Mike McGuire
Research VP
11 years at Gartner
21 years IT industry
Michael McGuire is a research vice president with Gartner's Media Industry Advisory Services. Mr. McGuire covers online music and media distribution, DRM, copyright-related issues, publishing , and how social-networking technology…Read Full Bio
by Mike McGuire | December 6, 2010 | 3 Comments
It’s quite interesting to note how one blog post can both illuminate and obfuscate hugely complex issues.
An example? Here’s one right here. Google’s chief legal counsel, Kent Walker, pledges that Google will work even harder to make sure that copyright holders which send take-down notices because unlicensed content is on, for example, YouTube. That’s a nice gesture but, frankly, it’s been the rule of the road since the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) went into effect. (To qualify for the DMCA’s “safe harbor” provisions a site must take down copyrighted material when requested by the copyright holder.)
So, adherence to takedown notices, check. Well done. And Walker notes that the company will improve its “counter-notice” procedures for those who post content that is removed for alleged copyright infringement. This is a nod to so-called “fair use” exemptions to copyright infringement claims. And boy, is that going to be a slippery slope. (The obfuscation of a complex issue.)
Two other items in Walker’s post, however, are worthy of discussion – and watching in the future: the promise to “. . . prevent terms closely associated with piracy from appearing in Autocomplete” and a promise to “. . . improve our AdSense anti-piracy review” to make sure web pages trafficking in infringing content are blocked and that violators are expelled from AdSense. (The illumination.)
What Google surely wants to avoid is any liability for copyright infringement (and earlier this year it won the first round in the $1 billion lawsuit Viacom filed brought against Google/YouTube but the media giant is vowing to appeal) but links ain’t copyrighted. This means Google is taking, for them, a fairly bold step in saying it’s going to be carefully policing AdSense so that when a user types in “free music,” links to possible file-trading software or illicit Torrents are filtered out. I say bold because it’s quite possible that Google might have been deriving some folding money, as grandpa used to call it, from the operators of such allegedly nefarious software. (I said “might” and “allegedly.”)
So why did all this “ have to happen”? Because business is business, that’s why. Google’s rumored online music service, its announced Google TV offering, not to mention the Viacom suit all hinge on Google being perceived and acting as an ally of rightsholders. As a matter of law, the safe harbor provisions can and should protect Google from what happens between individual consumers and the sources of information or content on the Internet that they just happen to use Google search to locate.
But that all changes when a company decides it wants to get in the business of actually generating users and money from content – as opposed to making it indirectly by merely providing a tool to find that content.
So, to all the media companies out there, you got something you’ve always wanted: a Google that’s willing to be a bit more engaged in your efforts to tame the Internet beast.
To all those who thought Google was your copy-left friend, I say, business is business. Get over it.
Category: Courts/Tech/Copyright Tension media business models online content Online Music Search/Discovery/Recommendation Systems Tags:
by Mike McGuire | November 16, 2010 | 2 Comments
I vowed I would not resort to ‘Long and Winding Road” references to describe the process that led finally to the Beatles catalog being available on iTunes.
What’s it mean to the music industry and to iTunes? For one thing, iTunes chief Eddie Cue can finally check off the “get the Beatles catalog" item on his to-do list. Beyond that, the announcement has more PR value than actual revenue-generating potential. This band’s catalog (of new Beatles songs) effectively stopped growing in 1970, when the band broke up and stopped recording together. (Their respective solo catalogs have generally been available on major online music services.) The catalog has been released on vinyl LPs, cassette tapes, 8-track tapes and CDs. While new music fans will come to buy a few downloads here and there, young adults are just as likely to raid their parents’ collections of, take your pick, box sets of CDs, tapes or LPs
That said, the iTunes team are masters of repackaging content, and the new Beatles page is really quite nice. Among the new items: a complete copy of the band’s first U.S. concert in 1964 in Washington, D.C.
So now iTunes has the Beatles. Yay!
Everybody get back to work.
Category: Uncategorized Tags:
by Mike McGuire | November 7, 2010 | 1 Comment
At first glance, the Entertainment ID Registry (EIDR) strikes one as one of those consortia that could easily end up claiming to want to work together as an industry to solve common problems , but either out of disinterest or distrust, never quite pull off codifying and spreading whatever standard was originally desired. Yet, I’m hoping EIDR actually avoids the fate of well-intention-but-never-deployed standard.
Why? Common IDs are required as content is increasingly able to be transmitted across multiple networks, in multiple formats and consumed by multiple types of devices. As the number of possible formats and consumption models increase, do do the requirements to track and account for this consumption. Having a common ID is crucial for increase accuracy (which is the basis for any business model, let alone new and emerging ones) and lower costs of operation, among other things.
