Funny or Die: How the Web Is Changing Comedy

How many comedy writers does it take to make a Hollywood star laugh? A half-dozen staffers for the comedy website Funny or Die are sitting around a conference table on a recent Tuesday afternoon taking a stab at it. Their target: 23-year-old actress Camilla Belle (When a Stranger Calls), the latest Hollywood celeb to make the unlikely pilgrimage to a modest suite of offices on Hollywood Boulevard to discuss starring in a Funny or Die video.

The writers come armed with ideas pegged to Belle's résumé along with a few pet projects in need of a star. Belle appeared in the prehistoric adventure film 10,000 B.C. and had a role in The Lost World: Jurassic Park. How about a sketch in which she insists she won't do another film unless it has prehistoric animals in it? She's into dance, and her mother is Brazilian — maybe a parody of Dirty Dancing using Brazilian fight dancing? The pitches come as fast as Belle can utter her polite, encouraging responses ("That's funny" ... "uh-huh" ... "yeah, yeah, yeah"). A celebrity photo shoot in which the pretentious photographer wields a cheesy cell-phone camera? A commercial for a line of anatomically revealing women's jeans? A fake TV promo for a girls' classic like Little Women or Anne of Green Gables done up in the style of The Hills?

A dozen or so ideas later, Belle is out the door, and Mike Farah, 31, Funny or Die's president of production, has retreated to his office, a couple of writers tagging along, to check on some other projects in the works. He jabs at the speakerphone and puts in a quick call to Charlize Theron's manager to see if they can get her for a cameo in a World Cup bit they're shooting in South Africa. "She loves you guys," says the voice on the phone. "Can you just send me an e-mail?" A writer tells Farah there's a chance they can hook up with NBA star Dwyane Wade in Chicago for a piece they want to shoot at a sporting-goods store. Then an update on the search for a female star to make a cameo in their upcoming Glee takeoff: Meryl Streep said no.

The iPhone Jailbreak: A Win Against Copyright Creep

Over the years, Apple has become almost as well known for the tight control it imposes on its innovations as for the tech and marketing genius behind them. If you buy an iPhone in the U.S., for instance, Apple makes you use AT&T as your carrier and it requires you to buy any new applications from its App Store. But some owners have been hacking their iPhones to get around these rules — a process known as jailbreaking — and this week the federal government gave them what amounts to a get-out-of-jail-free card by ruling that the hacks do not violate Apple's copyright. It is the right decision, and one that promises to give customers more freedom in how they use all kinds of new technology.

The jailbreaking battle is part of a larger war raging right now over copyright law. Corporations have been pushing to extend copyright protections further than they were intended to go, to reduce competition and increase their profits. This week's ruling pushes back against this copyright mission creep.

Apple's rules for the iPhone are pretty unusual. When you buy a television, you can choose between a cable or satellite provider (and in some cases a telephone provider as well) and watch any TV shows you want. When you buy a DVD player, you can play any DVDs. But buyers of iPhones are told precisely what they can buy and where they have to buy it.

How to self-publish an e-book

A while back I wrote a column entitled "Self-Publishing: 25 things you need to know," which was mostly about how to create and sell your own paper book. Since then a lot of folks have asked me to do something similar for e-books, so I have.

I begin with one caveat: The whole e-book market is rapidly evolving and a lot of self-publishing companies are offering e-book deals bundled into their print book publishing packages, which makes them harder to break out and evaluate. It's all quite complicated, and in an effort to sort through the confusion, I've decided to offer a few basic tips and present what I think are some of the best options out there for creating an e-book quickly and easily. As things change--and they will--I'll do my best to keep this column up to date.

携帯電話向けレンタル掲示板で音楽ファイルを違法配信--訪問者100万人超

香川県警察本部生活環境課と高松北警察署は7月21日、権利者に無断で携帯電話向けレンタル掲示板を利用して音楽ファイルを送信可能な状態にしていたとして少年2人（16歳と15歳）を著作隣接権侵害の容疑で検挙し、高松地方検察庁に送致した。日本レコード協会（RIAJ）が7月22日に発表した。

　16歳の少年は、「音楽の神様の保管庫」と題した携帯電話向けレンタル掲示板を運営し、キングレコードとエイベックス・エンタテインメントが権利を持つ音楽ファイルを無断でアップロードし、不特定多数がダウンロードできる状態にしていた。また15歳の少年は、同掲示板にエイベックス・エンタテインメントが権利を持つ音楽ファイルを無断でアップロードし、不特定多数がダウンロードできる状態にしていた。

Newspaper Chain’s New Business Plan: Copyright Suits

Steve Gibson has a plan to save the media world’s financial crisis — and it’s not the iPad.

