Prince obviously wouldn't die 4 YouTube.

In fact, the "Purple Rain" purveyor is planning to take on the video-sharing giant in an effort to "reclaim his art on the Internet," according to a statement released on Prince's behalf.

Meaning, Prince is feeling litigious.

The Web-savvy artist, who was one of the first major recording stars to utilize the Internet to release new tunes and interact with fans, is planning to sue Google Inc.-owned YouTube, as well as alleged piracy-encouraging sites eBay and Pirate Bay, for copyright violation.

"Very few artists have ever taken this kind of action over their rights," the singer's spokesperson said. "Yet Prince has shown time and time again he is ready to challenge the system in new ways to put artists and music first."

Gearing up to file suit in both the United States and the United Kingdom, Prince has hired British-based company Web Sheriff, which polices the Internet for pirated content and sends "take down" notices to offenders, to aid in the art reclamation, the technology site cnet.com reported Thursday.

Web Sheriff president John Giacobbi told C-Net that, over the past few weeks, his firm has removed about 2,000 unauthorized Prince-purloining clips from YouTube but that, once they're down, "there are 100 or 200 more."

"Their business model is built on making money off other people's creative work," Giacobbi said. He told Reuters that Web Sheriff has also removed about 300 seemingly benign items bearing Prince's likeness, such as mugs and keychains, from eBay

And Prince says that there's no excuse for these sites to not crack down on the copyright-violating content that inevitably makes its way online through one channel or another.

"YouTube, [eBay and Pirate Bay] are clearly able [to] filter porn and pedophile material but appear to choose not to filter out the unauthorized music and film content which is core to their business success," the statement from Prince's rep continued. "Prince strongly believes artists, as the creators and owners of their music, need to reclaim their art."

And it's widely known how much control Prince likes to retain over his music. Freaking out record company execs worldwide in July, he gave away free copies of his latest album, Planet Earth, inside the U.K. newspaper The Mail on Sunday, a week before its official release.

In a statement responding to Prince's allegations, YouTube's chief counsel, Zahavah Levine, said that his company is constantly working on ways to help artists manage their content on the site.

"Most content owners understand that we respect copyrights," Levine said. "We work every day to help them manage their content, and we are developing state-of-the-art tools to let them do that even better.

"We have great partnerships with major music labels all over the world that understand the benefit of using YouTube as another way to communicate with their fans."

The San Francisco Bay Area-based company is already embroiled in a $1 billion copyright infringement case brought by Viacom Inc., which accused YouTube of allowing thousands of unauthorized clips from its myriad networks (MTV, Nickelodeon, etc.) and Paramount Pictures to take up unopposed residence on the site.

Google maintains that YouTube is protected in this matter by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which doesn't hold service providers responsible for user-committed infractions.

EBay is also trying to fight the good fight, despite what Prince might think, according to spokesman Hani Durzy.

"The bottom line for us is that counterfeit or pirated goods are illegal and have no place on eBay," Durzy told C-Net. "We would be happy to work with Prince and his representatives to show them how they can work with us to make sure any infringing items come down."

March 14, 2007
CNN Money
By Paul R. La Monica

NEW YORK - Viacom's lawsuit against Google and YouTube could present an opportunity for smaller online video firms to make some noise.

Viacom, with its lawsuit seeking more than $1 billion in damages from Google and YouTube, has shown that it's serious about copyright infringement.

But several of YouTube's rivals say they are not concerned about big media companies coming after them since they think they are already playing by the rules.

"I don't know if YouTube had it coming but I'm surprised it took this long for a lawsuit. A lot of value has been created from illegal actions and inappropriate use of material," said Daniel Todd, president and co-founder of Zango, an online video and gaming site.

Zango is just one of many privately held companies that sense an opportunity to gain ground in the still nascent online video world now that YouTube and Google (Charts) have put on legal notice by Viacom (Charts), the owner of popular cable networks MTV, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central.

Viacom sues 'GooTube' for $1 billion

While YouTube does have partnerships with some established media giants, the Viacom lawsuit is a clear indication that media firms are still wary of working with search industry leader Google and its online video subsidiary YouTube. Copyrighted material often gets posted on YouTube by users, and Viacom claims YouTube is slow to remove the pirated clips.

But other online video companies say that it's not that difficult to flag and take down illegally posted content.

Greg Kostello, chief executive officer of VMIX Media, an online video company that runs Vmix.com, which has partnerships with GE (Charts)-owned NBC and News Corp. (Charts)-owned Fox, says his site has employees that manually look at videos for copyrighted content.

"We are very careful to be protective of artists' rights, from the up and coming individual filmmaker to big media companies. We monitor uploads and filter out illegal content," Kostello said. "Online video companies that don't do that could be in trouble. The media companies spend billions of dollars a year to produce entertainment so I think they have the right to manage it the way they choose."

Why Viacom could prevail

Erick Hachenburg, CEO of popular online video site Metacafe, agreed. He did say, however, that sites like his and YouTube should not be responsible for "policing" their sites. He believes that when a media firm asks them to take down a video, they will take it down.

But he thinks that one thing that may be hurting YouTube and other sites is that once copyrighted videos are removed, it doesn't take long for them to reappear. And that, he said, is something that he claims does not take place on Metacafe, since the company has technological filters in place to prevent something that already has been flagged as copyrighted material from getting back on the site.

"The important difference for us is once we pull something down, it stays down. If you try and put up same video or something similar, we don't let that get reposted," Hachenburg said.

Other online video companies also say that the Viacom lawsuit helps validate them since it highlights the importance of companies that specialize in working with mainstream media firms.

"This will continue to put in motion a sense from copyright holders that they need to assert more control over their distribution. Looking at the big picture, this is very positive for commercial online video firms," said Jeremy Allaire, CEO of Brightcove, an online video company that has partnerships with The New York Times Co. (Charts), Walt Disney's (Charts) Buena Vista TV unit and AOL.

AOL, which like CNNMoney.com is a division of Time Warner (Charts), also is an investor in Brightcove.

Viacom's GooTube Suit: What Everyone's Missing

To that end, another online video firm, Break.com, which caters mainly to young men, announced Wednesday that it is working with NBC Universal on an online program that will be created exclusively for the Web.

"Media is paying attention to online video and recognizing that it is important. That's different than where we were two years ago today," said Keith Richman, CEO of Break.com. "I find it ironic that the same studio producing Heroes for TV is producing an original series for Break.com."

Still, Google does not appear to be too concerned about increased competition and what effect the lawsuit may have on YouTube's business.

"YouTube has become even more popular since we took down Viacom's material. We think that's a testament to the draw of the user-generated content on YouTube. We've been very successful forging thousands of successful partnerships with content owners - like Warner Music, Sony/BMG, Universal Music, BBC, and the NBA - interested in finding new audiences for their programming," said Kent Walker, Google's general counsel, in a statement.

"These partnerships offer the YouTube community access to some of the best content in the world, ranging from entertainment and sports to politics and news. And we're only getting started," Walker added.

But not everyone agrees.

"The failure to achieve a long-term business model is going to clearly hurt YouTube. They have to come up with a business model that works. There are clearly a lot of competitors lining up that want to take a shot at YouTube," said Bruce Davis, chief executive officer of Digimarc, a company that has developed digital watermarking technology to help identify and protect media content.

March 9, 2007
USA Today
By David Lieberman

NEW YORK - Tiny retailers usually tremble when Wal-Mart invades their turf. Not CinemaNow CEO Curt Marvis.

For eight years he has offered people with high-speed Internet connections movies and TV shows to buy and download from his website. They can watch them when they want - typically on a computer or a portable device.

His problem? Hollywood studios have released just a handful of their most popular flicks to services like his and another longtime player, Movielink. They also often strictly limited how many copies buyers could make.

"They did not want to alienate Wal-Mart," which generates 40% of all DVD sales, Marvis says.

That's why he says he was excited in February when Wal-Mart, with the support of every major studio, joined Amazon, Apple and other retailers rushing into the download-to-own (DTO) video business.

With the Godzilla of retailing on board, Mavis says, "We're on the cusp of this business really beginning. I think you'll see significant growth in 2007."

He predicts that "by 2010 downloading of movie and video content will be as commonplace as downloading of music is in today's world. It will happen that fast."

If he's right, it would be a revolutionary change in how millions buy movies and TV videos.

It also could give the home video business a shot of adrenaline as growth in DVD sales slows. Consumers spent $15.9 billion last year to buy home videos, up 1.4% vs. 2005, and $7.7 billion on rentals, down 1.5%, according to Rentrak.

There are many skeptics, however, who say that even Wal-Mart can't overcome problems video downloading sales face. A movie download can take an hour or more with a high-speed connection. Copying for viewing on other computers and TV sets is typically restricted. Movie downloads are priced about the same as DVDs, but most have inferior video and sound. And most movie downloads don't include bonus features found on DVDs, such as trailers or non-English soundtracks.

"There'll be a few people doing a lot of downloads over the next couple of years," says Blockbuster CEO John Anti-oco, who plans to begin offering video downloads this year. "But this is going to be a migration process....Over the next couple of years I don't see it being a big business for anybody."

Still, retailers believe they see where the video industry is headed: The problems with downloads will be resolved sooner or later, and the future could belong to retailers who plant seeds in the market now.

"Big companies like Wal-Mart and Amazon are taking the market seriously, and they don't do that unless they think it will grow to be big," says Netflix CEO Reed Hastings.

On Wednesday Movie Gallery indicated it's ready to take a different approach to digital downloads. It acquired MovieBeam, a service that transmits films via broadcast airwaves to a hard drive-equipped box connected to the TV.

Disney opened the door

Studios began to offer some movies online in the late 1990s through services including CinemaNow, Movielink, Starz Vongo and Guba. Yet the business was largely an afterthought until late 2005.

That's when Disney cracked open the TV download market by allowing Apple's iTunes store to sell episodes of ABC shows, including Desperate Housewives and Lost. Other networks quickly followed.

Disney CEO Bob Iger grabbed the industry's attention again last September when he added movies to his offerings on iTunes and said that he expects revenue to be $50 million in the first 12 months.

How big video downloading will be and how fast it gets there will depend, in part, on how fast sales of broadband Internet service grow. Bernstein Research says 87 million homes will have it in 2010, up from about 55 million now.

As that happens, sales of TV show downloads are forecast to take off to 496 million episodes in 2011, up from 41.5 million last year, and movies to 213.3 million, up from 1.6 million in 2005, according to Adams Media Research.

Movies, however, will make the bigger financial splash. New releases typically cost about $15 to download, as opposed to about $2 for a TV show episode.

Hollywood's number crunchers like the idea of movie downloading because they don't incur the manufacturing, packaging and shipping costs DVDs require - and there is no risk of unsold inventory.

"The DVD is a consignment business," says University of Southern California digital media expert Jonathan Taplin. "You think you sold a million DVDs to Wal-Mart. But if they only sell half a million, guess what? You take the other half a million back at full price."

HD confusion boosts downloads

Studios might have held off on supporting video downloads if they had more faith that consumers will upgrade their DVD libraries with high-definition DVDs, which cost about $25 apiece. Hopes for high-definition DVD have dimmed as studios and technology companies still battle over two incompatible HD disc formats, Sony's Blu-ray and Toshiba's HD DVD.

Netflix's Hastings, for one, says that he's "less optimistic today than I was a year ago" that either of the HD formats will catch on. He says movie distributors are confusing customers and retailers in much the same way as the music industry did when companies split over two high-definition audio formats, DVD-Audio and Super Audio CD.

"The whole ecosystem didn't thrive," Hastings says. "Then people just went to downloading standard MP3 tracks."

Challenges to the growth of video download sales:

- Mixed standards. Downloading isn't for computer neophytes.

For example, each site has its own system requirements. Movielink works with PCs running on Windows 2000 or later. Amazon, CinemaNow and Wal-Mart require at least Windows XP. If you've got an Apple computer, enjoy iTunes. Most online video stores also require customers to download their software to organize and play the videos.

"Many of these companies are creating their own silos of distribution," Marvis says. "When you download the player for the content from company XYZ, it only works within the player format of company XYZ. That makes it very difficult for consumers to decide: Which one do I choose?"

In addition, the quality of the downloaded video can vary from site to site, and sometimes from film to film.

Things get a lot more complicated for portable devices. Most of the big video sellers use a version of Microsoft's digital rights system, which means they won't work on many of the most popular devices, including video iPods.

- Complicated movie rights. Studios can't just pull a film out of their vault and sell it online. They often must get on board a constellation of stars and companies that have a stake in the movie.

"One of the reasons there aren't hundreds of thousands of movies on the Internet is because it's difficult to get music license rights," says Movielink CEO Jim Ramo. "Generally, with movies made prior to 1995, the distributors did not get the music license rights for the Internet. Nobody thought of the Internet as a distribution channel for movies. It takes a lot of arms and legs to make those calls and do the follow-ups."

- Limited playback on TVs. Only a small market of people want to watch their feature-length movie purchase on a computer or handheld device. Most potential buyers will want to watch their movie on their TV and, for the most part, doing that easily with downloaded video is a ways off.

"That kind of device is the whole ballgame," says Adams Media Research President Tom Adams. "We're a technological generation away from (video) being in a consumption format people want."

Lots of companies are on the case. At the Consumer Electronics Show in January, "You couldn't walk 30 to 40 feet without seeing a solution to bring video from the PC to the TV," says the Yankee Group's Michael Goodman.

Apple is preparing to unveil its computer-to-TV technology. Amazon announced in February a deal that enables people with a TiVo DVR and a home network to buy some of its movie and TV downloads to watch on TV sets.

- Copy limits. Download buyers wouldn't have to worry about PC-to-TV technology if they could simply burn a DVD of a downloaded movie on their PC and then pop it into their living room DVD player.

"People are used to (music) where you can burn a CD and play it in your CD player," Marvis says.

But the only copying most retailers now allow is for a backup data DVD - a type of DVD that won't play in a conventional DVD player.

Studio executives insisted on that restriction, fearing buyers would make free copies for friends who'd otherwise buy a movie DVD (which can't be copied) or download themselves.

The impasse was broken, in a way, in November. The DVD Forum, an industry standards group, agreed on a system that lets buyers make at least one playable DVD copy. The catch: You'll need a new model of DVD burner that should be available later this year.

CinemaNow uses a different standard that enables customers to burn DVDs of some downloaded movies that are identical to retail DVDs, including the extra features. But studios only allow a few titles to be sold that way.

"Last time I looked that was 3% of their library," Goodman says. "The vast majority of their downloads are crippled DVDs."

Marvis acknowledges that these problems are real and need to be solved, but he says he's unfazed.

"When we started CinemaNow in 1999," he says, "I would never have predicted that by 2007, the age of digital distribution would still not have really arrived as a mainstream business. With that said, things are finally starting to converge."

March 2, 2007
Ars Technica
By Jacqui Cheng

Microsoft reached out to content producers this week with a memo outlining Microsoft's plans for how to handle the uploading of copyrighted content to its new user-generated video site, Soapbox. Instead of focusing on content filters, Microsoft plans to emphasize so-called takedown practices. Soapbox has only been in public beta for about two weeks but has already had various video clips from shows such as South Park and American Idol uploaded to it, as well as music videos and other films.

Microsoft's proactive outreach is aimed at steering clear of Google's current troubles dealing with the content industry. Google has been accused holding copyright protection ransom by only offering copyright protection to companies that partner with them - a charge that the company has recently denied. Viacom's CEO even suggested that a big draw to P2P video start-up Joost was that the company promised to protect copyrights, insinuating that Google wasn't living up to its word.

In the letter sent to major content industry players, Microsoft's vice president of media and entertainment Blair Westlake wrote, "what we believe content owners want and need: industry-leading notice and takedown ... practices, including tools that enable our content partners to more easily find content that is rightfully theirs and give us prompt notice so we can respond even more efficiently and expeditiously." The letter was first reported on by Variety.

Some execs have made it very clear that they prefer filtering to takedowns. NBC's Jeff Zucker recently said of YouTube, "They have the capability. The question is whether they have the will." But providing a filtering solution has proven to be difficult for YouTube - although MySpace recently implemented filtering technology on their own video site - and sources at Microsoft have indicated that they don't believe current filtering tools to be effective enough yet for Soapbox either.

Despite this, at least one major studio has indicated that they are happy with Microsoft's proactive approach on the matter, saying that it's more preferable than how some of the other video sites have handled the situation. And just who are these "other" sites? It's not hard to guess.

And that's the effect Microsoft's going for, as it's in the company's best interest to stay on the good side of video content producers. Microsoft sells some of their content through other venues, such as the Zune Marketplace and Xbox Live Video, and would not want to risk straining such relationships.

Right now, Soapbox has only a fraction of the content uploaded to it compared to some of its competitors, so the concern about copyrighted content on the service has not escalated to YouTube levels quite yet. But with such a strong push toward content filtering among the studios, it seems unlikely that Microsoft will be able to continue their takedown approach forever. If Microsoft wants to strike a few deals of its own, the company will need to come up with an effective filtering solution before more movie and TV studios write off user-generated sites altogether. But for now, the company is reaching out to the content industry as if to say, "don't worry, we're going to make sure your rights are respected."

Of course, none of this will matter if Soapbox doesn't build an audience to rival YouTube's massive user base, but perhaps Microsoft believes that courting the content industry will help make that happen.