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"An article published in, The Guardian, discusses a debate taking place in the British Parliament around a new "digital economy bill. One amendment in particular is stirring a lot of discussion about its impact on content online. The Guardian writes: The new proposal - which was passed in the House of Lords by 165 votes to 140 - gives a high court judge the right to issue an injunction against a Web site accused of hosting a "substantial" amount of copyright infringing material, potentially forcing the entire site offline. Critics say the major problem with this amendment is that ajudge could shut down a Web site because of copyright infringement, even if thesite's manager didn't put the content online."

An article published on Thursday in, The Guardian, discusses a debate taking place in the British Parliament around a new "digital economy bill." One amendment in particular is stirring a lot of discussion about its impact on content online. The Guardian writes: The new proposal - which was passed in the House of Lords by 165 votes to 140 - gives a high court judge the right to issue an injunction against a Web site accused of hosting a "substantial" amount of copyright infringing material, potentially forcing the entire site offline. Critics say the major problem with this amendment is that a judge could  shut down a Web site  because of copyright infringement, even if the site's manager didn't put the content online. What is left unanswered is how a company can be held accountable for every piece of content placed on its site.  Many critics of this bill and others in Europe say it is most likely to result in the stifling of creativity, innovation and free speech. In the United States, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act offers some protection against liability to Internet service providers and Web sites that host copyrighted material uploaded by third parties.

NBC's current online coverage of the Olympics is discussed in light of the online technology and the use of "cable verification" to establish new online models limiting free content.

Predictions that content fees will become more widespread by 2012. Describes various models for content fees and explains challenges for news, TV, cable, music.

 Hulu investor  Providence Equity Partners is pumping $50 million into a new online video company set up by Chinese Internet search giant  Baidu. The news comes roughly 7 weeks after Baidu confirmed plans to established a new independent company to provide licensed, advertising-supported online video content to Chinese Internet users.

Video of Luge Crash raises interesting discussions about copyright and Fair Use. Google would not comment on the particular video but offered this general statement. "We approach each video individually, and we do not prescreen content. Instead, we count on our community members to know the Guidelines and to flag videos they think violate them. We review all flagged videos quickly, and if we find that a video does break the rules, we remove it, usually in under an hour." And, interestingly enough, regular TV broadcasters, with no licensing agreement with the IOC, are employing the fair use argument and airing the clip. Yet YouTube, and other online outlets are so terrified of the constant bullying from content creators that they're not going to take any chance and are taking the video down. In the end, nobody wins, people don't have access to the information, online video sites lose viewers and trust from their users and the IOC comes out as trying to hush up an unpleasant situation and (mis)using copyright law to do so.

The Toronto-based startup Thoora promises to gauge how well individual news stories are doing by analyzing and calibrating real-time data from blogs, mainstream news sources and Twitter. Thoora's software uses more than 100 attributes to determine not only the most popular content but also the highest quality, using measures such grammar and spelling and the authority of sites that link to the content.

Television content will only be accessible online to those who currently pay for cable television.

An Italian case is decided against google, holding the company liable despite their removing the offending content. This challenges current understandings of liability, and raises profound concerns for Internet business models.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday resurrected a possible settlement in a class-action lawsuit brought by freelance writers who said that newspapers and magazines had committed copyright infringement by making their contributions available on electronic databases. The proposed settlement was prompted by a 2001 decision from the Supreme Court in favor of six freelance authors claiming copyright infringement in The New York Times Company v. Tasini. After the Tasini decision, many freelance works were removed from online databases. Most publishers now require freelance writers to sign contracts granting both print and online rights. After the decision, the authors, publishers and database companies who were parties to several class-action lawsuits negotiated a global settlement that would pay the plaintiffs up to $18 million.

The Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) removed an online ratings summary of the content in Dead or Alive: Paradise for PSP from its website today in response to inquiries as to the appropriateness of the summary.

"Portending future growth of viewing on alternative platforms, incidence of TV consumption on the computer/ handheld devices is already ubiquitous among young people, with 82% of 15-17 year olds surveyed viewing at least monthly. On handheld devices alone, half (48%) of online young people surveyed report watching TV content at least monthly, doubling from 24% last year."

RealNetworks has agreed to kill its DVD-copying software and pay $4.5 million in settling a copyright-infringement lawsuit filed by Hollywood studios. As part of the settlement announced Wednesday, the provider of online entertainment services also agreed to drop its appeal of a San Francisco federal court ruling that barred RealNetworks from distributing or supporting RealDVD or any other technology that enables the duplication of the studios' copyrighted content. The 2008 lawsuit filed by Viacom and the Motion Picture Association of America claimed that RealDVD illegally circumvented the anti-piracy technology embedded in DVDs. The DVD Copy Control Association, which licenses Hollywood-sanctioned copyright-protection technology, joined the suit later, claiming RealNetworks was also in violation of its DVD CCA license.

The RIAA argues ISP's should perform copyright enforcement, and claim Net Neutrality blocks such efforts.

US Supreme Court decides that corporate ownership/finance of online political content should be no different than if it was written by a person -- leading to changes in rules for corporate/union finance of political campaigns.

"DECE logo The Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem, an inter-industry effort to set open technical standards for selling movies and TV shows online"

This article contains a good example of Ben Silverman's strategy at NBC. He was heralded for his ability to to create a web presence for his popular primetime comedies. NBC has had successes in producing crossover content (The Office and SNL) but they have also had failures (Kathy and Kim, mentioned in the article). Overall this a good example of the extendable strategy.

Apple is looking to renovate old media and content distribution in the home and classroom

Discusses the challenges of charging readers for online news content, including competition between pay and free sites for readers.