Borrowing a page from patent trolls, the CEO of fledgling Las Vegas-based Righthaven has begun buying out the copyrights to newspaper content for the sole purpose of suing blogs and websites that re-post those articles without permission. And he says he’s making money.

“We believe it’s the best solution out there,” Gibson says. “Media companies’ assets are very much their copyrights. These companies need to understand and appreciate that those assets have value more than merely the present advertising revenues.”

Gibson’s vision is to monetize news content on the backend, by scouring the internet for infringing copies of his client’s articles, then suing and relying on the harsh penalties in the Copyright Act — up to $150,000 for a single infringement — to compel quick settlements. Since Righthaven’s formation in March, the company has filed at least 80 federal lawsuits against website operators and individual bloggers who’ve re-posted articles from the Las Vegas Review-Journal, his first client.

Now he’s talking expansion. The Review-Journal’s publisher, Stephens Media in Las Vegas, runs over 70 other newspapers in nine states, and Gibson says he already has an agreement to expand his practice to cover those properties. (Stephens Media declined comment, and referred inquiries to Gibson.) Hundreds of lawsuits, he says, are already in the works by year’s end. “We perceive there to be millions, if not billions, of infringements out there,” he says.

Righthaven’s lawsuits come on the heels of similar campaigns targeting music and movie infringers. The Recording Industry Association of America sued about 20,000 thousand file sharers over five years, before recently winding down its campaign. And a coalition of independent film producers called the U.S. Copyright Group was formed this year, already unleashing as many as 20,000 federal lawsuits against BitTorrent users accused of unlawfully sharing movies.

iPad Fuels Magazine Disruption

While some publishers eye the Apple iPad hopefully as way of migrating the print experience into a rich, multimedia domain as never before, others are already leaping over paper entirely to reach new readers with original digital publications.

In one of the latest direct-to-iPad initiatives, Richard Branson’s Virgin empire announced plans to launch its first consumer magazine on the Apple tablet without a companion print edition. Virgin claims Maverick magazine will be consistent with Virgin’s overall brand, says AdAge, but will include actual articles rather than promotions other Virgin properties.

Branson’s daughter Holly Branson is reportedly leading Virgin’s charge into iPad territory. If she succeeds in signing on premium advertisers and “exploit[ing] the creative potential of the medium without the costs of an existing print title to maintain,” Maverick will launch in the beginning of October, as an iPhone app only — no Kindle, web or paper version.

The Amazon Kindle, released in ‘07, lacks the multimedia capabilities of the iPad with its HTML5 video, color photos and ability to run complex interactive apps. One of the the Amazon device’s advantages when it comes to text — that its screen doesn’t act like a glowing computer screen, but like a faithful electronic reproduction of a physical book — becomes a disadvantage with next-generation formats. These formats attempt not only to port the reading experience onto an electronic device, but to take fuller advantage of the capabilities of modern phones and especially tablets, with their larger screens.

Apple’s iPad continues to loom large, as the market waits for the Google Android and other tablets it thought would be released by now.

Guns N’ Roses Uploader Laughs Last

The convicted Guns N’ Roses uploader, Kevin Cogill, isn’t the anti-piracy pitchman the Recording Industry Association of America was hoping for.

A year ago Wednesday, the 29-year-old Los Angeles man was sentenced to two months’ home confinement and a year of probation for uploading nine unreleased tracks of Guns N’ Roses’ Chinese Democracy to his music site. Federal prosecutors initially sought six months of prison, but Cogill got no time after agreeing to do an RIAA public service announcement that would scare future file sharers straight.

But nobody has made him perform the PSA. As of Wednesday, and he’s no longer under the court’s jurisdiction. So the deal is no longer legally binding.

