Dish literally wins some and loses some in ongoing DVR lawsuits with TV networks

A continuing legal battle between Dish Network and the broadcast networks it carries over whether or not ad-skipping DVR technology should be allowed had two decisions passed down this week - But if you think either one will bring the fight to a close, you'll soon have another think coming.

In the ongoing battle between television networks and channel carrier Dish Network, the winner seems to be “the legal system,” with two rulings this week that allow the networks to continue fighting with Dish, with the skirmish taking place on two fronts – which was part of Dish’s problem.

The first ruling came on Wednesday as US District Court Judge Dolly Gee refused to allow Fox Broadcasting’s attempt to block Dish’s ad-skipping DVR tech. Although the court order relating to the case is under seal – in part, to allow both parties involved to redact information contained therein that they may deem confidential or proprietary information -  the Hollywood Reporter revealed that Gee’s ruling wasn’t as simple as just allowing Dish’s “AutoHop” and “PrimeTime Anytime” features to continue without any restrictions; apparently, she believed that the systems may, in fact, infringe on particular copyright as they pertain to allowing the DVR to make copies of broadcast material in order to skip past commercials (Dish, for their part, responded by saying again that it did not believe that copies made using PrimeTime Anytime infringed on Fox’s exclusive reproduction rights under federal copyright laws in the same way that AutoHop didn’t translate into unauthorized distribution under the same laws, nor contravene VOD provisions of the involved parties).

In a statement released in response to the ruling, the company called Gee’s decision “a victory for common sense and customer choice,” adding that “the court [confirmed] a consumer’s right to enjoy television as they want, when they want, including the reasonable right to skip commercials if they choose.” Fox’s response statement was, as you might expect, a little less pleased with the verdict (“We are disappointed the court erred in finding that Fox’s damages were not suitable for a prelimary injunction,” being the exact phrase they used) but also found something to be happy about: “We are gratified the court found the copies DISH makes for its AutoHop service constitute copyright infringement and breach the parties’ contract.” Fox has already filed for appeal.

In a separate hearing also presided over by Judge Gee, however, Dish was the denied party as its attempt to prevent NBC from pursuing legal action against the company in California instead of New York – where the company is already fighting related legal battles against ABC and CBS – ran aground. NBC filed the suit in May, and a New York judge allowed the case to proceed in California two months later. Now, Gee denied Dish’s appeal against that decision, writing in her decision that “the Court finds that the dismissal of the contract claims would subvert rather than serve the policy objectives of Rule 13(a) and the first-to-file rule.” NBC’s Californian case against the company will continue.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

More Americans read news online than anywhere else, new survey says

More than half of all Americans use the Internet as their primary news source, a new study has found, with one third of adult Americans getting their news from social networks more than any other outlet.

An increasing number of all Americans use the Internet as their primary news source, a new study has found, with one third of adult Americans getting their news from social networks more than any other outlet. Is this a victory for the power of social media, or a sad commentary on the ineptitude of “regular” news media?

The Pew Research Center released the study Trends in News Consumption: 1991-2012 yesterday, tracking the ways in which readers and viewers receive information about current affairs over the last twenty-one years. The report backs up the long-held belief that the rise of the Internet has been felt most dramatically in print media, and print newspapers in particular, and demonstrates that television news reporting looks set to be affected in a similar way very soon, with the first signs already visible.

According to the most recent survey of news sources, only 23 percent of Americans read newspapers today, down from 47 percent in the year 2000; this drop is reflected outside of newspapers, with print magazine consumption also dropping from the year 2000 (18 percent of respondents read news magazines today, down from 26 percent in 2000). In comparison, 46 percent of Americans now get their news from the Internet at least three days a week, with 34 percent having done so in the 24 hours prior to answering the survey (That figure grew to 39 percent when cell phones and other mobile devices are factored in). That 46 percent figure is up from 37 percent for the same question when asked just two years ago, and apparently made up of young people with higher education (65 percent of online news junkies are college graduates, with only 22 percent of them ages 65 or older).

Even more impressive is the rise of social media’s importance in the news landscape. “The percentage of Americans saying they saw news or news headlines on a social networking site yesterday has doubled – from 9% to 19% – since 2010,” the report points out, adding that “among adults younger than age 30, as many saw news on a social networking site the previous day (33 percent) as saw any television news (34 percent), with just 13 percent having read a newspaper either in print or digital form.” Facebook is by far the most successful of all social sites, with 41 percent of all adults using it regularly for news, compared with just 13 percent for Twitter.

