Warners has even gone further, saying it would impose the same restrictions on Netflix and other DVD by-mail subscription providers unless they agreed to a "day-and-date revenue sharing option."
here's no way of getting around the fact that the studios who are trying to put the muscle on Redbox are making the same mistakes the music business made nearly a decade ago when it attempted -- and failed, quite spectacularly -- to squash unauthorized downloading of music by destroying the dreaded Napster Web file-sharing service.
At some point we'll have a longer, perhaps more intriguing discussion about why so many people have gone from buyers to renters.
Here's an update on AOL's citizen-journalism site, Seed.
"In what he hopes will be the first big demonstration of the "crowdsourcing" potential of AOL's new Seed.com service, former New York Times writer Saul Hansell says he is looking for writers who will write up interviews with all of 2,000 or so bands and artists at the SXSW music festival in Austin. The assignment will involve "real reporting," Hansell said in an interview, in which writers will have to pick up the phone and call the band or artist and write up a 1,000-word interview in question-and-answer format, as well as a 300- to 500-word biography. The price for this assignment? The princely sum of $50."
Merger between Ticketmaster and Live Nation, two of the major concert ticket vendors in the US, was approved by the US Justice Department.
Consumer groups, independent promoters and ticket brokers all urged the department to block the deal, warning that it would give the resulting company the power to dictate terms for live entertainment at the expense of venues, artists and consumers. The companies argued that combining their ticketing and promotions arms would enable them to offer better services to venues and acts, and better value to fans.