The consortia currently has five of the major movie studios are members, technology providers include ROVI (formerly Macrovision), CableLabs, MovieLabs, Comcast, Ad-ID, and others. EIDR members said the new standard is now in beta and that the consortium is accepting new membership requests.
While I include myself among those industry watchers whose first reaction to hearing of the birthing of another industry consortium is to typically roll my eyes, as a consumer, I hope this one does last.
First, it’s a consortium with the first objective being the agreement of every consortium member to immediately start using the EIDR’s common content ID format which is based on DOI, a metadata standard in many industries. A common content ID is something that my colleagues and I have been pushing for in multiple documents (“Foundations in Place for Digital Experience Management,” and “Mapping Content Experiences,” among others) because it is an important step in reducing friction in the licensing process between rightsholders and media companies and emerging online content and hybrid (as in hybrid TV) services.
Second, the industry group is creating a non-profit company to oversee the standard and the registry. Third, the consortium is working with the Center for National Resource Initiatives (CNRI) which has developed similar common ID standards and systems for academic journals and the military. CNRI will serve as EIDR’s software integrator/professional services arm.
When I asked personnel at companies involved in EIDR as current or potential members, why all of a sudden – after years of false-starts and seeming indifference to investing in common IDs and license registries – there’s all this action? I mean, just a couple of months ago, the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE) announced UltraViolet, a consortium of device manufacturers. And three years ago when I interviewed a number of execs and managers who oversee rights-in and rights-out licensing systems at the studios and networks who, at the time, all said an industry registry and common ID were all absolute requirements but they could not see how or when their industry company would actually back it or get involved in starting one. (There have been attempts to create a common content ID in recent years but they foundered due to concerns about costs, extensibility or administration.)
Bottom line: it seems that the c-level execs, the technology execs and the lawyers all finally saw the need to invest in the industry’s infrastructure in order to profit in a non-linear/online world. Let’s hope it sticks.
Category: Uncategorized Tags: DRM vs. DEM, IPRM, online media
by Mike McGuire | October 27, 2010 | Comments Off
As the World Series gets ready to take over more than a few news cycles in the coming week or so, it’s interesting to consider how consumers will watch and track the series. It’s possible that the 2010 World Series will be remembered not just for the games themselves but also as being a milestone in the evolution of broadcast TV and Internet-based delivery of TV programming.
In addition to using MLB’s AtBat app on the iPad, I’m going to be watching how the Series will play out on ivi.TV, from ivi.Inc. (www.ivi.tv). For $4.99/month, a consumer downloads a Mac or Windows software client and is able to get live (retransmitted) TV from a handful of stations – primarily in Seattle, WA, where ivi.TV is headquartered. (The company is working to sign up major market stations in Los Angeles and New York.)
ivi.TV is getting attention for developing a method for distributing linear live broadcasts to Mac and Windows PCs based on their proprietary peering architecture – each client is also a distributor – and content protection. Overshadowing the significance of the technical solution is the charged atmosphere in broadcast television, what with IP-centric solutions for delivering TV content (GoogleTV, Apple TV etc.) and the threat of “cable cutters.” (My colleagues Andrew Frank and Allen Weiner have noted recently in their respective blogs here and here some of the more noteworthy examples of these dust ups.)
Within a few days of launching in September, ivi.TV received cease-and-desist orders from broadcasters, leading the company to file a motion for a federal judge to find that ivi.TV does not infringe copyrights, a move ivi.TV is hoping avoids a bunch of time-consuming time in court. (The case is still pending.) ivi.TV is resting its business on US copyright law (section 111 of the Copyright Act) which enables them to retransmit live TV signals, as long as they pay the statutory rate to the Register of Copyrights which then pays networks and rightsholders. (Company execs have told us that a number of smaller stations were particularly interested in working with ivi.TV so that they would effectively increase their audience size, thereby increasing their appeal to advertisers. However, the stations were instructed by legal counsel that their existing distribution contracts with cable companies and content companies prevented the stations from retransmitting its signal over the Internet.)
Having watched the travails of the music industry as the labels file lawsuits against consumers and pursued legislation to control technological innovation, I have to wonder if the 2010 World Series will be viewed as a watershed or Waterloo for the TV incumbents.
Category: Uncategorized Tags: online media, TV 2.0
by Mike McGuire | June 30, 2010 | 2 Comments
So now we’ll get an answer to the $9.99 question: will making TV shows available on consumer PCs and portable devices be enough to get those consumers to pay directly for TV shows? Shows they’re probably already getting for free or through their service provider. OK, wait, let’s put a real fine point on this question: Will consumers pay directly for TV shows – they likely get for free somewhere else — that include advertising?
Beats me but the joint venture that is Hulu (owned by News Corp, NBC-Universal and The Walt Disney Company), aims to find out. Users will pay $9.99/month and get to watch advertising. (On the other hand, cable subscribers and other pay-TV subscribers have been doing that for decades, so maybe this Hulu Plus thingie is just, well, a repackaging of an old idea?)
