Tag Archives: google

Viacom vs. YouTube

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Google and Viacom (owner of MTV, BET, Paramount, and more) are fighting it out in court with Viacom contending that Google is no longer a “safe harbor” under the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act and must do more to ferret out and remove copyrighted material — like Viacom’s. Viacom is supporting its case with some old emails supposedly proving that Google relaxed its copyright policies after its 2006 YouTube purchase and that it knew very well that YouTube was a pirate haven of illegal video goods. Let’s not forget to mention the “sour grapes” component here: Viacom wanted to buy YouTube too and Google beat them out.

Whatever Google authorized in the past, in recent times they have added content ID tools to help companies identify and find pirated content on YouTube. They’ve done this to such a degree that they’ve fallen somewhat afoul of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

One issue that has surfaced is Viacom “continuously and secretly” uploading its own stuff to YouTube (self-pirating?). (Viacom disputes this and claims it only happened a few times.) From the YouTube blog:

For years, Viacom continuously and secretly uploaded its content to YouTube, even while publicly complaining about its presence there. It hired no fewer than 18 different marketing agencies to upload its content to the site. It deliberately “roughed up” the videos to make them look stolen or leaked. It opened YouTube accounts using phony email addresses. It even sent employees to Kinko’s to upload clips from computers that couldn’t be traced to Viacom. And in an effort to promote its own shows, as a matter of company policy Viacom routinely left up clips from shows that had been uploaded to YouTube by ordinary users. Executives as high up as the president of Comedy Central and the head of MTV Networks felt “very strongly” that clips from shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report should remain on YouTube.

The Law Librarian Blog has a nice summary of points around these issues and links to articles in the last paragraph. Although I agree with Law Librarian that “neither party to the suit has any lock on legal or moral purity,” if I had to choose a side to cheer, it would be Google. Although both companies are looking at revenues and bottom lines, Viacom is trying to control content distribution in a media market that arguably should be moved towards more sharing. YouTube on the other hand may not be perfect but it is involved in sharing content globally at no direct cost to producers. For me, that’s very much a move in the right direction.
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Fluid for Wave: Instructions on building an app

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I use a Fluid app to engage with Google Wave. The TC Wave has links to how to do this but the TC Wave is becoming harder and harder to navigate and find things. So here's the blog post with links to how to integrate Fluid and Wave and Growl.

Download Fluid then drop by??Guillermo Rauch's devthought blog for how to create the app (plus a link to a very nice Wave icon to use for your Fluid app). Then if you're interested in Growl notifications when new messages arrive at your waves, install Growl and then add this script to your Fluid app. (Guillermo's page describes how to install a script in a Fluid app.) Growl notifications only work when your Fluid Wave app is open.??

I'm happy with the Fluid Wave app performance and I've had no serious problems. It can be slow but no slower than Firefox (3.0.15). I have heard Chrome is snappier but I don't think Google has released an official Mac OS X Chrome yet.

Please add any useful links about Fluid, Growl, Wave etc.

Minimizing contacts in Google Wave

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Minimizing your contacts in Wave will give you a much longer list to view when popped down. You can also minimize the navigation box and give yourself the whole lower area for waving.

Background on this post: Tweetie listed Posterous as a photo display source for Twitter so I decided to try it. From Tweetie, it posted the tweet with a link here but it tossed the picture up in an untitled post. No context if you follow my Posterous blog only if you arrive via Twitter. Not acceptable.

via tweetie

First thoughts on my Wave World adventure

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Peter_-_google_wave

 

Somewhat random notes from my first visit to Google Wave. 

“A wave is a hosted conversation.” (from the Google Wave in Action video) Ah ha. That’s a good description. A wave is also boring when you’re all alone.

Video says you can drag and drop from iPhoto but neglects to mention that you have to install Gears. Wonder if I can do that directly from Flickr. 

Installing Gears.

With Gears installed, I can drag photos from desktop or from iPhoto. I was not able to drag an image from a web page however. Very nice and Waves gives a full-screen display when you click the thumbnail.

SHIFT-ENTER closes or opens “blips” which are the things waves are made of.

Double-click a blip to reply/edit that blip.

You can edit someone else’s blip as they are editing it. There was some highlighting indicating the other editor at one point but it went away. There doesn’t seem a way to identify who typed what if you are in the same blip.

Easy to get lost in a Wave if you are replying to previous blips or editing old ones. Is there a way to manage or sort? Ah ha. Playback mode goes through the wave in chronological order and indicates edits with yellow highlights. 

I’m using Firefox 3.0x. Friend using Safari. Compatibility seems fine.

When you mute a wave you can see it by choosing All from navigation pane. To “unmute,” select wave and click the inbox tab.

Finding waves with a particular contact: The search box for the inbox area is not useful unless you know the wave email address. It won’t give you a hit off the name (unless I’m missing the query term for it). So you would have to look for “pfhyper” for me and not “Peter”. You can search on “Peter” from the contact search and the pop-up will reveal recent waves. (Checking Wave help and they mention you can’t actually search on names yet.)

The Google Wave overview video is telling me I can link waves and publish them to my blog. Do you have to use blogger for that? Ah, you need a gadget or robot or something. Wavety.com has a list of robots and gadgets.

I finally found the Tweety robot  (made by the Wave team) and installed it. Tweety will display your Twitter stream in Wave and allows you to tweet from Wave. Or at least it will do that when they finish with it. Right now, it will grab your current twitter stream but then not continue updating and you can’t post to Twitter. 

Check the Wave help forums if you are trying to get gadgets, robots, extensions to work. That’s where I found out that Tweety is broken for now. When they get it ready to go, it will be put in the Extension Gallery located in the “Welcome to Google Wave” wave. 

For the record, this is how you install the Tweety robot. The instructions may be useful for other robots and gadgets.

  1. Add tweety-wave@appspot.com to your contacts. 
  2. Start a new wave. 
  3. Drag the tweety contact to the contact area above above the new wave. 

That’s all from my first Wave adventure. If you’re on Wave, you can connect to me at pfhyper@googlewave.com.