Eric Spiegelman has a Web video hit on his hands. “Old Jews Telling Jokes,” a series of short clips featuring exactly what the name suggests, is popular, viral, and cheap to make. But he still can’t cover his costs with Internet advertising. Enter the ancillary products, like a new book deal.
You can hear the head-scratching going on at movie studios and music labels across the world: What just happened to The Pirate Bay? Reports out of Sweden are murky at best. But supposedly, a Scandinavian software outfit is buying the world’s most notorious file-sharing site for about $8 million and will create a service that pays copyright owners when people download their work. But let’s be honest: That’s never going to happen.
When a big music label sues a scrappy Web music start-up, most people tend to sympathize reflexively with the little guy. But not everyone. Here’s the case against Grooveshark–not from EMI, which has hauled them into court, but from an indie that by all rights ought to be working with Grooveshark: “The service is just ripping off the band.”
Peter Kafka has been covering media and technology since 1997, when he joined the staff of Forbes magazine. Most recently, he has been the managing editor of the tech and media Web site, Silicon Alley Insider. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
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