Media News - Friday, February 03, 2012

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Huffington Post to launch streaming network

The Huffington Post on Thursday marked the first anniversary of its acquisition by AOL with an announcement that it plans to launch an online video streaming network. The HuffPost Streaming Network will launch this summer with 12 hours a day of original programming, to be increased to 16 hours a day by the end of 2013, Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington said in a blogpost. Huffington said the network will "live on every platform - computer, smartphone, tablet, Over-the-Top TV - with the goal of creating the most social video experience anywhere." She said the network "will be built around segments spotlighting the biggest, hottest, most engaging stories HuffPost is covering at any given moment." The Huffington Post was launched by Huffington, a Greek-American author and columnist, in May 2006 and sold to AOL last February for USD 315m. Huffington said that over the past year, the number of unique monthly visitors to the Post has increased by 47 percent to 36.2 million. The Huffington Post also launched Canadian, British and French editions, she said, and has plans to launch Spanish and Italian versions. (AFP)

Swedish court denies final appeal to Pirate Bay founders

Sweden's Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday not to hear the appeal of four founders of controversial The Pirate Bay website, the world's largest clearinghouse of peer-to-peer BitTorrent filesharing. Carl Lundstom, Fredrik Neij and Peter Sunde were denied appeal. Together with fellow founder Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, who was ill and did not attend the appeal, the four men now face prison sentences of between 4 and 10 months and a combined fine of SEK 46m (USD 6.8m). All four have since moved abroad, and it is unclear when and how they will need to pay up and sit down in jail. "We are already seeing some implications of the decision," Marten Schultz, a law professor at Stockholm University, said in an e-mail to Deutsche Welle. "Representatives of the rights holders have issued public statements that they will take this decision as a starting point for a crackdown on filesharers and especially on services that facilitate (illegal) filesharing by others." Sweden's Anti-Piracy Bureau told Stockholm's local newspaper Aftonbladet that it was preparing a new offensive against filesharers. Meanwhile, the filesharing website has taken down its main site and is now redirecting traffic to a Swedish mirror to thepiratebay.se. The action appears to be a defensive move to avoid domain seizure by US authorities. (Deutsche Welle)

“Hungary’s public broadcasters violate European principles”

The 2010 overhaul of Hungary’s media laws set a dangerous precedent in Europe, the South East Europe Media Organization (SEEMO) has said in a statement. Instead of guaranteeing press freedom in an EU member country, they seem to guarantee press freedom for the governing party at the expense of the right of the public to free information, the Vienna-based affiliate of the International Press Institute (IPI) said. The organization expresses concern at the state appropriation of the Hungarian media landscape. The Hungarian Media and Telecommunication Authority and its Media Council are controlled by the parliament in which the governing party, Fidesz, has a majority. Although the law prescribes a two-thirds majority of votes in parliament for the council members to be elected, all four members were nominated by Fidesz. The legal procedure was respected but Fidesz controls two thirds of parliament seats in the parliament and can easily choose its candidates. The political independence of the Chairperson of the Media Council is not guaranteed. SEEMO Secretary General Oliver Vujovic said: “I urge the international organizations to do everything they can in order to underscore that people in Hungary have the same right to information and professional public service as in the rest of Europe, and to guarantee that right.” (B 92)

Google changes enable ‘per country’ blog takedowns

Blogger sites can now be blocked on a "per country" basis after a change to its web address system. Google will now be able to block access in individual countries following a legal removal request. The new system means blocking will not require restricting world-wide access to a blog. The changes apply in Australia, New Zealand and India, but the BBC understands Google plans to roll it out globally. The news follows Twitter's announcement that it could selectively block tweets on a country-by-country basis - news that attracted criticism from free speech campaigners. However, Joss Wright, research fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute, said he felt the changes to Blogger were a positive step. "Google's new approach to supporting country-level takedown requests in Blogger strikes a good balance between free speech, legality and practical issues for end users. "By allowing per-country takedown requests, Google can meet local laws without blocking content at a global level." Under the new system, a blog reader will, in the first instance, be directed to a website address using a "country-code top level domain". Google believes this will allow it to comply with local law enforcement requests, while keeping content available in other jurisdictions. (BBC News)

WikiLeaks to move servers offshore, sources say

Julian Assange’s investors are in the process of purchasing a boat to move WikiLeaks’ servers offshore in an attempt to evade prosecution from U.S. law enforcement, FoxNews.com has learned. Multiple sources within the hacker community with knowledge of day-to-day WikiLeaks activities say Assange’s financial backers have been working behind the scenes on the logistics of moving the servers to international waters. One possible location: the Principality of Sealand, a rusty, World War II-era, former anti-aircraft platform off the coast of England in the North Sea. Based on a 1968 British court ruling that the facility is outside the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom, Sealand’s owner has declared the facility a sovereign state, or “micro-nation.” But others dismissed the idea that simply moving servers would allow WikiLeaks to escape prosecution. Jim Dempsey, vice president for public policy with the Washington, D.C., think tank Center for Democracy and Technology, said moving WikiLeaks’ servers to Sealand wouldn’t matter -- unless the people behind WikiLeaks moved themselves. Another WikiLeaks source said attempts had been made to place servers on old military barges in the ocean, in international waters. The source would not say whether those attempts had been successful, citing concerns for compromising the success of WikiLeaks and its future plans to move offshore. WikiLeaks' servers are now based in Sweden and Iceland, among other locations. (Fox News)

Tumblr hires journalists to write about Tumblr

Call it a snake eating its own tail or a smart take on objectively monitoring a particularly under-served area of the internet, but social blog service Tumblr raised eyebrows Wednesday with the news that it was hiring two writers to write about Tumblr and its communities. The two writers — Chris Mohney, SVP of content for BlackBook Media and Jessica Bennett, senior writer and editor for Newsweek and The Daily Beast — will be reporting on various content and conversations appearing on the almost 44 million blogs powered by the company. Bennett likened it to a virtual journalistic beat: “Basically, if Tumblr were a city of 42 million, I’m trying to figure out how we cover the ideas, themes and people who live in it.” The work will exist to report on and market Tumblr (although Mohney said that their writing will be more about “demonstrating the potential of this nascent creative population than simplistic or forced attempts at corporate boosterism”), and will be posted on both the official Tumblr staff blog and a new Tumblr site that has yet to be created, according to a company spokesperson. Readers can expect “real journalism and analysis” from the new site, Tumblr vice president Andrew McLaughlin told the New York Times, “not PR fluff”. So far, Tumblr’s staff blog hasn’t announced the addition of Mohney and Bennett, nor has the company announced a launch date for the new service. (Time)

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• 02/02/12 - Greek media hit by financial crisis
• 02/02/12 - Journalists press NYPD on media access issues
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• 31/01/12 - FM Radio in the Arab World 2012
• 31/01/12 - Pirate Party to sue FBI for closing Megaupload file-sharing site
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