Steve Bryant

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A California district court concluded today that Veoh is not liable for infringing content uploaded to its site, settling one of the first lawsuits filed against a video sharing site two years ago. “The record presented demonstrates that, far from encouraging copyright infringement, Veoh has a […] Read more »

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Is the latest breakout series on YouTube the beneficiary of view scamming? An unexpectedly successful, non-studio affiliated show starring All My Children actress Eden Reigel as a lonely-slash-possibly schizo girl who conjures imaginary friends, Imaginary Bitches has been racking up the views lately: At least one […] Read more »

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After weeks of speculation about its autoplay view-counting policy and at least one high-profile news story, YouTube has revealed that the company purposefully does not count video autoplays. “Autoplaybacks are not counted toward the visible ‘views’ numbers displayed on the YouTube site because autoplaybacks are not […] Read more »

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While Google is busily applying YouTube’s pop culture aegis to safe-for-work fare like politics and hip hop, the company seems content to allow also-ran Google Video to wallow in softcore smut. Not a believer? Check the first few Google Video top 100 new videos, as delivered […] Read more »

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Among the many annoyingly-addictive gimmicks J.J. Abrams has helped loose upon the world — TV show cryptograms, mysterious movie trailers, Alias — is that inescapably virulent strain of marketing known as the interactive mystery. The latest show to employ the format, albeit without Abrams’ imprimatur: MTV’s […] Read more »

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In an apparent attempt to earn even less money than they do now, Hollywood writers, long at loggerheads with studio execs over contract terms, might start jumping into the notoriously fickle online media marketplace once their contract terms expire. Hello frying pan. Meet the fire. Screenwriters […] Read more »

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When it comes to applying for a job with a music biz icon, nothing says “I’m qualified” like saying “I’ll be your b*tch.” Just ask the kids responding to Diddy’s search for a personal assistant, which the hip hop impresario is conducting through YouTube: Read more »

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What to make of the fact that Stickam, a site popular with young webcam users, is run by a Japanese porn magnate? Here are the facts: The company that owns Stickam, Advanced Video Communications (AVC) owns and operates porn sites; Stickam has no advertising; Stickam has […] Read more »

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Saturday was a strange day. While the rest of the world was celebrating the global canonization of Al Gore, a flock of handycam-wielding YouTubers descended on Washington Square Park and busily navel-gazed their way into a me! me! me! orgy of giddy solipsism. At the park’s […] Read more »

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In what is an apparent attempt to convert Washington Square Park into a techno-hippie love-in of Haight-Ashbury proportions, hundreds (maybe thousands?) of video geeks will descend tomorrow into Greenwich Village, handycams in hand, for the first-ever New York YouTube Meetup. If you keep tabs on the […] Read more »

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Really bored at work? Titillated by advertising masquerading as softcore porn? Really bored at work? Then check out the latest international YouTube phenomenon, an advertisement posted on the European Commission’s YouTube channel — a.k.a “EUTube,” a.k.a “Really? EwwTube? LOL” — which shows snippets of lovemaking from […] Read more »

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How have vidshare sites changed this week? Let us count the ways: 1. Vimeo, the vidshare offspring of College Humor, launched a new version. The biggest change (besides lookin’ a whole lot more chill) is the addition of user-level privacy settings. You can choose which of […] Read more »

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In what’s being touted as a milestone for web marketing, the viral phenomenon Dove “Evolution” advertisement won the Grand Prix at the 54th Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival this weekend. For the three people and my dad who haven’t seen the vid: It’s a 74-second web-only […] Read more »

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Execs at the Weinstein Company announced this week that Michael Moore’s Sicko, scheduled to open nationwide on June 29, will open Friday on a single screen at the AMC Loews Lincoln Square theater in New York. Distributor Lionsgate, meanwhile, will be offering sneak preview screenings in […] Read more »

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Sicko, Michael Moore’s scathing look at the healthcare industry and the pharmaceutical companies that are destroying it, is scheduled to debut June 29 in theaters. But, if you’re the savvy keyboarding sort you can download the documentary now. (Check TorrentSpy for copies.) I know, I know. […] Read more »

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There’s a blog-sharp maw waiting to gnash anyone who is critical of the democratizing power of YouTube. If you deride its star-making potential, you’re accused of old media partisanship. If you doubt its meritocratic infallibility, you’re a curmudgeon, scribbling from behind the fame-inflaming footlights of “most […] Read more »

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Oh, the horror. Hollywood, having just begun to grudgingly accept online video dramas like Prom Queen, is now facing an influx of slasher flicks and gorefest vids on the computer screen. I’m not sure why anyone would want to watch horror videos on their computer — […] Read more »

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You’re only allowed five words when you accept a Webby award, and the best five-word speech yesterday evening came from Eepybird‘s Fritz Globe, who, after the audience had watched Diet Coke and Mentos fountains explode on the screen at the New World Stages in Manhattan at […] Read more »

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Of all the consequences of our culture’s infatuation with reality programming, our increasing preference for “behind the scenes” shows — big air quotes there — is the most intriguing. By “behind the scenes” I mean everything from literal fare like American Idol and SNL Backstage (the […] Read more »

