Just as Johannes Gutenberg's printing press brought books to the mainstream public in the 15th century, Tim Berners-Lee's World Wide Web brought commercial publishing to the people.

Blogging

Blogging not only allowed anybody to publish easily to the Web, it ended up shaking up the print media world.

Blogging began in the 90s as a form of online diary - Rebecca Blood wrote a good pre-history in 2000. One of the early popular blogging services was Blogger.com, launched by Evan Williams (who subsequently became a co-founder of Twitter) and Meg Hourihan in August 1999. The service was acquired by Google in February 2003, a couple of months before ReadWriteWeb began. At that point, 2003, blogging was still seen as an informal diary-type of publishing.

Around 2004-05, blogging started to become accepted as a legitimate news source. This was around the time that ReadWriteWeb began to publish tech news, as well as analysis.

By the end of the decade, many blogs were directly challenging newspapers - proving that a solid news brand, such as Huffington Post, can be created from almost nothing in a few years.

RSS

Blogging software was one part of the democratization of media. RSS ("Really Simple Syndication") was another. There were and still are different versions of RSS, created by Dave Winer and others. But whatever the flavor, syndication has had a major impact on media.

Basically RSS allowed people to subscribe to updates from blogs and other publications. Using RSS Aggregators, people could read news from a selection of niche and general news publications.

Blogs were the first to utilize RSS, but mainstream media followed during the 2005-06 period. Today it is very rare for a major news website - whether it be the New York Times or a leading blog - not to use RSS.

Twitter & The Real-Time Web

The next major development in news media occurred towards the end of this decade. It was of course Twitter and the Real-Time Web.

To be fair, this has challenged not only traditional media - but blogs as well. Now anyone, whether they're a writer or not, can publish 140 characters to the Web. And it might end up as breaking news, as the Hudsen River plane crash proved earlier this year.

Media in the Next Decade

There is much talk of the mainstream media "dying" and blogs usurping traditional media companies like the New York Times. While it's true that blogs sometimes report breaking news stories or analyze them better than newspaper websites, I'm a big believer in the power of brand. Washington Post, Wall St Journal, New York Times - these are all powerful brands and they reach a much wider audience than the vast majority of blogs.

The challenge of course for mainstream media is to (drastically) reduce their costs, because few people want to pay for content these days - news or otherwise.

However, in my view the traditional news media industry is in much less danger of extinction than the music industry. Musicians can bypass record labels completely nowadays, but there will always be a need for news to be questioned, put in context and analyzed. The best media publications of the next 10 years will do that and be successful, the ones that don't will fade away.

See also: Top Internet Trends of 2000-2009: Online Music

Up until now, Dazzboard supported this to-and-fro between PC and mobile while also allowing you to upload to media sharing sites like Facebook, Flickr, and YouTube. Today, the company adds one more option: MySites, a web-based service offering an unlimited amount of cloud storage.

The first step to using Dazzboard is installing the software, which currently works only as a browser plugin (IE/Firefox) on Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7 PCs. The company has a Mac version in the works and will support Google Chrome once extensions come to that browser. A Facebook app and iGoogle gadget are also available.

From the web-based Dazzboard interface, you can easily move your files to and from the supported platforms and online services. You can browse, play, and organize your files which are organized into three categories: photos, music, and mobile.

For now, Dazzboard's focus is on the consumer market so for end users, the service is free. However, companies and brands wanting to use Dazzboard's API can do so if they're interested in sharing their content with website visitors or Facebook fans. Dazzboard simplifies the process of having that content pushed from web to mobile and handles the content's global mobile distribution for the brand. This service will be available for a fee and will help keep the consumer-level offering free.

...Now With Unlimited Cloud Storage!

With Dazzboard's new "Cloud Storage" option introduced today, you can upload files to MySites, a personalized homepage designed for file sharing. The MySites web service provides you with a custom URL (yourname.mysites.com), privacy control features, an RSS feed, and a multi-file upload option for sharing several files at once. After uploading your media, your page will feature the files and links to download and you also have the option to share the files using embed codes, Facebook, Twitter, social bookmarking services (Delicious, Digg, Google and Reddit), and even mobile QR codes.

Unbelievably, MySites, a free service, has no upload limit, no file size limit, no resizing of the original file, no download limits, no speed limits, no nag screens, and no watermarking. You can play your content right from MySites as the service provides players for the different file types hosted there (video, music, etc.) The company also plans to offer a Dropbox-style desktop client and API in the near future.