Social networking sites have a far higher news penetration than other sites you may have thought would be more traditionally popular; compared with the 33 percent who get their news from social media, only 12 percent read news blogs on a regular basis, with just 5 percent listening to news podcasts. This may be considered a lesson for Huffington Post and other news sites: Perhaps it’s time to just start using Facebook and save yourself the costs of a website.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Netflix confirms loss of streaming content from A&E Networks

More than 800 hours of content from A&E Networks disappeared from Netflix's Watch Instantly service on Friday, and it may not be coming back quick enough for the streaming provider, thanks to complicated negotiations.

If you’ve been spending your downtime this summer catchng up on such shows as Hoarders or Pawn Stars on Netflix’s Watch Instantly streaming service, you may have been surprised this weekend when you went to continue your catch-up spree. Don’t worry, however; you weren’t falling victim to some kind of well-intentioned televisual intervention via long-distance proxy when you couldn’t find the shows on the service. It turns out, around 800 hours of content from A&E and affiliated networks was taken from the service on Friday, and more is on the way out.

The Hollywood Reporter has confirmation from Netflix that the A&E titles were removed from the service at the end of last week. “A number of titles expired today, that is true, but we have titles coming on and off all the time,” reported Netflix spokesman Joris Evans when asked about the disappearance of shows including not only Hoarders and Pawn Stars, but also Storage Wars, American Pickers and several others. As Evans’ statement may suggest, Netflix is playing down the show’s disappearance, and with some reason; the company is actually still in negotiation with A&E over a new agreement that would see the various shows return to the service sooner rather than later, in which case, why draw attention to what may end up being a hiccup in service?

On the other hand, there’s the other hand. The negotiations between A&E and Netflix didn’t lead to an agreement in time for uninterrupted service, and they are still ongoing three days into the shows being offline with, according to the Hollywood Reporter’s unnamed sources, no end in sight. The issue that hasn’t been settled isn’t, apparently, anything to do with money but exclusivity, interestingly enough; Netflix is said to be asking for “some level of exclusivity that A&E is unwilling to grant.”

It’s possible that this could be a sign of things to come for Netflix. With the rise of alternate streaming avenues for broadcasters – Amazon Prime and Hulu, to name just two, not to mention the continually-rumored Apple variation on the idea that may or may not be connected with the equally long-rumored Apple TV product – Netflix may find more and more often that broadcasters have no problem with the idea of sharing their content with streaming services, but are increasingly unwilling to limit the number of services that their content is available on, no matter how much money is offered to sweeten the deal. In this, Netflix may be a victim of its own success; having proven the value of streaming content, now they have to deal with a market in which the content providers recognize the value of their content in this context.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Apple Maps link redirect to Google Maps when you share them

Apple Maps in iOS 6 lets you drop a pin and share the location over email, SMS or social networks. The recipient can click on these links and open the point described in the URL. It seems for now, though, Apple is choosing to let people open these links in Google Maps.

This comes as no surprise considering the Apple Maps are only available on iOS 6 devices so it’s better to let people open the link in what is arguably the best and most popular mapping service in the world. If you do have an iOS 6 device, then it would open within the Apple Maps application.

There does seem to be an issue on iOS 6 devices at the moment, where certain apps tend to open the link within Google Maps in the browser whereas others open it correctly within the Maps application. This probably has more to do with those applications and an update should fix the issue.

Source : blog[dot]gsmarena[dot]com

Sharing is not caring: How social networks ruin amazing secrets

Social networks encourage spreading everything you encounter far and wide, but sharing can actually destroy the very things you want to promote.

With Twitter, Facebook and even LinkedIn “share” buttons plastered on every website, any online experience can become a social one with the click of a link. The ubiquity of social networks encourages the thinking that sharing is an unquestionably good thing, especially on the Internet when there’s no limited resource to deplete. The more people that know about something cool, the better, right?

Wrong. I’m here to tell you: People ruin everything. The next time you discover something secret and amazing, you should let it stay that way. Here’s why.

John Peel Archive

Earlier this month, something wonderful was discovered. Unfortunately, that discovery assured its destruction.

On September 10, the Liverpool-based culture blog Seven Streets wrote that an archive of 458 radio shows hosted by legendary DJ John Peel had “turned up on Soundcloud.” On September 12, The Verge picked up the story. By the time I attempted to access the Soundcloud archive eight hours later, it had disappeared. Soon after, “+dB,” the user account which had created this resource had disappeared as well. As Seven Streets wrote in an update to the original post, “Sadly, it looks like the Web police have struck as the channel is currently down.”