Maybe, maybe not. For $9.99/month and you can get entire seasons worth of current shows as well as back-catalog or shows which left the airwaves years ago. (The existing free product typically has the most recently aired show plus a few trailing episodes.) Users will also get to watch content in 720p HD on PCs and Macs, iPads, iPhones, a Samsung Internet-connected TV, Samsung BluRay players, and in the future, Sony PlayStation and Microsoft XBox gaming consoles. (Presumably here will be even more devices in the future).
Hulu CEO Jason Kilar described Hulu Plus as a “revolutionary ad-supported subscription product,” in this blog post.
Well, we’ll see if the magic translates into revenue and how the cable world’s “TV Everywhere” efforts stack up against Hulu Plus.
Category: media business models online video Tags: Hulu, online media
by Mike McGuire | June 25, 2010 | Comments Off
I’m over in Europe running about visiting clients at the moment, so it was interesting to be in a different part of the world when the news that a judge effectively gutted Viacom’s $1billion copyright infringement case against YouTube/Google. (Yes, yes, I know, Viacom will appeal which means this case will drag on for awhile.)
The judge sided with Google’s argument that the “safe harbor” provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act protect Google and other online portals, ISPs and communications service providers against liability for the alleged or actual copyright infringement committed by their users — as long as they (Google or any ISP or site) respond to take-down notices sent by the rightsholders and remove the copyrighted material. During the case many colorful anecdotes made their way into the press. Some of my favorites:
* Google knew what was going on and ignored it because traffic volumes were growing (an allegation made by Viacom’s legal team).
* Viacom employees actually used YouTube to their own ends by uploading promos of programs in hopes of growing the audience (an allegation made by Google)
My first reaction when I saw these nuggets appear in the press ? “Duh.”
Sure the Google/YouTube teams would know there were/are infringing videos on the site. Evidence was presented during the case that, when notified they apparently made signficant efforts to remove the offending material. That’s what the DMCA “safe harbor” provisions require.
And I was not surprised to see that any number of Viacom employees may have uploaded copies of their very own company’s shows to the site. For God’s sake, if you were responsible for promoting some show, and you wanted to maybe make a few consumers aware of your program (or remind them of why they like the program) wouldn’t you go to a site that gets hundreds of millions of visitors every day of the week? Of course you would.
Consumers like online video. They like sites and services that make it very, very convenient to get video. Even the music labels, some at least, have recognized this, hence the Vevo channel on YouTube. Now, while advertising revenue generated from these online videos may not yet be where some had hoped, they are generating revenue. The supremacy of convenience is what consumers are opting for – I think they’ll pay for those services that can deliver on that.
So, while Viacom will pursue an appeal, I wonder if some of those legal resources might be better applied to finding more ways to license and exploit online versions of Viacom’s popular content assets and figure out how to balance the opportunities of online and over-the-top options and figuring out how to evolve incumbent broadcast carriage models.
Hugely complicated issues, indeed. But maybe it’s time for both parties to get out of the courtroom and get into the lab and boardroom.
Category: media business models online content Online Music Uncategorized Tags:
by Mike McGuire | June 25, 2010 | Comments Off
HP has apparently forgotten all about it’s ill-fated attempt in 2004 to leverage the iPod’s then-growing popularity and the mushrooming consumer interest in online music distribution and digital portable music players.
Why? Because it’s reportedly picked up Seattle-based Melodeo, developer of various online music applications (including one of the earliest cool iPhone apps for the band the Presidents of the United States of America).
While the article I’ve linked to speculates HP is angling to make some sort of cloud-based online streaming music application or service or what amounts to a cloud-based storage locker for a user’ s music library, I’d have to really wonder what would motivate HP to do something like that. Extend the value of the consumer products by providing a nice little media-sharing technology? As the kids say, whatever.
I’ll be curious to see how HP explains this acquisition. From my perspective, it’s a puzzler.
Category: Uncategorized Tags:
by Mike McGuire | June 9, 2010 | Comments Off
One of the serious challenges facing media companies and new online (and I include mobile in “online”) distribution intermediaries is knowing what content is available to license out (media and content companies) and how to secure licensed content and then track its consumption (distribution intermediaries). Royalty calculations, among other contractual obligations, are paid out based on relatively complex contracts and license terms of the many different ways a song, a TV show or a movie can be distributed, monetized and consumed.
At the root of this challenge is something that sounds fairly prosaic but is fraught with complexities and that is how a movie or episode of a TV series (or the entire series) is identified.
