Home Media Magazine - May 18-24, 2008 - (Page 11)

www.homemediamagazine.com ELECTRONIC DELIVERY BRIEFS I HBO ON ITUNES “The Sopranos,” “Sex and the City,” “Rome” and other HBO programs are now available on Apple’s iTunes. HBO’s catalog series are being priced at $1.99 per episode for “The Wire,” “The Flight of the Conchords” and “Sex and the City.” “The Sopranos,” “Deadwood,” and “Rome” episodes are going for $2.99 each. Customers can also purchase entire seasons. – Chris Tribbey MPAA Sues Alleged File-Sharers By Erik Gruenwedel LEGAL Taking a page from the music industry’s counter-piracy playbook, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) filed separate copyright infringement lawsuits against five Ohio residents for allegedly accessing and distributing movies illegally on the Internet. The suits, filed May 7 in U.S. District Court of Ohio in Columbus, claimed defendants Mike Thompson, Irevor Lisi, Larry Mercer, Jack Mitchell and John Mitchell in 2005 and 2006 used file-sharing services BitComet, KaZaA and iMesh to illegally access movie files of Constantine, Good Night and Good Luck I IPHONE OUT OF STOCK The Apple iPhone is sold out online in the United States and United Kingdom, according to The Associated Press. The company, however, said brickand-mortar stores managed by Apple and iPhone carriers, including AT&T, might still have some in stock. – Ruby Cardenas costs. The file-sharing services were not named in the suits. Elizabeth Kaltman, communications director with the MPAA, said the suits were part of a multipronged Mr. & Mrs. Smith effort that includes legislation, education and public awareness to curb (Warner Bros.), The Exorcism of Em- piracy in the United States. “[Consumer] suits are not the corily Rose, Hitch (Sony Pictures) and Mr. & Mrs. Smith (20th Century nerstone of our litigation strategy. However, they have been a tool in Fox), among others. In addition to unspecified finan- our [arsenal] to help raise awareness cial damages, the suits seek to stop about the consequences of engaging the defendants from further copy- in these activities and to remind peoright infringement; destruction of ple that they are not anonymous on all downloaded and burned copies the Internet,” Kaltman said. “There of aforementioned titles; and legal are consequences.” She said there are numerous thirdparty sites whereby movies and TV shows can be downloaded legally. Corynne McSherry, staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based civil liberties group, said the suits displayed an increased fervor by the MPAA, which she said has been quietly using the courts to go after individuals since 2004. By comparison, McSherry said the Recording Industry Association of America has filed legal actions against more than 30,000 people, including students, for allegedly accessing pirated music online. See MPAA, Page 22 I RENTRAK INKS VOD DEAL Rentrak Corp. signed a multiyear VOD data tracking agreement with Knology Inc., a Georgia-based phone, cable and Internet provider. The deal covers PPV, subscriber VOD, digital video recorders and HDTV. – Erik Gruenwedel Copyright Law Is Hot Topic at N.Y. Confab By Anne Sherber LEGAL NEW YORK — With so many things available in digital formats, and, consequently, easily appropriated, how do we make sure creators have control over their work without stifling the free flow of ideas? That question was at the center of On Copyright 2008, a conference held last month. The specter of the music industry’s response to what it perceived as a technological assault on its ability to profit loomed large. Speaker Chris Sprigman, associate professor at the REPORT: YOUTUBE MAINTAINS ONLINE VIDEO DOMINANCE By Erik Gruenwedel I MUSICGIANTS ADDS IMAGE High-def home theater media distributor MusicGiants has signed a deal with Image Entertainment to add more than 200 DRM-free Image music tracks to the MusicGiants HD Media Store. – Billy Gil University of Virginia School of Law, noted that rather than recognizing that its core business was to help artists disseminate their music to as large an audience as possible, the music industry behaved as if it was in the business of selling plastic discs when faced with peer-to-peer file sharing. Now, said Sprigman, the music industry is having difficulty collecting money for that plastic disc. But had record companies been more flexible about how they extracted value from signed artists, a new paradigm See COPYRIGHT, Page 22 Online video consumption, spearheaded by YouTube, in March continued at a frenetic clip, up 64% to 11.5 billion videos views compared to same period last year, according to a new report. ComScore Video Metrix, a Reston, Va.based research firm, said YouTube generated 4.3 billion video views, or 38% market share of all online videos. Fox Interactive Media (FIM) sites ranked a distant second (4.2%) with more than 477 million video views, followed by Yahoo with 328 million (2.9%), Viacom Digital with 249 million (2.2%) and Microsoft with 245 million and 2.1% market share. RESEARCH The next top five sites were Time Warner (excluding AOL) with 159 million (1.4%), Disney Online with 108 million (0.9%), ABC.com (100 million, 0.9%), AOL (100 million, 0.9%) and ESPN with 89 million (0.8%). The report found that nearly 74% of the U.S. Web-enabled audience (139 million) watched an average of 83 videos in March. Once again, YouTube attracted the largest audience with more than 85 million unique viewers, who watched an average of nearly 51 videos. The average online video was 2.8 minutes long, and the average viewer watched 235 total minutes. TOP 5 RANK TITLE E LE C T R O NI C SELLT H R OUG H Week ended May 10, 2008 RELEASE DATE VIDEO LABEL GENRE TOP 5 RANK TITLE E L E C TRO N I C S E L L THRO U GH Week ended May 11, 2008 RELEASE DATE VIDEO LABEL GENRE 1 2 3 4 5 The Golden Compass First Sunday 27 Dresses Cloverfield Dexter: Season 1 — Episode 12 4/29/08 5/6/08 4/29/08 4/22/08 7/2/07 New Line Sony Pictures Fox Paramount Showtime Fantasy Comedy Comedy Sci-Fi Drama Source: Movielink 1 2 3 4 5 The Golden Compass The Invincible Iron Man First Sunday Cloverfield 27 Dresses 4/29/08 1/23/07 5/6/08 4/22/08 4/29/08 New Line Lionsgate Sony Pictures Paramount Fox Fantasy Animated Comedy Sci-Fi Comedy Source: CinemaNow TOP 5 RANK TITLE E LE CT R O NIC D OW NLOAD S Week ended May 10, 2008 RELEASE DATE VIDEO LABEL GENRE TOP 5 RANK TITLE E L E C TRO N I C DO WN L O A DS Week ended May 11, 2008 RELEASE DATE VIDEO LABEL GENRE 1 2 3 4 5 P.S. I Love You Lions for Lambs Over Her Dead Body Reservation Road Conspiracy 5/6/08 5/8/08 5/6/08 5/7/08 5/2/08 Warner Fox/MGM New Line Universal Sony Pictures Romance Thriller Comedy Drama Action Source: Movielink 1 2 3 4 5 P.S. I Love You Over Her Dead Body I Am Legend No Country for Old Men Dan in Real Life 5/6/08 5/6/08 4/17/08 4/10/08 4/25/08 Warner New Line Warner Disney/Miramax Disney/Touchstone Romance Comedy Sci-Fi Drama Comedy Source: CinemaNow May 18–24, 2008 Home Media Magazine 11 http://www.homemediamagazine.com http://ABC.com

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Home Media Magazine - May 18-24, 2008

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