Sad indeed. A unique and invaluable cultural resource was destroyed by the publicity The Verge and other outlets brought it, and a passionate patron of the arts was hounded (further) into hiding.

This is far from an isolated case. Public attention destroys great things all the time, even in a digital world that’s supposed to foster sharing.

The Awful Forums

The private forums for the comedy website Something Awful make another ready example — only the Awful Forums didn’t need public news stories to be destroyed by the public.

Launched in 2001, the SA Forums were for years very close-knit communities of like-minded nerds. The success of The Forums could be attributed to two factors: a $9.95 sign-up fee (which kept less-determined users away), and curation by SA’s forum admins, who were never afraid to drop the banhammer to ensure the forums stayed the forums.

Unfortunately, the Awful Forums were irrevocably changed by explosive growth in 2004. It wasn’t just that there were massive amounts of new users. It was that most were joining for the wrong reason: to access the short-lived “BitTorrent Barnyard” — a family of subforums which hosted BitTorrent files when the legality of this activity was more of a grey area.

Tens of thousands of new users flooded in to the forums. Most weren’t up to the standards of the previous guard, and many were ignorant of the codes of conduct for the community. When the Barnyard was shut down on January 1st, 2005, this unwanted influx of new user accounts was cited as the reason. As one forum user wrote in SomethingAwful’s own SAClopedia in late-November 2004,

Fight club will be no more on January 1, 2005. This is because [SA Founder Rich "Lowtax" Kyanka] is tired of the newbies, and he thinks that it’s just bringing retarded people to the forums (which it is.)

Unfortunately, this change may not have come soon enough. After dilution by hordes of new users that arrived during this period, the forums and would never be the same. The public had ruined them.

Apple

I’m sure veterans of sites like Reddit, 4chan, and Digg pine for “the good old days” in a way similar to senior Awful Forums users. Long-time Apple fans may soon join these groups. This will be due to the unfortunate side effects of Apple’s ascent to hardware dominance: increased vulnerability by viruses and other exploits, and decreased coolness implied by ownership of the Apple device.

OS X has long-enjoyed (and promoted) a reputation for being more secure than competing operating systems. Apple’s engineering skill is one reason for this advantage. A bigger reason may be that hackers target Apple devices less often because Apple’s market share is significantly smaller than that for Windows. As Apple’s market share grows, this may change — causing, I’m sure, great dissatisfaction for millions of Apple fans.

Further, in the months following iPhone’s and iPad’s release, the novelty of each was so great that mere ownership of the device made for a solid 10 minutes of conversation with any non-owner. Fast forward a few years, and Apple now sells 2 million iPhones in its first day of preorders.

Moving from exclusivity to ubiquity has made Apple billions, but it’s also made its devices less interesting to own and maybe even less secure. We may have been better off had the excellence of Apple experiences remained a secret.

Not a new problem

The harm that a crowd brings to anything noteworthy can extend outside the digital world, too. See the reason shows at many of Portland’s best house venues are now secret. See the effect that many fear Portlandia and The New York Times’ affections will have on our fair city (which, incidentally, is a terrible place to which you should never consider moving). In each case, greater knowledge by the public threatens the very existence of the thing being celebrated.

The scientists who study the world’s most-exceptional trees understand this. The locations of trees like the 379-foot Hyperion, the tallest known tree, and the Del Norte Titan, one of the most-massive, are closely-guarded secrets. So too is the exact location of Methuselah, one of the oldest.

They learned their lesson from the tragic story of Prometheus, a ~5,000-year-old tree which was chopped down by a graduate student in 1964. This and other conservation fails have taught ecologists a valuable lesson: even if 99 percent of people will behave themselves appropriately, there remains that one person in one hundred who will not. That person may even have great intentions, but those intentions don’t make their actions any less destructive. Hence, secrecy — something more of us should consider when dealing with things both wonderful and fragile.

Conclusion

I think we could all take a cue from ecology and learn that cool, secret things deserve to remain cool, secret things. Even on the Internet.

Some things will be destroyed immediately, simply due to greater knowledge of them. Some communities are great in large part due to their exclusivity, and thus should remain exclusive. Some products are cool because few have access to them, and some are secure for the same reason. Some things are so rare and so fragile that secrecy is the only way that they can continue to be.

Yes, people might think (for a moment, at least) you are cool for sharing some secret. Yes, you may get some page views for your “discovery” of an amazing thing. But, if you really care about the preservation of that secret thing you’d best shut up about it.