Dazzboard does not have an iPhone application at this time and may or may not ever build one. Since iTunes essentially does the same thing for iPhones and iPods, it would almost be foolhardy for Dazzboard to try and compete with Apple or any of the other thousands of apps available in the crowded market that is the iTunes App Store. Instead, Dazzboard's focus is on the other mobile devices outside of Apple's ecosystem. That's not a bad plan. Although sometimes it seems like everyone owns an iPhone these days, the reality is that worldwide, their are still plenty of other mobile phones to choose from. Now those device owners can enjoy media on their mobiles, too.

In September 2007, when seventeen years old and living in the Netherlands, van Poppel decided to launch a news aggregation business called Breaking News Online. Months later, somehow, he came into possession of a full video of an Osama Bin Laden statement before any of the major news outlets had it, and sold it to Reuters.

Why BNO is Exciting

Three days after van Poppel sold the Bin Laden tape to Reuters, he said in an interview with Inside Cable News that he'd originally reached out to CNN's iReport with the tape. They were unresponsive. He then tried to contact a number of other news outlets before connecting with and making a deal with Reuters. Breaking News Online had already launched months earlier, but the experience must have underlined van Poppel's belief that he could find, select and push out news faster and better than other larger media outlets. The experience probably provided some funds for that vision as well.

Since then, BNO has added editors in the United States, Ireland and Mexico to its team. The team watches news wires closely for important updates, exercises their own brand of editorial judgment in deciding what to push out through their various distribution channels and then they push it out fast.

BNO has made the most of a number of different media technologies. The team is best known for its presence on Twitter - at 800k, BNO has four times more followers than ABC News and twice as many as Newsweek. BNO also makes extensive use of RSS, email, FriendFeed and now promises an iPhone app leveraging the phone's brand new push messaging sometime next month.

In a media landscape that some argue has transcended the old models of scarcity and physical distribution - it could be efficient research infrastructure, high-quality editorial judgment and building online channels of distribution that make the difference. Or, as blogger Mike Bracco put it on The Next Web today, "Unlike their mainstream counterparts the service does a great job of only reporting news worthy of the 'breaking' label. I can attest to this as well as their ability to deliver breaking news before anyone else. I have found them to consistently report news 10-15 minutes before it hits mainstream websites or blogs and well before it is ever reported on TV." In the news game today, being best and first by minutes means it's your link that gets passed along. Breaking News Online is excelling at that game with its short, quick updates.

On the Other Hand...

Now BNO says it will enter the world of the iPhone in August. Every major media outlet is building its own iPhone app but few if any others are charging money for them. The BNO app will cost $1.99 to download. Even crazier, BNO says it will charge an ongoing subscription fee of 99 cents per month for breaking news updates.

All of this is fascinating, but isn't BNO still just an aggregator? In traditional media outlets "aggregator" is a dirty word (unless they are the ones doing the aggregation). In fact, Breaking News Online does very little original reporting. The company is going to monetize its research flow, editorial judgment, distribution channels...and links to other peoples' content. If BNO is successful, there is a real risk of original content publishers objecting to the fact that someone else has found a way to make money off of (links sending traffic to) their content.

Imagine if the Huffington Post charged money for an iPhone app that pushed links to its pages aggregating content from elsewhere. Major media companies would blow a gasket. Ariana Huffington told those companies at a Congressional hearing on saving newspapers this Spring that if she sends them millions of readers and they can't figure out how to monetize that traffic - that's their problem. Some companies gasping for air didn't find that convincing and insist that aggregators hand over some of the only money that anyone in the media ecosystem has figured out how to make online. Admittedly, if the professional reporters on the ground aren't getting paid - then there's going to be less content for aggregators to aggregate.

BNO says it doesn't think of itself as primarily an aggregator, van Poppel says it will do even more original reporting as the company expands.

The internet is changing everything and it's changing itself fast enough that it's a challenge to keep track of it all. Recurring, mobile micropayments for near real-time aggregated news content delivered using push delivery? It's hard to think of a sentence that packs more hot-button concepts into such a small space. That's pretty impressive for a 19 year old.

According to Robson's report (available here courtesy of the Financial Times), today's teens don't really consume any of what you could call "traditional" media. For example, notes Robson, they don't read newspapers because why bother reading "pages and pages of text" when they could instead "watch the news summarized on the internet or TV?"

They're also not interested in listening to the radio. Although they may occasionally tune in to various stations, they prefer online sites like Last.fm where they can stream music ad-free and, more importantly, where they get to pick the playlist - not some unknown DJ.

What's more surprising, perhaps, are Robson's statements about teens and TV consumption. He says that his peers still watch TV, often tuning into a particular season of TV show or sporting event like football, but the group of "regular TV watchers" who tune into daily programs is shrinking. Also, teens watch less TV than ever before thanks to online streaming services like BBC's iPlayer. (Robson lives in the U.K.). When commercials come on, teens, unlike more patient older generations who grew up without fast-forward buttons and DVRs, simply change the channel.

Internet and New Media

Given that teens aren't into old media like newspapers and radio, you would think that they would be adopting the latest new media crazes like Twitter in droves. Apparently, that's not the case. In fact, Robson says teens see no point in using Twitter. "Most have signed up for the service," notes Robson, "but then just leave it as they realize that they are not going to update it." The teens realize that no one is viewing their profile, so they see tweeting as a pointless activity, he adds. Besides, to update Twitter via text message takes credit (referring to cell phone text plans) and they'd rather use that credit to text their friends.

Twitter aside, most teens are into the Internet. They use Facebook for social networking (so it's not just for "old people?"), they search and research topics with Google, watch videos on YouTube, and download music for their iPods from file-sharing sites. Although that last one is an illegal activity, Robson says it's still very popular since teens are very reluctant to actually pay for music.

Finally, when it comes to online marketing, teens do like viral campaigns but see banner ads and pop-ups as annoying and pointless. They tend to ignore them entirely and never click through.

Teens and Mobile

Although teens may be envious of modern smartphones with Internet data plans, they tend to not own these types of devices because they're too expensive. Instead, teens typically use their phones simply for talking and texting. Video messaging and video calling are also not popular, again due to cost. Teens don't bother with mobile email either, not needing to be hyper-connected to their inboxes like the adults are. However, one thing teens do use their phones for (outside of chatting and texting) is sharing music files with their friends. They do this using Bluetooth, since the service is free and most phones now support it.

Author's Note: Share music via Bluetooth? In reading that, I immediately felt old. Not only have I never done this myself, I didn't even know people did this. Were you aware?

Do You Agree with Robson?

Morgan Stanley notes that Robson's piece "provides one of the clearest and most thought-provoking insights we have seen" and that's why they published it even though they don't have statistics to back up his statements. But by doing so, they're saying that they believe what he reports is accurate and representative of today's teens media consumption.

Of course, without hard data, a report like this has to be taken with a grain of salt. Still, in reading through it, nothing sounds all that shocking or revealing. That's probably because on some level we already know what Robson says to be true. Today's "digital natives" have grown up surrounded by technology and the Internet, so naturally they're not going to be as interested in old media the way older generations are.

Do you agree that the trends Robson notes are real? Or have you seen behavior that contradicts what he reports?

Image credit: flickr user Paulo Fehlauer

The latest addition to their collection of utilities is a new, experimental Firefox extension called the Pixelpipe Media Uploader 1.0. With this add-on, you can upload media all across the social web either through drag-and-drop or by selecting from a chooser.

After installing the extension and restarting Firefox, you'll see that there's a new orange "P" button in your toolbar. Click that once and the Pixelpipe sidebar will display on the left side of the screen. The first time you go to use this tool, you'll need to sign in with your Pixelpipe account and authorize it to work in Firefox. Once that's done, you can then drag-and-drop any media into the sidebar to upload it to Pixelpipe which then, of course, shoots it out to any of the services you've configured. Alternately, you can right-click on any image on the web and choose the "Upload image with Pixelpipe Uploader" option from the menu that appears.

One of the nice things about the uploader is that you can add the title, any appropriate tags, and set the privacy levels before you click "Upload." That way, you don't have to actually go visit the sites afterwards to configure these sorts of settings. 

This new utility is just another reminder of how desktop software tools are slowly being replaced by browser-based services. Who needs the Flickr uploader anymore when you can drag photos to your browser and send them directly to Flickr, Facebook, and a slew of other sites with only a click or two?

If you want to try the new Pixelpipe Media Uploader, you can download the Firefox extension here.

Twitter was among a number of web technology companies that visited Iraq as part of the US State Department delegation. Other participants included representatives from AT&T, Google, Twitter, Howcast, Meetup, YouTube, Automatic/Wordpress, and Blue State Digital.

State Department spokesperson Robert Wood explained the intent of the visit:

During their visit to Iraq, they will provide conceptual input as well as ideas on how new technologies can be used to build local capacity, foster greater transparency and accountability, build upon anti-corruption efforts, promote critical thinking in the classroom, scale-up civil society, and further empower local entities and individuals by providing the tools for network building.

