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DIGITAL MEDIA WIRE -- October 13, 2000
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o Scour Files For Chapter 11 Bankruptcy
o New York Times Company Withdraws IPO For Internet Unit
o SDMI Hacker Contest Yields Watermark Cracks
o Statistics Show CD-RW Sales Up, MP3 Player Sales Down
o MTV and Asiacontent.com Launch MTVIndia.com
o Briefly Noted: Goosehead.com - MGM, WisemanMedia - CMJ Marathon,
StreamSearch, Digital Creative Development Corporation, MP3.com,
Soundbreak.com - Scott Thompson, Broadband Sports, "iHollywood
Forum"
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o Scour Files For Chapter 11 Bankruptcy
Los Angeles -- Scour Inc., which operates Scour.com and the Napster-like
Scour Exchange, has filed for Chapter 11 in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Los
Angeles. Scour president Dan Rodrigues said that both Scour.com and Scour
Exchange will remain in operation during the Chapter 11 process. The
company, backed by Creative Artists Agency's Michael Ovitz, is engaged in
ongoing litigation with the Recording Industry Association of America, the
Motion Pictures Association of America and the National Music Publishers
Association for the alleged copyright violations of its Scour Exchange.
The bankruptcy filing automatically puts all litigation against the
company on hold. The company's filing reported that it had assets of
between $1 and $10 million, and estimated debts of more than $100 million,
the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. Scour laid off 52 of its 64
employees in September as a result of mounting legal costs. Inside.com
recently reported that Scour's PR firm, CarryOn Communications, sued the
company for $154,000 of unpaid bills.
http://www.inside.com/story/Story_Cached/0,2770,11241_13_30_1,00.html
http://www.scour.com
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o New York Times Company Withdraws IPO For Internet Unit
New York -- The New York Times Company announced on Friday that it has
withdrawn its registration for an initial public offering of stock for New
York Times Digital, which includes NYTimes.com, Boston.com and
NYToday.com. Investors' disenchantment with Internet investments -- and
the content sector in particular -- are the main reasons for the
withdrawal. "This is a symptom of the marketplace's reaction (to
Internet
companies)," said Martin Nisenholtz, CEO of New York Times Digital.
"It
went from irrational exuberance to unqualified pessimism."
http://www.nytimes.com
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o SDMI Hacker Contest Yields Watermark Cracks
San Francisco -- A challenge to the hacker community posed by the Secure
Digital Music Interactive (SDMI) -- which offered a $10,000 prize to
anyone who could break the digital watermarks it has developed to protect
digital music -- has yielded "cracks" of all its watermarks,
Salon.com
reported. The SDMI, a recording industry-backed organization charged with
developing technologies to prevent the piracy of digital music, denied the
report. At issue, according to Salon.com's sources, is whether or not the
hacks can be repeated, and whether or not the music's quality is affected
when the watermark is removed. The SDMI is "going to try to keep it
quiet
-- the official word will be that the testing company is still analyzing
the results," said an anonymous source in the article. "They
will try to
skate out of this without releasing the information that it's all
broken."
Many in the hacker community boycotted the SDMI's contest, arguing that
they should not aid the recording industry in making music less available
to the public.
http://www.salon.com/tech/log/2000/10/12/sdmi_hacked/index.html
http://www.hacksdmi.org/
_____________________________________________
o Statistics Show CD-RW Sales Up, MP3 Player Sales Down
Mountain View, Calif. -- Sales of CD-RW drives rose 16 percent since last
quarter, while sales of MP3 players fell 28 percent, according to a report
published by OneChannel.net, an Internet sales data provider. CD-RWs allow
the "burning" of data such as music files onto a compact disc.