Welcome to the antisocial.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

FaceTime over cellular confirmed by Verizon for iPhone 5

As you may or may not recall from the recent iPhone 5 announcement from Apple, the new iPhone was claimed to support FaceTime video calling over cellular networks, although it wasn’t clear for which networks.

Verizon has since confirmed that FaceTime on the iPhone 5 will be available to customers on any of their data plans.

This is in contrast to what some other carriers are offering, such as AT&T, who are requiring iPhone 5 users to sign up for a new Mobile Share plan in order to use FaceTime over anything other than WiFi.

Verizon’s announcement, of course comes with the added caveat that data restrictions will apply, depending on the type of data plan you have, so you’ll have to keep an eye on your data cap.

Source : blog[dot]gsmarena[dot]com

All give and no take: Why should we use check-in apps, again?

Social networks at least provide some utility for the privacy they take, but check-in apps like Foursquare and Saga get an intimate glimpse at your life without much in return.

A very dear friend of mine, who is not the most prolific of Facebook users, posted the following message on his feed over the weekend:

“I just unlocked the “Newbie” badge on @foursquare for checking in for the first time!”

He checked in at the local grocery store, and hasn’t checked in anywhere since.

The fact that he’s about two years late on the Foursquare fad notwithstanding, I’m only left to assume that after everyone on his feed found out that he was at the grocery store, he realized just how creepy check-in apps are. It’s certainly not because he’s worried about being caught in a compromising place. He’s the least likely person in my circle of friends to do that sort of thing, mainly because I know what his wife would do to him if he accidently checked in at Tassels Adult Entertainment Complex.

I recently tried the new Saga app myself. It tries to make life a game, like Foursquare does. It gives you experience points for going to cool, new places based on its suggestions. It knows when you go to these places because it’s constantly tracking you. But it sounded like an interesting idea for me because I don’t get out as much as I used to (thanks, three-year-old daughter), so when I do get out I would like to maximize the experience. I also do some travel writing on the side, so finding some cool new places around town is a professional responsibility.

It lasted about two minutes before I deleted it.

That’s how long it took me to realize that all of these apps are thinly veiled marketing schemes and might also be serving to undo the community that they bill themselves as creating.

Before you fit me for a tin-foil hat, let me defend myself as a rational person. I barely read Terms of Service before clicking the “Agree” button. I have all of my usernames and passwords saved in both my browser and my phone. In other words, I tend to think the best of both people and companies.

And I don’t have anything to hide, location-wise. If my wife had somehow gotten access to my Saga data, the only thing she would find out about me is that I go to Target, Best Buy, and Barnes & Noble entirely too much. She already knows how lame I am, so this won’t be news. It won’t divulge my mistress’ address, mainly because we always meet in public places like Target, Best Buy, and Barnes & Noble. Just kidding, honey.

The first thing I worried about was becoming a sheep to the app, blindly following it wherever it led me, even if I had already heard from various sources that a certain BBQ truck was substandard to the one I already frequent. Good marketing can manipulate even the strongest of minds.

In other words, with these apps some people can lose the freedom of choice.

The second aspect that troubles me applies more for Foursquare than Saga. As we know, the gamification of Foursquare assigns “Mayors” to various locales. I’m a very competitive person and I like to think of certain places as “my places,” even though rationally I know these places are visited by hundreds of other people per day.

For example, say there is a place I like to frequent for lunch at least once a week. I’ve been going to this place since college. In my will, it requests that my favorite wrap from this establishment be placed in my coffin with my decaying corpse. I check in on Foursquare and find out that there’s someone out there who goes to this place two or three times per week. They are obviously the Mayor.

I will immediately hate this person, even though he or she is probably a nice person and obviously has exquisite taste. In any other situation we could probably be good friends, which is theoretically the point of all social apps, including check-in apps. But Foursquare has pitted us against each other.

Usage statistics for Foursquare show that the app isn’t growing at the rate it was a year ago, but still shows a user base that numbers over 20 million. That’s 20 million people who run the risk of being blocked from their friends’ Facebook feeds, unfollowed on Twitter, and serving as a conduit for the marketing activities of corporations. As I’ve written before, Facebook and numerous other online entities serve the purpose of marketers, but I concluded that Facebook provides its users enough to make the exchange worth it.

I don’t know if having an outside chance at being the fake Mayor of the gas station across the street has the same value.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Opinion: Are you ready for the physical Web?

The Web might not just be a place you visit on your laptop anymore. Wearable computers and ubiquitous sensor networks promise to bring the benefits of connectivity to all aspects of life in the near future.