This announcement between CBS and Secure Path Technology, Inc.is an example of a couple of entities taking concrete steps to overcome the challenges associated registering and licensing content at time when incumbent distribution models are under siege by various Internet-based offerings. As consumers increasingly program their own content experiences, demanding it on their schedule and on the devices they want, online service providers and media companies are going to struggle to keep up with the demands of the marketplace if they don’t make the investments in metadata systems and common content identifiers.
Beyond the very important requirements for automation of licensing and calculating royalties, prioritizing investments in metadata management and content identification standards will pay off for media companies in another important area: recommendation and discovery systems. Why? The more consistent the metadata fields are across media sectors e.g. music or movies, recommendation and discovery technologies engines can be more rapidly deployed – if they’re developers aren’t having to spend time building up metadata fields.
At their core, deals such as the one between Secure Path and CBS are about efficiencies that need to be developed behind the walls of media companies. Look for more, lots more of these kinds of announcements.
Category: media business models online content Online Music online video Search/Discovery/Recommendation Systems Tags:
by Mike McGuire | May 13, 2010 | Comments Off
Inducement, thy name is Limewire.
So now – almost five years after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June 2005 (in the MGM vs. Grokster case) that purveyors of file-trading software could be held liable for “inducing” copyright infringement – a district court ruling in a suit between the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and Limewire gives the content and technology industries an example of what inducement means.
In 2005, I published a Gartner note on the Supreme Court’s decision, “In the majority opinion, then-Justice David Souter wrote, ‘We hold that one who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement.’” I went on to note that technology and companies considering the development of online content services would have to pay attention to see how courts defined “inducement.”
So now we know. But the Limewire decision, issued Tuesday, doesn’t end the case – a conference is scheduled for June 1 to figure out how the case will proceed.
What happened was that the appeals judge (Judge Kimba Wood, one time nominee for U.S. Attorney General’s position under President Bill Clinton, by the way) granted the RIAA’s motion for summary judgement that the industry group had proven that Limewire system induced infringement, benefitted from it, knew about it and didn’t do much if anything to stop it.
While the importance of getting a precedent for what “inducing” copyright is, in the eyes of U.S. legal system, for those who watch these issues closely, I focused on the judge’s ruling on Limewire’s claim that there are substantial non-infringing uses of the Limewire software and the P2P protocols it uses.
Limewire attempted what is sometimes referred to as the Sony-Betamax defense against the RIAA’s accusation that its system enabled “vicarious copyright infringement” (meaning that the evidence indicates Limewire was profiting from direct infringement and did nothing to stop it), but the judge did not buy it. She swatted it away like an annoying fruit fly buzzing around her head. In fact, she seemed to go out of her way to note that Limewire knew infringement was occurring and took no effective steps to stop it. What caught my eye in this part of the ruling, however, was the judge’s language that “…the record does not support a finding that LimeWire is capable of substantial noninfringing uses.”
This is crucial for the future of any sort of content distribution system that is based on distributed computing or peer-sharing.
I wouldn’t say the door was close to “substantial non-infringing uses” of P2P architectures. I would say that if somebody is thinking about using those technologies for licensed content distribution systems, tracking and enforcing copyright is going to keep you from getting swatted.
Category: Courts/Tech/Copyright Tension media business models online content Online Music Tags:
by Mike McGuire | May 10, 2010 | Comments Off
Want to pay to rent a movie that’s still in the theaters – or just left the theaters and is wending its way through various distribution windows before it gets to the DVD rental or online VOD services – and watch it on your TV?
Well, there’s what we will pay for as consumers and what the movie studios are willing to deliver. As always, there’s a price.
Now, the FCC has approved a proposal by the movie studios which would deliver the new distribution strategy that would enable consumers to pay a fee to get a hi-definition stream of movies that are still in the theaters or just out of theaters. (This would be a distribution window that be slotted in ahead of the so-called “home product” windows of DVDs for sale, rental DVDs, online distribution.) The market calculus is pretty simple: if we’re not getting consumers in the theater, and DVD sales are slipping, and online piracy is a constant, existential threat, then perhaps a “rental” in the form of a tethered stream (encrypted stream with decryption being done by a STB or the consumer’s computer) is the way to go?
Predictably, the studios’ position that in order to deliver this potentially cool benefit, they want protection of the streams. Their answer? The “selective output control feature” they want built into new HD TVs. This technology would prevent a consumer from hooking up an analog recording device or to otherwise redirect the unencrypted stream of content from the computer or STB to the consumer’s TV set.
While the FCC is embarking a new era – pushing network providers to adhere to “net neutrality” like principles, freeing up unused or under-utilized spectrum as part of a national broadband strategy – some of the old tensions remain. Such as the how much control content companies should have over the technology consumers use to access and consume copyrighted material.
Me, I think the FCC needs to continue to focus on maximizing the value of a natural resource – spectrum – and ensuring equal access to the ‘net for all – not dictating consumer-device specifications.
Category: media business models online content online video Tags:
