industry or experience in Internet or television production or experience
in producing games in the iTV, on-line or PC games.
Send resumes to: resumes@spe.sony.com
http://www.spe.sony.com
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> America Online, Listings Editor - New York City

Get a start in shopping journalism with Digital City, America Online's
local city guide. We're looking for full-time freelance editorial
assistants to help curate our shopping listings and program our shopping
pages. You should be a web-savvy college graduate with good writing
skills. Journalism background and/or Photoshop experience is a plus.
Send resumes in the body of an email to: doctorvas@aol.com
http://www.home.digitalcity.com
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> H2O Networks, Director of Sales - New York City

Must have the ability to sell products & services ranging from a twenty
thousand dollar fixed price solution sale to a several hundred thousand
dollar integrated services sale. Background in Web Development,
Advertising, Affinity Marketing, Agency experience or other related fields
is a necessity. Ideal candidate will have a network of contacts that can
be leveraged to effect immediate sales. Steady commission possible.
Send resumes to: jon@h2onetworks.net
http://www.h2onetworks.net
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> Aether Systems, Sr. Director of Quality Assurance - McLean, VA

Provide leadership and mentoring in component based, mobile and wireless
enterprise-wide software development environment. Proven track record to
lead several QA teams in various geographic locations. Member of core
development team responsible for Object Oriented, iterative, use-case
driven rapid software development. Manage 60+ and integrate QA initiatives
throughout the development organization.
Send resumes to rcronin@aethersystems.com
http://www.aethersystems.com

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Events/Services Postings:
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To Post Events/Services: http://www.digitalmediawire.com/events.html

> 9th Annual SHORTSPAN Film & Video Festival - Pacific Northwest Tour: Aug. 3-13

SHORT MOVIES! Dreamspan presents the 9TH Annual Short Attention Span Film & Video Festival. Shortspan is a non-stop two hour program of ALL NEW
two-minute-or-shorter films, including Michael Moore's "Testify," Canadian
David Weir's collaboration with Douglas Coupland, "Night Shift"-- and 57
more shorts! The tour kicks off in the Pacific Northwest and will travel
to 30 North American cities! Pac NW tour dates are:

VANCOUVER, B.C.: The Blinding Light Cinema - August 3rd and 4th - 8:30PM
SEATTLE, WA: 911 Media Arts Center - August 9th and 10th - 8PM
PORTLAND, OR: Northwest Film Center - August 12th and 13th - 7:30PM
http://www.dreamspan.com/shortspan
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> Digital Rights Management, September 20-21 - New York City

DRM for Sports, Media & Entertainment -- Learn How To Monetize & Protect
Content, Digital Assets & Intellectual Property. Featuring Forecasts, Case
Studies & Strategies from: AOL Time Warner, Sony Music, NY Times, National
Hockey League, A&E Networks, Microsoft Corporation, BET, Artisan,
Reciprocal, IBM, NASCAR Digital Entertainment and many more!
Contact dmitry@worldrg.com -- mention this ad for a special discount!
http://www.DRMconference.com
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> New England Tech Wire - Free Email News Service

New England Tech Wire is a free daily email service that summarizes the
most important technology, venture capital, and Internet stories from
Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and
Vermont. Every business day, readers rely on us for a quick, objective
briefing of the region's top technology and venture capital stories.
Sign up for free at http://www.newenglandtechwire.com
______________________

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Copyright 2001 Digital Media Wire