“I knew as soon as this went down, nobody would give a shit about me doing a PSA,” Cogill said in a recent telephone interview.

The closest he came to providing a public service announcement was last August, in a video interview with Current TV. He said file sharers can get “f’d in the A” from the RIAA and get it “right in the butt.”

The proposed court-ordered PSA was vaguely defined from the beginning, he said. “We had some conversations about it, hypothetical conversations,” Cogill said. “I said everybody is going to laugh at it.”

FBI agents raided Cogill’s home in 2008, and last year he pleaded guilty to uploading nine pre-release songs to his Antiquiet site from the 14-track Chinese Democracy album. He said he did not inform the authorities where he got them, although he said they asked.

Cara Duckworth, a spokeswoman for the RIAA, which alerted the FBI to Cogill’s unlawful uploading, said in a Wednesday e-mail that the RIAA has “discretion whether or not to move forward” with a public service announcement.

“Due to various elements of this case (not to mention unnecessarily high production costs), we chose not to produce one,” the e-mail said.

Tell-All Author Riffs on Music Industry in Crisis

Second of two parts

People like to throw virtual stones at record company executives — but who are they, and what makes them tick?

In the second half of this discussion about the music industry and one of its key figures, the author of Fortune’s Fool: Edgar Bronfman, Jr., Warner Music, and an Industry in Crisis, Fred Goodman tells us how his research led him to believe that subscribing to artists, rather than to generic music services might offer the best way forward.

Goodman also explores how Apple’s poor penetration on the desktop helped Steve Jobs convince major labels to license their music to iTunes. He asks whether massive bonuses are justified when a company’s stock sinks. And he presents evidence that the major labels might need to abandon adversarial relationships haunting them from the past if they want to solve problems in the future — within the bounds of antitrust law, of course.

地デジどころではない大変革は間近？--「明日のテレビ チャンネルが消える日」

インターネットが普及して、テレビを見る人が減ったと言われる。確かに、ワールドカップのような世界的に注目される大会の放送以外は、10年前と比べて軒並み視聴率が下がっている。しかし、本当に人々は「テレビ」を見ていないのか？

　正確には「テレビ」は見ていないかもしれない。しかし、「番組」を見る人はそれほど減っていないのではないだろうか。見たい番組は、録画してビデオやデジタルレコーダーで見たり、パソコンでインターネット配信を見たり、DVDで見たり、視聴スタイルは多様化している。視聴者のニーズは日々変化しているのだ。このニーズに応えられなければ、誰も番組をみなくなる。当然のことだ。

　テレビ局も、このままで良いわけはないと焦り始め、試行錯誤しながら、一部の番組のオンデマンド配信などを始めて起死回生を図っている。そのような日本のテレビ局に比べて、さまざまな面白い試みをすでに行っているのがアメリカだ。

　アメリカのテレビ局やメーカーは、インターネットで番組を配信したり、インターネットをテレビに融合したり、自由な発想でテレビを捉えているという。そのさまざまな試みを詳細に伝えるのが本書だ。アメリカと日本では、テレビ事情そのものが多少異なるかもしれない。しかしまずは現状を知り、取り入れられる方法を積極的に採用する姿勢でなければ、日本のテレビには本当に未来がなくなるのではないか。

Tell-All Author Riffs on Music Industry in Crisis; Part 1

First of two parts

When Fred Goodman was looking for one music-industry figure whose story would be fodder for his next book as a metaphor for the industry at large, he saw only two clear choices: Apple CEO Steve Jobs and Warner Music CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr.

In the end, the former Rolling Stone senior editor chose Bronfman over Jobs for Fortune’s Fool: Edgar Bronfman Jr., Warner Music and an Industry in Crisis, in no small part due to the intense motivation exhibited by the heir to the multibillion dollar Seagram throne to transform his family’s liquor-derived empire into an entertainment company.

Why, when he could have spent his life playing tennis, did Bronfman persevere? And why does he continue to believe in the value of recorded music, despite having shown the poor timing to invest in the major-label system not long before Napster introduced the world to file sharing, causing the financial worth of recorded music to decline?

