New Amazon deal brings MTV, VH1, and Comedy Central to Prime Instant Video
If you’re considering an Amazon Prime subscription, you might be persuaded by Amazon’s new deal with Viacom to bring 2,000 new titles to the service.
The Viacom agreement will bring a new slate of programming to Amazon’s video offering and will include popular shows from MTV, VH1, and Comedy Central.
Amazon Prime, which costs $79 per year, is a service that gives customers free two-day shipping on most products and access to streaming movies and … Continue Reading
5 years later, Viacom still suing YouTube out of “principle”
A five year-old legal battle between Viacom and Google-owned YouTube over copyrighted content continues to clog up the U.S. court system because Viacom, parent company of Paramount Pictures and MTV, believes there’s an important principle at stake, president and CEO Philippe Dauman said Tuesday.
Dauman, in an interview at the D: Dive Into Media event, defended his company’s ongoing litigation against YouTube, the purveyor of user-generated content, despite a 2010 federal ruling establishing that the … Continue Reading
SOPA Opera: Anonymous targets media execs, moguls take aim at Google
The White House shook up the debate over the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) this weekend, publishing a letter that made it clear the executive branch would not back a bill without changes that addressed concerns over online censorship and damage to the very architecture of the internet.
The big news is that Congress has agreed to shelve the vote on SOPA until it can find more common ground. But the battle over how … Continue Reading
The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart takes on SOPA & the Internet
Jon Stewart, host of the popular comedy “news” program The Daily Show, is finally going to tackle SOPA, the controversial, anti-Internet piece of legislation that has every social network up in arms.
“Tomorrow night,” the host said during last night’s broadcast, “our guest will be the Internet.”
A redditor was present at the taping of last night’s show, and during the pre-show period, he asked Stewart why he’d been silent on SOPA.
If you
Viacom may owe $383 million to Harmonix shareholders
Viacom Inc. may owe $383 million to former shareholders of Cambridge-based developer Harmonix Music Systems, best-known for the Rock Band series.
There are apparently a handful of legal battles going on between Viacom and shareholders over their $175 million acquisition of the developer back in 2006.
An arbitration team ruled Dec. 19 that Viacom still owes money to shareholders based on sales targets which were met in both 2007 and 2008. The $383 million stems … Continue Reading
Shodogg will let you pause and restart video from any device (exclusive)
There’s a series of DirecTV commercials where a TV viewer is immersed in an action scene but easily pauses and begins the scene where he left off in a different room. While that idea is easy to grasp, it’s not fully realized because our homes have more screens than just TVs. The viewer can’t begin watching again, on say, his smartphone.
Shodogg, a startup focused on consuming and syncing video easily across platforms and devices, … Continue Reading
Why Facebook, Yahoo & others are celebrating LGBT Spirit Day
GLAAD (that’s the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) is promoting Spirit Day this Thursday, Oct. 20, and encouraging folks to wear purple and display that color on their online profiles. In response, Facebook and other companies are “going purple” for the day.
Diversity in tech is never more contentious than when sexual preference is brought into the mix. So why would major tech companies like Facebook, AT&T, Yahoo, HP and actively celebrate LGBT diversity?… Continue Reading
Paramount cuts out the middlemen: Offers direct streaming rentals of new Transformers film
Film studio Paramount Pictures is experimenting with a new digital distribution model for the most recently released Transformers movie.
By offering its own marketplace for customers to purchase the streaming video, Paramount’s parent company Viacom is essentially cutting out “middlemen” services like Netflix, Vudu and others — meaning it takes a bigger cut of the overall revenue.
Viacom is obviously keeping quiet about the experiment. It sent out an e-mail blast Friday (via Viacom-owned MTV’s … Continue Reading
