 |
| events |
|
| about us |
|
| resources |
|
| privacy |
|
| news tips |
|
| contact us |
|
| home |
Sign up for our free daily email briefing
Past Editions
| =================================================== DIGITAL MEDIA WIRE -- October 25, 2000 =================================================== To Subscribe For Free: http://www.digitalmediawire.com o On Eve Of Launch, Sony Removes Playstation 2 Sales From Its Site o Salon.com Asks Freelancers To Sign Away Electronic, Newspaper Rights o Hollywood Reporter To Launch Electronic East Coast Edition o University Researchers Claim Crack Of SDMI Music Security Software o Streamedia President and CEO, Chief Financial Officer Resign o Briefly Noted: Chumbawamba's "Pass It Along," Hollywood Reporter/Convergence, Myplay - MusicBlitz, Medeski, Martin and Wood, "George Lucas In Love," Napster, Scriptforum.com/WhoRepresents.com, CNN Mobile - Ericsson, "Ziggy Stardust," The Fallen, Columbia Records, Kick.com - i-drive.com, TVWorldwide.com _____________________________________________ o On Eve Of Launch, Sony Removes Playstation 2 Sales From Its Site Foster City, Calif. -- Sony Computer Entertainment America announced on Wednesday that it has removed Playstation 2 from the company's online store, saying it instead wants to focus on fulfilling orders for retailers. Only 500,000 of a previously announced 1 million game consoles will be available to consumers starting at midnight tonight -- the result of an electronic parts shortage. A number of companies announced on Wednesday that the games will be available at their stores tomorrow, including Best Buy, Buy.com, Amazon.com, Toysrus.com and Ebay, which said that over 100 sellers are currently taking Playstation 2 bids on its auction site. http://www.playstation.com http://www.ebay.com _____________________________________________ o Salon.com Asks Freelancers To Sign Away Electronic, Newspaper Rights San Francisco -- Salon.com, an online magazine, has begun asking some of its freelance contributors to sign "catchup contracts," giving Salon the rights to distribute their writing through syndication, the Village Voice reported this week. Freelance writers who are offered these contracts will retain the right to redistribute their works in books, TV, radio and film, while Salon keeps a cut of electronic and newspaper syndication. Salon is offering 25 percent of profits to writers, while other syndicators, such as FeatureWell.com offer 60 percent, the article said. "[25 percent is] a stingy offer for an organization that hypes itself as supporting the ideas of independent journalists," said FeatureWell.com CEO David Wallis. Salon managing editor Scott Rosenberg replied to criticism of the revenue-generating new contracts in the article, saying his publication will "make sure that we do not resell any piece of content that we don't specifically have the right to resell. Salon isn't out to screw anyone." The Village Voice provides an online sample of the contract in question at a link below. http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0043/cotts.shtml http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0043/cotts-agreement1.shtml http://www.salon.com _____________________________________________ o Hollywood Reporter To Launch Electronic East Coast Edition New York -- The Hollywood Reporter announced on Wednesday that it will launch an electronic version of its publication, tailored for east coast readers, on October 30. The new publication, called The Hollywood Reporter-East, will add late-breaking west coast news, as well as content from its east coast editors, to a replica of its normal print edition. The publication will be e-mailed to subscribers each morning in Adobe Acrobat Reader format, which will allow readers to print out or redistribute the editions. Content special to east coast readers will include sections on Wall Street, Broadway productions and a daily calendar of New York events. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com _____________________________________________ o University Researchers Claim Crack Of SDMI Music Security Software Los Angeles -- Researchers at Princeton and Rice universities, as well as at Xerox Parc, claim that they have cracked security measures created by the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI). The SDMI recently issued a challenge to the hacker community, offering a cash prize to any party that could crack its security measures for digital music files. Officials from SDMI, an organization of 200 recording and consumer electronics companies, have denied all claims of cracks, saying that they still have to analyze all data from the contest. "I believe all of these schemes would have been cracked by pirates if they had been deployed," said Edward Felten, an associate professor of computer science at Princeton, in an Associated Press story on CNET's News.com. Links to the Princeton researchers' results and the original SDMI challenge are provided below. http://news.cnet.com/news//0-1005-200-3277584.html http://www.salon.com/tech/log/2000/10/22/princeton_sdmi/index.html http://www.cs.princeton.edu/sip/sdmi/ http://www.hackdsmi.org _____________________________________________ o Streamedia President and CEO, Chief Financial Officer Resign San Francisco -- Amid financial difficulties, Streamedia president and CEO James Rupp, and CFO and COO Nick Malino, have resigned their posts, Steamingmedia.com reported. New York-based Streamedia produces streaming media and designs, as well as consults for web sites; the company recently announced that its founder took an equity interest in Nomad Media, a Swedish streaming media company. The executives' poor financial direction was cited as reasoning for the resignations -- Streamedia's stock went up 30 percent after the resignations were announced. http://www.streamingmedia.com/article.asp?id=6369 http://www.streamedia.net _____________________________________________ o Briefly Noted: (New York) British band Chumbawamba has made available free for download its song "Pass It Along," which uses unauthorized samples from musicians who oppose file sharing, Musicstation.com reported on Wednesday. Featured on the track are samples from songs performed by Metallica, Eminem, Dr. Dre, The Beatles