The devices
can also make copies of existing audio CDs. Factors of lagging sales of
MP3 players include their current high prices and limited memory space to
hold digital music. The report indicated that MP3 player sales rebounded
during the back-to-school period -- college students are some of the most
avid users of new digital music technologies.
http://www.onechannel.net/analysis/data_10_12_00.html
_____________________________________________
o MTV and Asiacontent.com Launch MTVIndia.com
Hong Kong -- MTV and Asiacontent.com announced on Friday that they have
launched MTVIndia.com. The site will feature usual MTV.com content, as
well as local music news and music from South Indian films.
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/001013/asiaconten.html
http://www.mtvindia.com
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o Briefly Noted:
(Los Angeles) Goosehead.com, a teen entertainment site, announced on
Friday that it has made a deal with MGM Television Entertainment to
produce television programming. The company, which is run by 15-year-old
Ashley Power, who writes and stars in programming on the site, also said
that Showtime Networks has agreed to convert the site's first program,
"Whatever," into a weekly cable television series. Richard
Dreyfuss has
also agreed to create programming for the site.
http://www.goosehead.com
(Bryn Mawr, Pa.) WisemanMedia, a developer and distributor of multimedia
content, announced on Friday that it will provide live and recorded
webcasts from the CMJ Marathon, a music festival and conference put on by
College Music Journal. Pennsylvania-based WisemanMedia will webcast
keynote addresses, panel discussions and some of the event's live concerts
in New York City.
http://www.wisemanmedia.com
(New York) StreamSearch, an aggregator and distributor of multimedia
content, announced on Friday the launch of its X-Stream Sports Channel,
which is devoted to youth culture and extreme sports such as BMX and
snowboarding. New York-based Stream Search said that RealNetworks will
sponsor the channel, and that the majority of content will be aggregated
from Kick Media Broadband, a network of sites that includes
GravityGames.com and Snowboardermag.com. Additional content will come from
companies including LA-based iFuse.com.
http://xsc.ss.com
http://www.kickmedia.com/broadband/index.html
http://www.ifuse.com
(New York) Digital Creative Development Corporation, a developer of
entertainment content companies, announced on Friday that it will spin-off
its other businesses, including restaurant chains Arthur Treacher's Fish
and Chips, and Pudgie's Famous Chicken, in order to focus on its digital
efforts. New York-based Digital Creative Development Corporation said the
divestiture is part of its strategy to focus on broadband content delivery
and the business-to-business Internet sector.
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/001013/ny_dc2_foo.html
(San Diego) MP3.com, a downloadable music site, announced on Friday that
it will provide an audio archive of musician interviews for its users.
Wisconsin-based Sonic Foundry, a provider of software for digital media,
created the service, called Inside Track. Tom Petty, Jim Morrison, Jerry
Garcia, Robert Plant and Lindsey Buckingham are among the musicians
interviewed.
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/001013/ca_mp3_com.html
http://www.mp3.com/insidetrack
(Los Angeles) Soundbreak.com, a Internet radio site featuring live DJs,
announced on Friday that it has partnered with Kids in the Hall comedian
Scott Thompson to create a song that parodies rapper Eminem. The song,
"Dear Marshall," is available as a download at soundbreak.com,
and will be
performed live by Thompson on Friday's Late Night with Conan O'Brien.
http://www.soundbreak.com
(Santa Monica) Broadband Sports, a sports entertainment site, announced on
Friday that it will provide daily webcasts from baseball players on the
teams still competing in this year's MLB playoffs, as well as commentary
from baseball journalists. The webcasts will be available on Santa
Monica-based Broadband Sports' AthletesDirect.com and RotoNewsDirect.com.
http://www.athletesdirect.com
http://www.rotonewsdirect.com
http://www.broadbandsports.com
(Los Angeles) iHollywood Forum will present "Unwiring Hollywood: How
Wireless Devices, Telecommunications, and Satellites Will Revolutionize
Entertainment Delivery" on Oct. 19 at the Santa Monica Doubletree in
Santa
Monica. Journalist Michael Stroud, who has written for Wired News and the
New York Times, is the founder of the dinner and panel discussion series.
http://www.ihollywoodforum.com
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