Jack Dorsey is the third co-founder of Twitter, but our understanding is that he is uninvolved in day to day operations. Instead, he travels the world talking to people about Twitter. You can follow his updates at twitter.com/jack.

You can find ReadWriteWeb on Twitter, as well as the entire RWW Team: Marshall Kirkpatrick, Bernard Lunn, Alex Iskold, Sarah Perez, Frederic Lardinois, Rick Turoczy, Sean Ammirati, Lidija Davis and Phil Glockner.

Regarding sensors, these devices can be editors according to Bilton. For example if your phone has GPS, then your location can influence what content you see. Or if you're in your car, your phone could sense that and so NYT could deliver the news to you in audio. It can also change the way NYT does reporting - for example sensors that pick up noise activity could alert reporters to noise problems in NYC (a common problem in that city).

Bilton said that NYT has also been experimenting with semacodes, bar codes in the newspaper - although he noted that it has issues, such as it not being understandable for many mainstream people. There are also e-ink and other interactive concepts being tested (example below).

CustomTimes interactive newspaper box, photo from NickBilton.com

Bilton then showed how if NYT was being 'consumed' in the living room, they can introduce much more video and use sensor metadata to add to the experience (for example showing content based on location). He also asked the question: why doesn't my couch have an API? If NYT knew more about the people in the room, how close they are to the TV, etc, then NYT could customize the user interface and content even further.

He wrapped up by addressing the so-called death of the newspaper. Bilton argued that "paper is just a device". He noted that the next generation will be used to accessing content immediately - there will be flexible displays, full immersive video and graphical experiences, more user-generated content. All of these things are just ways of storytelling, he said.

Based on this fascinating presentation, we can be sure that newspapers - at least ones with enough money to do this type of research - are far from dead if they evolve with and adapt quickly to technology. NYT is certainly one of the leaders in using technology in news reporting, so it appears to be well positioned.

Disclosure: RWW has a syndication relationship with NYT.

Now, we know what you're thinking. But this had nothing to do with Twitter. Rather, it had to do with an aptly named server "justworkplease.handbrewed.com." A server that supports a service called SocialSite, which - in their defense - is still "in private alpha." The service probably seemed like a good bet, given that it was also used for the Obama inauguration. But be that as it may, the service is still in private alpha. It's not the safest bet for adding a server-melting Twitter stream to your site.

ABC News learned that lesson in a very public way.

If at First You Don't Succeed

Hopefully, this event doesn't scare ABC - or other news outlets - too far away from trying things like this again. It's online. These things happen.

Other news outlets - like CNN - have learned how to incorporate Twitter into the work that they do - and they've had their own stumbles as well. Properties like Twitter have had their scalability issues, but they have learned how to scale for the sheer volume of users that descend upon sites during events such as these.

ABC may have to weather a bit of snark for it, but it's a great learning experience for them. And a testament to the sheer volume of users who share their opinions via Twitter - and the potential the service holds.

Here's hoping the next endeavor is more successful for them - and the users who expected to share their opinions with other ABC viewers.

Screenshot courtesy edubyad.

Enjoysthin.gs lets you share all kinds of media, from images to videos to quotes to audio you call in and record from your phone. The interface is beautiful and the site is a real joy to use.

The user experience on the site is a real home run; from browsing through the beautifully displayed items from other users to interacting with the site's basic functionality. Creating an account is remarkably smooth and the plush, over-sized displays make us want to jump up and down and clap our hands.

Anyone can tag items, even those saved by other people, and you can view recent shared items globally by tag. Recent activities by your friends are displayed as another item in a big box when you are logged in. There's even an API for integration with outside services; though we dare anyone to try to make a cooler interface, it would be nice to see Enjoysthin.gs on FriendFeed.

There are clearly more features that are still needed, there are no RSS feeds or ways to view the most popular items, for example. Roden is hard at work improving the site, he added 31 new features in December alone. The new feature that lets you call in a voice recording is very cool - a message we recorded was posted to our profile page in just a few minutes.

You can befriend me at Enjoysthin.gs on this page. I'll probably be using the service for at least the next few days. Not because it's particularly popular, secure, supportive of data portability or anything like that - just because it's so damn much fun to use.

Even more interesting is that the simultaneous media usage for men decreases the older they get, but for women it's the opposite. Up until the age of 40, it's the women who are the better multi-taskers. Amanda Welsh, head of research for IMMI, thought the trend was surprising, given the amount of sports-related programming on the web. What does this mean? She says that they're interpreting the data to mean that "women are more inclined to multi-task than men."

