COPYCENSE

“A year ago, Yahoo!’s ambitions in the media industry were nothing short of audacious. Yahoo! Inc. execs spoke of creating smash-hit, medium-defining programming for the interactive world, a sort of I Love Lucy for the Internet. With former movie mogul Terry S. Semel as its CEO and former ABC television Chairman Lloyd Braun running the media outfit, Yahoo looked capable of achieving its aspirations. The company furiously set to work on a number of high-profile content ideas, from adapting the abandoned reality-TV show The Runner into a multimillion-dollar Internet program to developing a home-electronics reality contest, dubbed Wow House.

“Today, after a turbulent year in the media business, Yahoo is singing a much more modest tune. Large projects such as The Runner are in a holding pattern as Yahoo susses out the potential business opportunities. Wow House has been sent back to the drawing board. And headline-grabbing content partnerships, which Yahoo once pursued with zeal, are increasingly ending up at competitors such as America Online, Google, and Microsoft’s MSN.”

“It’s the media education of Yahoo Inc.”

BusinessWeek Online. Yahoo’s Boulevard Of Broken Dreams. March 13, 2006.

See also:

David A. Utter. Yahoo May Run “The Runner.” WebProNews. Jan. 16, 2006.

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.

Under a proposed $90 million settlement of a class-action lawsuit over alleged click fraud, Google said Wednesday that it would offer advertising credits to marketers who claim they were charged for invalid clicks and not reimbursed.

The total amount of credits, including attorneys’ fees, will max out at $90 million, Nicole Wong, associate general counsel at Google, wrote in a Google blog posting.

The lawsuit, filed in February 2005 in state court in Texarkana, Ark., accused the defendant search engines of charging advertisers for clicks on online advertisements that were fraudulent or done in bad faith and not with the intention of legitimate commerce. The lawsuit was filed by Lane’s Gifts and Collectibles and Caulfield Investigations against Google, Yahoo, Time Warner and its America Online and Netscape subsidiaries, Lycos, FindWhat.com, now known as Miva Media, Buena Vista Internet Group doing business as Go.com, LookSmart and Ask Jeeves, now known as Ask.com.

Elinor Mills. Google Says Click Fraud Settlement Near. News.com. March 8, 2006.

See also:

Google Blog. Update: Lane’s Gifts v. Google. Mach 8, 2006.

Eric Goldman. Lane’s Gifts Click Fraud Lawsuit Near Settlement. Technology & Marketing Law Blog. March 8, 2006.

Search Engine Watch Blog. Google Agrees To $90 Million Settlement In Class Action Lawsuit Over Click Fraud. March 8, 2006.

John Battelle’s Search Blog. Google About to Settle Click Fraud Class Action Suit. March 8, 2006.

Updates:

Burt Helm. Gauging Google’s Gaffes. BusinessWeek Online. March 10, 2006.

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.

“If you click on Great Expectations by Charles Dickens in Google Book Search, you may find yourself taking an unexpected journey. Google’s ambient advertising programme hotlinks to a dating agency called Great Expectations Dating. How crass is that? We can be sure that Dickens would have thought it so. Indeed, he would probably have reserved a special vituperation for Google’s literary land-grab.

“There are two aspects to this land-grab. The first involves scanning out-of-copyright work, provided by the great libraries, and surrounding it with such advertising. That’s not illegal, though it is of cultural concern. The second part of Google’s literary predations, in the case of American libraries, involves scanning in-copyright works — for the purpose of publication — without direct prior permission of the copyright holder. That is to say, the author or his or her estate. Google’s decision to scan first and ask permission later with copyrighted works is playing fast and loose. In America, it has already landed Google with a huge lawsuit from publishers.

“It is authors who will suffer most. Dickens isn’t around to defend the integrity of his work. Were he alive, he would certainly have tried. In Dickens’s spirit, I believe we need to take action against Google. ”

Nigel Newton. Google’s Literary Land-Grab. Guardian Unlimited. March 4, 2006.

See also:

Information World Review. French PA May Sue Google. March 3, 2006.

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.

“Are consumers going to start having to spend a lot more to surf the Web?

“Phone and cable companies have stoked those fears recently by floating plans that would have Amazon, Yahoo and other Web sites paying new fees to ensure that their content will be delivered to customers faster.

“This possibility has raised the prospect that consumers may end up having to pay twice for access to the Internet — once to the phone or cable company that sells them a dial-up or broadband line, and again to Internet companies that pass along new charges for fast access to content from their sites.

Ken Belson. The High Speed Money Line. The New York Times. March 6, 2006.

See also:

Yuki Noguchi. AT&T Deal Raises Issue of Internet Control. WashingtonPost.com. March 9, 2006.

Arshad Mohammed. AT&T in $67 Billion Deal to Buy BellSouth. WashingtonPost.com. March 6, 2006.

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.

“Are consumers going to start having to spend a lot more to surf the Web?

“Phone and cable companies have stoked those fears recently by floating plans that would have Amazon, Yahoo and other Web sites paying new fees to ensure that their content will be delivered to customers faster.

“This possibility has raised the prospect that consumers may end up having to pay twice for access to the Internet — once to the phone or cable company that sells them a dial-up or broadband line, and again to Internet companies that pass along new charges for fast access to content from their sites.

Ken Belson. The High Speed Money Line. The New York Times. March 6, 2006.

See also:

Yuki Noguchi. AT&T Deal Raises Issue of Internet Control. WashingtonPost.com. March 9, 2006.

Arshad Mohammed. AT&T in $67 Billion Deal to Buy BellSouth. WashingtonPost.com. March 6, 2006.

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.

“No matter the guff about the old studio moguls pounding their fists on their desks and demanding excellence, and despite the sob stories about trampled vision, the American film industry has always been a business first. The genius of the system, to borrow André Bazin’s phrase, was that this heavily standardized, technologically dependent industry still fostered creative freedom and produced individual works of art. American movies both gave us an image of who we wanted to be and were instrumental in the creation of who we became.

“But what are our movies saying about us now? “Munich” is one of Steven Spielberg’s crowning achievements, yet despite its accolades it has been characterized as a disappointment. There is a sense that the director hasn’t been able to connect with those who months earlier thrilled to his dystopian fantasy, “War of the Worlds.” Audiences may be staying away from “Munich” because it lacks pop kicks and familiar marquee names. I fear, though, that after being fed a steady diet of schlock and awe, trained to expect less from films that demand little of them in turn, moviegoers no longer expect greatness from Hollywood and may not much care when, on that rare occasion, it shows up at the neighborhood multiplex.

Manohla Dargis. Hollywood’s Crowd Control Problem. The New York Times. March 5, 2006.

See also:

Paul B. Brown. The Long Studio Decline. The New York Times. March 4, 2006.

The Smoking Gun. Hollywood by the Numbers: The Tinseltown Money Trail. Feb. 28, 2006.

Updates:

The Patry Copyright Blog. Oscars and Copyright. March 7, 2006.

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.

“Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, will introduce new legislation today that would prohibit Internet network operators from charging companies for faster delivery of their content to consumers or favoring some content providers over others.

“The bill is meant to ease growing fears that open Internet access may be blocked or compromised by the Bell phone carriers and cable operators, which may create tiers of service for delivering content to consumers, much the way the post office charges more for overnight mail delivery than for regular delivery.”

Ken Belson. Senate Bill to Address Fears of Blocked Access to Net. The New York Times. March 2, 2006.

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.