You are sitting in a park when a small child tugs on your pant leg and warns you not to step on the magical creatures under your bench. Odds are she doesn’t have a vivid imagination; she’s just playing The Hidden Park, an iPhone app.

In this game, kids point an iPhone around the park, and they follow a map that tells them where the magical creatures live. They have to solve riddles and puzzles, and they take pictures along the way — which can serve as “proof” to doubting adults that we are not alone.

Welcome to the early signs of the “physical Web,” where everything in our world is as digital and interconnected as the Web is today. It will change your career and your life, so let’s take a quick tour.

The Webcam Social Shopper lets people turn any webcam into a mirror, so you can find clothes online and hold them up to see how they will look on you.

Electric Foxy takes things a step further, by connecting clothing with technology. The company is experimenting with Ping, a ring that gives you feedback when you exercise, and Move, a line of clothing designed for athletes and dancers to help them understand precisely the movements of their bodies.

Not every innovation will necessarily represent a step forward for society. A Japanese gadget enthusiast hooked up a Kinect (from Microsoft Xbox 360) sensor to a pair of video glasses and created a virtual girlfriend named Hatsune Miku, who follows him around. She’s a pretty good, if somewhat creepy dancer; no word on how good the developer is.

Here’s one thing I’m pretty sure about: Looking through a computer will be dramatically different than looking at a computer. You look at your laptop and smartphone, but when companies start offering smart glasses we will literally look at the world through computers.

When this happens, Hatsune will have lots of competition. Zombies, athletes, movie stars, game tokens, fact sheets, cooking demonstrations, and, yes, advertisements will be everywhere. At this point, we all will have three choices: ignore the changes, dig deeper, or escape the real world.

#1 Ignore the changes

Since my intention is to write about entrepreneurial opportunities arising from technology, this isn’t the option I’d recommend. Sure, you could stick your head in the sand and reject new technologies. But the people likely to do that stopped reading five paragraphs ago.

#2 Dig deeper

The Physical Web will bring humanity closer to the truth than we have ever been before. I don’t mean “the meaning of life” truth. I mean the truth as in, “Is it time to water my garden?” or “How long will it take me to drive from my office to home if I leave right now?”

Nearly everything will have data connected to it, or will become data itself. BigArtMob lets people position art — from graffiti to museum art — onto a map, where people can then access it and it can become the foundation for, say, personalized art tours.

You probably know that smart glasses are nearly here. More than 17 million people have watched Google’s Project Glass video showing how data will be overlaid on nearly everything you see.

This data will make you smarter, which is another reason not to choose option number one. If you do, everyone else could be smarter than you.

Of course, you won’t need to don a pair of smart glasses to benefit from the physical Web. You could instead just connect sensors around your home, yard and office… and then tell your stuff what to tell you.

To get a sense (no pun intended) of what this will be like, stop by IFTTT. Here you can already tell the Web what to tell you. For example, I use IFTTT to send me a text every time the word “snow” is in the forecast in Vermont. Even better interfaces will spring up for sensors.

#3 Escape the real world

Watch for escapism to get a lot more powerful.

I have no inside information whatsoever, but you can bet that one of the first power users of smart glasses will be the porn industry, which is always the first to embrace new tech. “In your face” will take on a whole new meaning.

So if you buy your teenager a pair of smart glasses, you might also want to think about limiting what he or she can do with them.

Game companies will be close behind porn merchants, with new offerings that bring zombies, aliens and monsters into the real world. Players will be able to hunt and “kill” real-life people and animals, as well as imaginary characters that the rest of us don’t see.

I’m not a fan of movies or TV shows in which the viewers get to choose the ending, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see new types of entertainment spring up that allow people to escape far away from everyday life. As I write this, the Oculus Rift virtual-reality headset is blowing the doors off its $250,000 funding goal on Kickstarter. The headset will bring gamers inside the game, in a way no device has done before.

And it’s a pretty safe bet that by this time next year even Oculus Rift will seem tame.

So what does this mean for your career and your life? Keep in mind three things as you make decisions about what to buy, where to work, and how to invest your savings. The emerging physical Web will:

1.) Link devices to other devices, plus devices to people and vice versa.

2.) Cause sensors to be built into nearly everything, and they will be connected, too.

3.) Let you tell all this stuff what to do, and what to tell you.

Bruce Kasanoff is a speaker, author and innovation strategist who tracks sensor-driven innovation at Sense of the Future. Kasanoff and co-author Michael Hinshaw teamed up to explore more of the opportunities unearthed by disruptive forces in Smart Customers, Stupid Companies.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com