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While skipping through commercials during the two-hour season finale of ABC’s Lost on Sunday (thanks, DVR), I realized that a certain commercial would trick me into pressing the play button too early. The commercial was for Traveler, a new ABC primetime show with dark lighting and […] Read more »

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I spent the last hour hunched over my keyboard trying, desperately trying, to somehow free associate a connection between the topics of boobs, misheard lyrics, and script selling. I failed. Blame the boobs. So, instead of a cohesive post that pleases with its narrative symmetry, I […] Read more »

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Last week, while the networks were announcing their fall lineup at their annual upfront presentations, a little-known but quite successful online advertising and production company called Broadband Enterprises (also known as BE; see Liz’s post about the company) held an upfront celebration of their own. The […] Read more »

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Somewhere in the heavens, George Burns is watching YouTube and wagging his eyebrows with glee. If you haven’t noticed, the vid share site is recently chock-a-block with blasphemy challenges, Scientology diatribes, and Kirk Cameron proving the existence of God (not to mention the end of his […] Read more »

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The powers that be at Google have made some tough decisions since acquiring YouTube last October: Whether and how to filter videos, how to use the now redundant Google Video, whether to pay users, how to appease Viacom. And NBC. And CBS. Over time, YouTube has […] Read more »

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Woe is DC Comics. While competitor Marvel somehow emerged from the 20th century as the arbiter of superhero glam, DC, excluding the Superman and Batman franchises, remains little more than a silly putty-like substrate for the affectionate mockings of our collective pop consciousness. Exhibit A: DC’s […] Read more »

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Sony, if you haven’t heard, will soon be launching a Minisode Network on MySpace that will show three-to-five minute versions of old TV standards like Charlie’s Angels and T.J. Hooker. Another sign of our ADD culture? Maybe. The Web certainly privileges quicker/faster/cheaper videos that only demand […] Read more »

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Forbes magazine recently published an article by YouTube CEO Chad Hurley in which Hurley explained the benefits, as he saw them, of partnering with YouTube. Hurley’s argument was twofold: That YouTube subverts the traditional media structure by democratizing distribution while simultaneously supporting that media structure by […] Read more »

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The hype surrounding our burgeoning video culture already exceeds the level of scrutiny applied to its consequences. The promise is that we’re creating a participatory culture where every consumer is a producer. The danger is that we’re all just a big focus group. Thus my suspicion […] Read more »

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The most important post-crime aspect of the Virginia Tech tragedy is that Cho Seung-Hei couldn’t conceive of the massacre without justifying it through media. In the videos Cho mailed to NBC, he repeatedly refers to himself in the past tense. He has a meta-cognitive view of […] Read more »

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Wouldn’t it be a gas if pornography — or rather, the absence of pornography — turned out to be YouTube’s undoing? If you think, like billionaire with a bullhorn Mark Cuban, that the idea has legs, you should be paying close attention to another vid-share site, […] Read more »

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We’ve come a long way since Arsenio Hall. Remember back in 1992, when Bill Clinton took the stage, saxophone in hand, and belted out “Heartbreak Hotel?” It was a highly scripted moment, but it impressed because it demonstrated how an older generation could appeal to a […] Read more »

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NEW YORK, Search Engine Strategies conference — Video, you may have heard, killed the radio star. You can thank The Buggles for that gem, and you can thank lazy headline writers — “Video killed the AOL Star,” “Video killed the MP3 Star,” “Video killed the podcasting […] Read more »

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Ron Jeremy isn’t the only pop icon out to rekindle his career via online video. Also making his online debut this week on Heavy.com is Donnell Rawlings, better known as Ashy from The Chappelle Show. The show: From Ashy to Classy, a cultural review of art […] Read more »

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If you’re searching for video on the Web, odds you’re getting a lot of results you don’t need. For example: Try 855,000 results for The Office on Blinkx. Or try 3,536  results for The Daily Show on AOL Video. Or try 27,679 results for Heroes on […] Read more »

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Tony Dunaif, VP of content partnerships at Brightcove, has no opinion, really, about Blip.tv. If you don’t believe me, just ask Tony, who told the audience at the New York video 2.0 meetup last night “I have no opinion, really, about Blip.tv.” To which the audience […] Read more »

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The business of online video is like Zen. Or like a Rumsfeld-ism. To wit: There are known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns. We know this. And so we routinely celebrate our current level of unknowingness. We call these events “panels.” Last night, as I was […] Read more »

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As modern poet and child-care expert Chris Rock once noted, fathers have just one important job: You gotta keep your daughter off the pole. Failing that, keep her off the pole on the Internet. Failing that: Therapy bills. So it’s with a bemused “sorry daddy” that […] Read more »

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Pursuers of moral rectitude, you have no better friend than online video. The latest head in the pillory belongs to none other than Michael Crook, the ironically- and aptly-named ne’er-do-well who, in an attempt to have embarrassing photos of himself removed from 10 Zen Monkeys and […] Read more »

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Among the many dubious achievements in Silicon Valley recently, none pique my interest so much as the creation of an absurd corporate moniker language apparently cribbed from menopause commercials and erectile dysfunction literature. Daylife. Vuguru. Stickam. Signifying nothing (it’s a brand new word!) and everything (it’s […] Read more »

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