What About the Digital Natives?

Arguing against hard data is difficult, but we have to agree with Amanda - this information is surprising. It seems to support the age-old theory that women, because of their "natural" abilities as mothers and in running the household, have some sort of innate multi-tasking abilities that allow them to engage in different activities at the same time more often (and the subtext implies "better") than men.

But is that still accurate? We're not entirely sure. The ability to take part in different activities when surfing the web is something today's teens and young adults, aka the "millennials'" or "Generation Y," also reportedly do well. Because this generation grew up with the internet a part of their world from the day they arrived, multi-tasking while online just became a normal part of their existence - for both boys and girls. Surfing the net while instant messaging, listening to music, and/or watching TV, is something that this younger generation of internet users are known for. And since these millennials are a part of the age range (15-48) involved in this study, you would think their learned multi-tasking behavior would have some impact on the reported results. But Instead, the results seem to uphold the more traditional view about women and their multi-tasking abilities.

Then Again, Multi-tasking Could Be a Myth

This idea of multi-tasking being a skill to boast about is left over from the days when technology like desktop PCs and email systems were being integrated into the workplace. Suddenly, HR managers were looking for "multi-taskers" able to focus on several different aspects of the job at the same time. However, in later years, it's been discovered that multi-tasking is more myth than reality, since the human brain can only really focus on one thing at a time, no matter how many activities a person is engaged in. The new advice for increased productivity is to slack off, work simpler, and ditch multi-tasking altogether.

So perhaps women sit in the living room with notebook PCs on their lap more often than men, but let's be honest - they aren't multi-tasking. They're just tuning out the TV to engage in something more interesting instead; the internet.

These appear to be buttons you can click on, but they are only there for displaying the information. In order to access the commenting and feedback features, you have to actually click the headline to read the article. That's a very minor complaint, though, as it's the commenting feature that really makes the News Mixer site shine.

Facebook Connect Makes the News Personal

Because of the site's integration with Facebook Connect, News Mixer is able to highlight the comments left by your Facebook friends. This brings their thoughts to your attention which in turn delivers a more personalized news experience. (Unfortunately, I couldn't test that aspect of the commenting feature since I don't know anyone in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.)

If you choose to participate, you can select from a drop-down box of responses which will preface your comment. By default, the site suggested "Sarah Thinks." (Obviously, your name would display in place of "Sarah.") Other options include "feels," "wonders," "agrees," "disagrees," "hates," and "loves." These choices are very similar to the options presented to you at the microblogging site Plurk, a Twitter-like site for sharing status updates with friends. On Plurk, you are also given various color-coded prompts to choose from when posting a note, the same as News Mixer.

Another plus to News Mixer's commenting feature is its transparent nature. Instead of allowing for the creation of fake names or internet handles for use on the site, Facebook authentication means that people's real identities are being displayed. No more comments left by internet trolls hiding behind their mask of anonymity!

Today's commenting systems are largely broken, as social media pundit Robert Scoble noted today on his blog. The main reason for his post was to share ideas about the state of commenting and interaction systems on the web. He wanted there to be a way that he, as the writer, could call attention to some comments as being more important than others. He had also said that he wished there was a way to see the social networks of the people commenting. As it turns out, News Mixer has introduced a great example of how that second request of his could work.

Newspapers: Steal These Ideas!

Although at the moment the News Mixer site appears somewhat plain and clunky, you can see the potential is in its framework, if not its design. In fact, the press release even notes that the New York Times interactive news technologies editor Aron Pilhofer encouraged media industry members to look at News Mixer, adding that there were "bits and pieces of it I'd like to steal right now."

We would encourage others in the industry to borrow some of News Mixer's ideas as well. It's not too late to save the daily paper - it just takes some fresh ideas. Like Rupert Murdoch recently said, the time for doom and gloom is over - the internet is really just a huge new market ready to be tapped. We agree. Now is the time for innovation because...well, it's either innovate or die. Hopefully most will choose the former.

We're excited about it from a technology perspective, but media industry analyst and RWW Jobwire guest editor Sam Whitmore discusses the move in terms of what it means for the Times as a business as well over in the Jobwire Featured Hire of the Day (sponsored by VisualCV).