Goodman’s well-researched profile functions as history of the major-label system, from its origin through the boom, up to the declining returns and shrinking investment of today, while elucidating the personal motivations of Bronfman and other important figures at the storm’s vortex. He doesn’t mince words:

The sorry fact was that record executives had no personal financial incentive to be forward-thinking. In an industry where bonuses were based on chart performance and market share, incentives were tied to creating hits and not to addressing the fact that the CD business was being rendered unnecessary and needed to be reinvented. With a lethal myopia, the industry went around its day-to-day business and made sure all its windows and doors were locked, completely indifferent to the fact that its house was on fire.

Rock impresario says file sharing is inevitable

Peter Jenner helped launch some of the most influential and soul-stirring rock 'n' roll bands ever recorded in Great Britain or anywhere else. But what does the former manager of such acts as Pink Floyd and The Clash know about the economics of digital music?

Apparently, Jenner has spent some time considering the current state of affairs in music. The former Cambridge University economics lecturer has some ideas on how the industry should proceed.

"Attempts to stop people [from] copying are clearly a waste of time," Jenner said on Wednesday at the Westminster eForum. "Not only are they a waste of time, they make the law offensive. It's very similar to prohibition in America in the 1930s."

The blog Music Ally covered the conference, and you can find more of what Jenner, 66, said there.
Some of the highlights include Jenner's thoughts on music prices, antipiracy efforts, the labels' loss of control over distribution, and the need to "rebuild the relationship between creators and the public."

Jenner doesn't like to use the word 'consumer' in the context of the digital world," he said. "We do not 'consume' files. There is no limit to the number of files that can be copied. Every time you send a file to somebody else, you increase the supply."

He said controversial file-hosting service RapidShare, which has been accused of being a pirate tool, is an example of how to get people to pay for content. "The best thing I've heard about is the whole thing about RapidShare," Jenner said. "People pay for RapidShare, so that seems like a model we can use."

「コンテンツミル」への懸念--問われるウェブの品質

スーパーマーケットの陳列棚の間を歩くと、アボカドやザクロ、マッシュルームなど、ほとんどあらゆる食品に、品質基準を示したシールやラベルが驚くほどたくさん付いているのを見かける。その種類は、「有機認証」「フェアトレード」「完全無添加」「地元産」などさまざまだ。

　同じようなラベルがデジタルコンテンツに付けられる日も近いのだろうか。

　Internet Content Syndication Council（ICSC）と呼ばれる小規模な業界団体は5月から、「コンテンツミル」への業界の関心を喚起することを目的とした文書の配布を行っている（米国時間7月6日のAdweekの記事で取り上げられた）。コンテンツミルは、急速に成長しつつあるデジタルメディアビジネスの一分野であり、検索結果で上位に表示されるような、簡単で低品質の記事を量産して、そこに広告を掲載している。Demand Mediaや、AOLの「seed.com」、Associated Content（米Yahooが最近買収）などのコンテンツミルは自社について、活字やマルチメディアのコンテンツの制作作業を効率化し、デジタル時代に合った速度で送り出していると説明する。それによって、ウェブに空いた穴を新たな材料で埋めているとしており、その材料はニッチ志向であることが多いという。しかしそうした企業は同時に、怪物のようなビジネスモデルをウェブに解き放ってしまった。多くのジャーナリストやマスコミは、コンテンツミルが生み出すものは質が落ちてきていて、それはおそらく破滅的なほどだと主張する。

　ICSCの文書には次のように記されている。「『コンテンツミル』の増加によって、コンテンツ全体の品質が低下するおそれがある。結果として、情報を探すユーザー、さらには自分たちのメッセージを伝える良い環境を求める広告主から見た、インターネットの有用性が下がってしまうことが懸念されている。この脅威に立ち向かうために、Internet Content Syndication Councilは、情報コンテンツの品質基準を維持する最善の方法について、業界として議論を始める時期が来たと考えている」

　コンテンツミルが短期間で広まっていることを憂慮するメディア業界の専門家らは、この展開を心強く思うかもしれない。しかし少なくとも今のところ、この問題への具体的な対処方法について、結論に近いものは得られていない。有機認証済みのパイナップルのように、ブログ記事に「品質」ラベルを貼るには、具体的にはどうすればよいのだろうか。

What’s Wrong With Music Biz, per Ultimate Insider

The basic recording contract upon which most of the popular music business has been based for the past 50 years is fundamentally broken.

This is not the sentiment of one of the countless critics who throw stones at the music industry from afar, usually for vague philosophical reasons, but rather the pragmatic opinion of a true insider: Tom Silverman, founder of Tommy Boy Records, which sold millions of records by hip-hop artists including Club Nouveau, Coolio, De La Soul, Digital Underground, Everlast, House of Pain and Naughty By Nature.

In a song called “Labels,” The Wu-Tang Clan’s GZA rapped in 1995 about Silverman, “Tommy ain’t my mothafuckin’ boy,” as part of a general criticism of the same label system that Silverman advocates ending in the below interview with Wired.com. To be fair, GZA calls out a number of other hip-hop labels in that song, and Tommy Boy’s practices followed the industry standards of issuing an advance, and generally never allowing an artist to recoup it in order to make money from the sale of their records. The money would always seem to get lost, somehow, before making it to the artist.

But Silverman has a new idea for how to save the biz and treat artists more fairly, by creating a corporations in joint partnership between artists and music companies that give each a 50 percent stake in the artist’s businesses.

RIAA suffers big setback in Tenenbaum case

The music industry suffered another high-profile legal setback on Friday when a federal judge reduced a damages award against a file sharer found liable for copyright violations.

A jury last year ordered Joel Tenenbaum, a Boston University student, to pay $675,000, after being found liable of copyright infringement, to the Recording Industry Association of America, the trade group for the four largest record companies. But U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner ruled that the amount was "unconstitutionally excessive," according to a report in Boston.com, the Web site for The Boston Globe.

Tenenbaum must now pay one tenth the original sum, or $67,500. Gertner's decision is another indication that judges just aren't satisfied with the damage amounts juries are allowed to set under federal guidelines.

DNP、電子出版など出版社の著作権契約管理業務をクラウド型BPOサービスとして提供

大日本印刷（DNP）は7月5日、コンテンツの著作権契約管理業務を代行するビジネスプロセスアウトソーシング（BPO）サービスを、今秋よりクラウド型サービスとして提供開始すると発表した。

　昨今の携帯電話やスマートフォン、電子書籍端末、情報家電の登場により、多くのメディアのデジタル化が進み、それに伴うコンテンツの細分化販売、情報端末や流通経路の多様化、読者のコンテンツ購入形態の多様化、著者への印税支払方式、頻度などの多様化によって、出版社の契約管理対象項目が増加している。出版社にとって、それに伴う著作権契約管理業務は、従来に比べ煩雑化し大きな業務負荷となっているという。

　DNPが開始するサービスは、書籍や雑誌の電子出版コンテンツや映像、ゲーム、キャラクターなど、出版社が管理する多様なコンテンツの著作権契約や原稿料契約をデータベース化し、その契約に基づいて、印税計算から支払通知書の作成・発送業務まで、著作権管理に関わる業務をトータルで受託するもの。同サービスの利用により、オペレーションコストの削減、業務の効率化、データの正確性の確保とともに、今後予想されるメディアの多様化への迅速かつ柔軟な対応が可能になるという。

Feds seize cash, Web sites of alleged film pirates

A week after U.S. Vice President Joe Biden warned that the government would start cracking down on illegal file sharing, the feds swooped in and seized assets belonging to operators of accused movie-pirating sites.

The government on Wednesday also took control of at least seven of the sites in question: Movies-Links.tv, Now-Movies.com, TVShack.net, Filespump.com, Planetmoviez.com, ZML.com, ThePirateCity.org, Ninjavideo.net, and NinjaThis.net. More than a dozen bank, investment, and advertising accounts were seized, and authorities served search warrants on residences in several different states.


Authorities are searching for operators of the sites as part of an ongoing criminal investigation, according to Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The crimes that the operators are accused of committing weren't clear, but some of the sites are accused of distributing film copies prior to their theatrical release.