and Madonna -- all vocal opponents of the free trading of copyrighted music. "This is about commerce rather than art or integrity," said Chumbawamba vocalist Dunstan Bruce. "When Metallica's Lars Ulrich said that he was objecting to his art being traded like a commodity, he was lying. What Ulrich was objecting to was his art not being traded like a commodity from which he could reap the lion's share of the profits." http://www.musicstation.com/musicnewswire/pr/100092418474413706.html http://www.chumba.com/_passitalong.htm (Los Angeles) The Hollywood Reporter today ran several features on digital filmmaking, chronicling the rise of the medium from its inception to its use in award-winning movies such as Lars von Trier's "Dancer in the Dark," which was shot entirely on digital video, and won this year's Cannes Film Festival's Palme d'Or. Several other features covered online content, and digital production and postproduction of film. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com. (Redwood City, Calif.) Myplay, a provider of digital music storage technology, announced on Wednesday an agreement with MusicBlitz, a downloadable music site. Redwood City-based Myplay offers users a free "digital locker" in which they can store any music they own, and later stream it from the locker to their computers or MP3 players. Under the deal, visitors to MusicBlitz.com will be able to click on a "copy to locker" button, which saves songs from MusicBlitz into their Myplay digital lockers. Myplay has similar deals with Knittingfactory.com, Epitonic.com, Rapstation.com and Jazze.com. http://www.myplay.com http://www.musicblitz.com (Redwood City, Calif.) Liquid Audio, a developer of technology for digital music, announced on Wednesday that EMI/ Blue Note Records musical group Medeski, Martin and Wood will release their upcoming album as a full-album digital download on the same day that it is made available in stores. The digital album will cost the same as the CD, and consumers will be able to record the tracks onto CD-R or transfer them to portable digital music players. http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/001024/ca_liquida.html http://www.bluenote.com (Los Angeles) MediaTrip.com, a film and music entertainment site, announced on Wednesday that it is distributing a film originally featured on its site, "George Lucas In Love," on DVD. The DVD for "George Lucas In Love," a satire combining elements of Star Wars and Shakespeare in Love, will include a personal letter from George Lucas to the filmmakers, as well as other MediaTrip.com short films. http://www.mediatrip.com (Redwood City, Calif.) Napster on Wednesday announced the release of the Mac version of its music file-swapping software. Apple Macintosh users previously were relegated to using Macster, a Napster clone, or the "beta" test version of Napster for the Mac. http://www.napster.com/mac (New York) Inside.com on Wednesday listed a number of underground film sites in its "World Weird Web" column: Scriptforum.com, an e-commerce site for movie scripts, is offering copies of scripts for movies such as Universal's "00-Soul," Sony's "Ali" and Paramount's "Tomb Raider," all of which have not yet entered production. WhoRepresents.com offers a database with the contact information of agents, managers and publicists, cross-referenced with the actors they represent-- invaluable information for actors, directors and many others in the film industry. http://www.inside.com/story/Story_Cached/0,2770,12543_10_22_1,00.html http://www.scriptforum.com http://www.whorepresents.com (Atlanta) Turner Broadcasting Systems Latin America announced on Wednesday that it has partnered with Swedish telecom Ericsson, to deliver news over wireless connections to Latin American countries. Under the deal, CNN Mobile will deliver text-based news to Spanish and Portuguese-speaking cell phone users. http://ericsson.pressroom.net http://www.turner.com (San Diego) MusicMatch, a digital jukebox software provider, and Gracenote, an online CD tracklist provider, have announced that a live version of David Bowie's song "Ziggy Stardust," not included on some pressings of his upcoming album, is available at MusicMatch.com. Consumers must first purchase the 3 CD live album, "Live At The Beeb," then download MusicMatch jukebox software, and then insert one of the 3 CDs into their computer to prove they have purchased the album in order to gain access to the song. http://www.mmguide.musicmatch.com/sweepstakes/bowie/index3.html (San Diego) MP3.com, a downloadable music site, announced on Wednesday that The Fallen, a California-based metal band, is the winner of its Metal Search 2000 Contest. Receivers of the most votes on MP3.com, The Fallen was awarded a recording contract with Metal Blade Records. http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/001025/ca_mp3_com.html http://www.mp3.com/thefallenusa (New York) Columbia Records has created a series of full-length music videos using Macromedia's Flash animation program. Artists currently featured on the promotional "Music Digitals" include The Getaway People, P.J. Olsson, PALOALTO and The Union Underground. http://www.columbiarecords.com http://thegetawaypeople.com/musicdigital (San Francisco) Kick.com, a developer of software that personalizes digital music information, announced on Wednesday that its service will be available to users of online storage provider i-drive. San Francisco-based Kick.com's technology "learns" what kind of music a user likes based on what they listen to, and then delivers relevant news, album art, concert information and places to buy similar music. http://www.kick.com http://www.idrive.com (Chantilly, Va.) TVWorldwide.com, a provider of streaming video content, announced on Wednesday that it has partnered with Colorado-based Bennett Productivity Programs to produce a streaming video service for sales professionals. The service, Salestrainingtv.com, will offer professional development and seminar training courses. http://www.salestrainingtv.com http://www.tvworldwide.com ___________________ To subscribe, go to: http://www.digitalmediawire.com Questions or comments? Send email to: mark@digitalmediawire.com News tips, press releases. Send email to: editorial@digitalmediawire.com |