publisher

YouTube, music publishers settle copyright beef

A group of music publishers that joined a class action lawsuit filed against YouTube in 2007 have reached a settlement with Google's video-sharing site.

The National Music Publishers Association as well as individual music-publishing companies, such as Cherry Lane Music Publishing Company, the Harry Fox Agency, and Murbo Music Publishing, joined a class action lawsuit filed against Google by The Football Association Premier League among others.

The suit--which accused YouTube of encouraging users to upload pirated video clips of TV shows, films, and music videos--was filed shortly after Viacom filed a copyright complaint against YouTube and Google. For efficiency, Viacom and the class action were reviewed by the court simultaneously even though they were separate complaints.

"As a result of this resolution," the publishers wrote in a statement, "music publishers will have the opportunity to enter into a license agreement with YouTube and receive royalties from YouTube for musical works in videos posted on the site."

Thanks to the agreement, music publishers can license Google the right to sync their music with videos posted by YouTube users and YouTube will pay the royalties. The parties involved didn't disclose the complete terms of the agreement.

That's nice but what's important here is that YouTube executives continue to put their copyright troubles behind them. The Web's top video-sharing service was once packed with pirated content but the service built a filter system and now most of the top film studios and TV networks consider the site to be swept clean. … Read more

Apple, Google music clouds can't snub publishers

NEW YORK--Those in digital music should take notice of the olive branches being extended by David Israelite, the president and CEO of the National Music Publishers Association.

Israelite advised NMPA members Tuesday in Manhattan during the trade group's annual conference that it was in their best interest to help legal music sites thrive, Billboard reported. To do this, Israelite wants to streamline the process of licensing rights, a time-consuming task for Internet services that has frustrated managers from SpiralFrog to Apple to Google. Still, Israelite's comments about bridge building with the tech community could surprise some there.

For … Read more

'Go the F*** to Sleep' author: I don't support piracy

Adam Mansbach, author of the cathartic "children's book for parents" "Go the F*** to Sleep," has a complicated relationship with content pirates.

The viral spread of a PDF version of his book helped rocket the print version into the bestsellers list on Amazon before the book was printed. Finally pushed to stores and retailers just this Tuesday, it is now Amazon's number one seller.

If one were to design a viral media campaign, it could not have been done better. Except this success happened quite by accident. I talked to Mansbach about the book, piracy, and social marketing.

Mansbach says that the online spread of "Go the F*** to Sleep" started before the PDF hit the Net. He did a reading of the text on April 23, in Philadelphia. He told the audience that they could preorder the book on Amazon, and the next morning, he says, it was 125th-best seller.

He had sent the PDF of the book to a few booksellers -- a common practice in publishing. And then, Mansbach says, "Innocently enough, it was forwarded. And it went from there."

Mansbach, a novelist, never intended the world to be able to see his book, for free, online, and before the print version was available. "To show how Web-savvy we were, " he says self-deprecatingly, "We were trying to do cease and desist orders at first."

He even reached out to individuals who were sharing the PDF on Facebook accounts. Mansbach says he asked one Facebook user to remove the PDF from their page, and the response was, "'Ok, If you want, but 300 people asked me where I could get the book.'"

There was a "gradual dawning that it wasn't hurting us," he says. After about a week, Mansbach and his publisher, Akashic Books, ceased trying to stanch the spread of the book.

Mansbach still has not given the piracy of this book his full support.

"It helped us," he says, "but it would have hurt most people. We had a perfect storm. The idea of pirating I don't want to be too romantic about or supportive of."

… Read more

Google closing in on $400 million deal for AdMeld

Google's full employment program for antitrust regulators continues: the search giant is in the final stages of a deal to purchase ad tech company AdMeld. Like other recent Google purchases, this deal will automatically generate scrutiny from Washington before it can formally close.

That's both because of the size of the deal--around $400 million--and because the purchase deals with a sector that Google already dominates--display ad sales.

AdMeld is one of a handful of big ad optimization platforms that work on behalf of publishers by trying to get the best prices for their inventory from a variety of … Read more

Guardian brings a broadsheet to your browser

Who says the old broadsheet newspaper is dead?

To celebrate its 190th anniversary, the U.K.'s Guardian (known at its 1821 founding as The Manchester Guardian) has concocted a very-old-school version of the front--er, home--page of today's edition.

The page uses serifed and black-letter Web fonts; copious vertical and horizontal rules; vintage engravings; and a background image of a pulpy, papery texture to re-create the thrill that awaited one who clapped a copper into a newsboy's palm and flapped open a newly purchased copy of the Latest Edition.

In explaining the project, the page's developers also have some fun with Georgian/Victorian-era prose stylings:

"This new edition is available in the following establishments: the Flaming Fox public house; the Verdi & Traviatta at the Royal Opera House; the African Expedition outfitters and the recently-constructed Silver V8 engine foundry," they write in a blog post. When readers click the included links, the rather exotic appellations become clear:… Read more

Little divides Apple, music publishers on cloud deal

Hopes are high in the music sector that Apple will have all the licenses it needs to launch a cloud music service in time for the company's Worldwide Developers Conference, which starts on June 6.

Negotiations between Apple and music publishers have begun in earnest only recently but the amount of money that separates the two sides from reaching a deal is relatively small, according to two sources with knowledge of the talks. That said, these are cloud-licensing contracts, which are new and complex and there are still several ways Apple's service could be delayed, insiders say.

Apple … Read more

Game makers get few new details on PSN outage

Sony hasn't provided the public any significant update about the status of the PlayStation Network outage or investigation into the security breach in a week. It turns out its video game publisher partners aren't getting much more new information either.

At least that's what we can surmise from a letter from Sony's head of publisher relations that was leaked to gaming blog Industry Gamers last night. The letter mostly repeats what Sony has already posted on its PlayStation blog and written in e-mails to the 77 million users whose information was exposed in a cyberattack more … Read more

Get Serif PagePlus X4 desktop-publishing suite for $9.99

This is an update of a post from a couple years back. Yes, years.

Whatever happened to desktop publishing software? A decade ago you had your pick of a dozen or more programs, but now the field is practically empty.

Granted, you can still buy Adobe PageMaker or QuarkXPress for a small fortune (they still run $499 and $799, respectively), but what if you just want a simple program for creating newsletters, brochures, flyers, and the like?

Enter Serif PagePlus X4, a terrific desktop-publishing application that's ideal for designing print and Web-based documents alike.

Today only, PricePlunge.com has … Read more

Twitter tells third-party developers to stop building clients

Twitter today told developers explicitly that they should stop making third-party clients, citing repeated privacy policy violations and an inconsistent user experience.

Ryan Sarver, who leads the company's platform team, said in an announcement on the company's developer discussion group that existing third-party clients can continue to operate but they will be held to rigorous standards of privacy and consistency. The micro-messaging company said it now makes the top five Twitter clients (including its Web site) and says 90 percent of its active users use its apps at least once a month.

The key quote is:

Developers have … Read more