YouTube、Rumblefishとの音楽ライセンス契約を締結

YouTubeがRumblefishと交わした新しい契約により、アップロードした動画に音楽を加えたいと考えるYouTubeユーザーは、特定の楽曲のライフタイムライセンスを購入できるようになった。

　米国時間6月29日に発表されたRumblefishの新しい音楽プログラム「FriendlyMusic」は、著作権処理済みの楽曲からなるカタログを提供する。YouTubeで動画を作成するユーザーは1曲1.99ドルでそれらの楽曲を購入し、合法的に編集して動画に挿入し、その動画をオンラインに投稿することができる。YouTubeのブログによると、この新しい機能は、これまで著作権で保護された楽曲を許可なく使用したために動画をブロックされたことのあるユーザーに対するYouTubeによる解決策であるという。

　今回の新しい提携により、YouTubeを所有するGoogleとRumblefishは、YouTubeの動画作成者がライセンス保護された音楽を使用できるようにするための新しいサービスを計画しているという報道を正式に認める形になった。FriendlyMusicは、YouTubeのAudioSwapサイトを介してユーザーがRumblefishから楽曲を取得できるという、両社のこれまでの契約を拡張したものでもある。

　FriendlyMusicから楽曲を取得するにはまず、欲しい楽曲をカタログで検索または参照する。一覧では、すべての楽曲の全トラックを試聴することができる。最後に欲しい楽曲をダウンロードし、購入する。1.99ドルで、その楽曲のライフタイムライセンスを正式に取得することができ、自分が作成する任意のYouTube動画で恒久的に使用することができる。

The iPad's chicken-or-egg developer problem

SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO--While the release of the iPhone 4 may have taken some of the wind out of Apple's iPad marketing sails, developers are still scrambling to produce apps for the new tablet device. One of the biggest problems to crop up though, is how much of a priority the iPad continues to be, versus creating something for the iPhone--or another platform first.

At first blush the reasoning behind this seems simple: there are just more iPhones and iPod Touches out there than the iPad can hope to approach in the next few years. Especially after this past weekend, where Apple announced that it sold 1.7 million iPhone 4s in just three days; that's compared to the 3 million iPads Apple sold after its first 80 days on the market. Any developer hoping to make a profit out of their first app knows full well there are more potential customers where there are more devices.

But there's more to the problem than size. It's that developing apps, and games in particular, for the iPad, is very different than it is on the iPhone. Not in the software or familiarity when coming from the iPhone, but in how the game ends up playing on a bigger screen. And to make the really great apps for either device does not always mean they'll port over well to either platform--at least according to developers and industry insiders at Monday's inaugural iPad Games Summit in South San Francisco.

Take for example Playfirst, the makers of the popular Diner Dash series. At the Summit, Playfirst's lead game designer Dana Nelson explained to the crowd that the company had had great ambitions of including complex, gesture-based minigames as part of one of its Dash iPhone games, but that in the end, the small-screen real estate proved to be a problem. When moving their Diner Dash title up to an iPad, Nelson explained that they tried out the mechanic again, and finally found a set of simple gestures and a "can't fail" game mechanic that worked. The only problem was that it couldn't be ported back over to the iPhone--at least not in a way that they've figured out yet.

Hulu unveils $9.99 premium service

Hulu, the online TV and film portal, has finally rolled out a subscription service, according to a note posted to the site on Tuesday.

For $9.99 a month, subscribers of Hulu Plus get access to a full season's worth of their favorite TV shows--and even past seasons in some cases--and "not just a handful of trailing episodes" that the free-version of Hulu offers, according to CEO Jason Kilar, who wrote the note.

Hulu Plus marks the first time the service has charged for content and it's arrival has been long anticipated. Supported by Disney, NBC Universal, and News Corp., some of Hulu's backers, especially News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch, have been pushing for a paid service for over a year. The word out of Hollywood for a long time is that advertising just doesn't provide the kind of return that the studios and networks are accustomed to generating. Apparently, when it comes to premium TV shows, the ad-supported model works for television but not for the Web.

A monthly service fee may not sit well with some Hulu fans. While the free Hulu service is still available, Internet TV fans have grown accustomed to getting content for free. Critics have noted that Hulu was the first service to actually seize market share away from illegal file-sharing sites. They say that throwing up a pay wall may do nothing more than send people back to pirate sites.