With the new iPhone app, available in both a free version and a paid version which allows for more control over what you watch (OrbLive free just streams random files), you can now stream your media over 3G in addition to Wi-Fi and EDGE. Given Apple's approval of this application, they've set a precedent for approving apps that stream live video over 3G. They could now no longer block approval to apps like Slingbox, for example, as doing so would be illegal and anti-competitive. If they approved the OrbLive app knowingly, then we can expect a slew of 3G-enabled live TV and streaming media applications in the near future.

Of course, the new OrbLive app may have been admitted into the App Store by mistake, so before shelling out the $9.99 to purchase it, you may want to wait and see if the app is yanked in the next few days. We hope that's not the case, because live TV on the iPhone over 3G would be truly incredible. But this is Apple, so you never really know. 

With so many Americans getting their news online instead of in a daily newspaper, SpinSpotter decided to use the power of the web and all its many users to combat the growing trend of media bias. How? Simple: by making you the editor. With the new browser plugin from SpinSpotter, you can edit and share any sign of bias on the web.

The first step to becoming a SpinSpotter is to get the browser plugin, "Spinoculars." At the moment, this plugin is Firefox-only, but IE support is coming soon. After it's installed, you can begin to spot and share the media bias you find on the web. When you see a word or phrase that you feel is biased, select the word then click the "create spin marker" button. For example, in the demo they showed an article where someone was being identified as a "guru," - they disagreed that the person deserved that accolade. You can then correct the text with a word or phrase you feel would be more appropriate (ex: analyst, not guru).

When you come across an article that other users have identified as being biased, the "S" icon on the toolbar will light up. To see the Spin Markers left by other users, you can switch Spinoculars on. When "See Spin" is selected, you'll be shown the original text. When "See Edits" is selected, you'll see how the other user or users have edited the text. The various Spin Markers created are also rated by the community as a whole from lowest (1) to highest (5). With the Spin Level slider bar, you can choose what level you want to see. As you adjust this slider to only show the highest rated Markers, you'll see fewer edits.

What's Bias?

When you're leaving a Spin Marker on a page, you must also identify what kind of spin it is. These rules come from the company's own Journalism Advisory Board and the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics. From a drop-down box, you're provided with a list of choices to choose from. These different types of spin include: Reporter's Voice (the reporter is writing to convey meaning beyond supported evidence), Passive Voice (the subject of the sentence isn't the person performing the action; not identifying who did it!), Biased Source (the reporter doesn't disclose their view or affiliations or those of their source), Disregarded Context (the reporter leaves out parts of an event without giving equal weight to the full aspect of what happened), Selective Disclosure (the reporter fails to mention a critical element of the story), Lack of Balance (the reporter fails to give equal voice to both sides, or all sides, of a controversial story), Over-Reliance on Press Releases (the reporter reprints a press release as if it were a news story).

Share Your Findings

In addition to sharing your findings with the SpinSpotter community, you can also share the article through other online services like Digg and StumbleUpon, or you can email the article to your friends.

See It In Action

Want to see want Spin Makers look like? Check out this video from YouTube:

Google's Reaction: Don't be Evil, Just Talk to Us

YouTube issued a statement to Bloomberg, arguing that there was simply no need for legal action, as it already prohibits all its users from uploading infringing material and cooperates "with all copyright holders to identify and promptly remove infringing content as soon as we are officially notified." From the reports we have seen so far, it was not immediately clear if MediaSet has ever approached YouTube about removing its clips before filing this lawsuit. Based on our own tests today, finding MediaSet owned videos on YouTube was a trivial exercise and we did not come across any videos with takedown notices.

Other Lawsuits

This lawsuit is quite similar to the Google/Viacom lawsuit that made a lot of headlines earlier this month when a judge ordered Google to hand over its YouTube user data to Viacom. In this lawsuit, Viacom is looking for more than $1 billion in damages because of alleged copyright violations.

This also marks the second time in two weeks that Google has run into trouble with the Italian law. Just last week, prosecutors in Italy charged Google with failing to monitor its content in the context of a video where a group of students were taunting an autistic classmate.

One Video on YouTube = One Lost TV Viewer?

Over the years, Google has always promised that it was working on a better way to recognize and remove copyrighted content from YouTube - so far, however, it has not been able to do so effectively.

For the MediaSet lawsuit, it would also seems like it would be hard to argue that every video seen on YouTube would automatically translate into lost revenue for a media company (or if it is not, in the end, also mostly advertising for at least some of the media producers).

In this case, it would actually be interesting to get a look at the raw usage data for the copyrighted videos to see how many of them were viewed outside of Italy, where user couldn't have watched the actual TV show anyway.