Submission + - SoundExchange: Billion Dollar Administrative Fee
palewook writes: "On June 7th, Yahoo, RealNetworks, Pandora, and Live365 sent letters to US lawmakers emphasizing they owe SoundExchange "administrative fees" of more than $1 billion dollars a year for collecting the increased CRB royalities effective July 15th unless the Internet Radio Equality Act passes Congress.
SoundExchange, the non-profit music industry entity, admits the levied charge of $500 per "channel" is supposed to only cover their administrative costs. Last year, SoundExchange collected a total of $20 million dollars from the Internet radio industry. Examining the new "administrative fee", means that RealNetworks which hosted 400,000 unique subscribed channels in 2006, would owe an annual administrative charge of 200 million dollars in addition to the retroactive 2006 rate hike per song played."
Submission + - iPredict a Cease-and-Desist letter.
palewook writes: Last week, MSNBC debuted a new service on their news site. Rex Sorgatz, Executive Producer at MSNBC.com, calls the service, "answers visualized over time". The service, iPredict is aggregated news. Propelled by user's votes with annotated changes in the news story marked on a graph. IPredict resembles a Statistical Process Control graph compressed into a timeline covering topical news headlines.
Presently, MSNBC has yet to ask the risky questions using the service. When should the USA leave Iraqi? Should Paris have been released? When will Apple send a Cease-and-Desist letter over the name?
Submission + - Photosynth: the Microsoft & BBC 3D image exhib
palewook writes: MicroSoft's Photosynth project unveiled an exhibit containing three-dimensional images of Ely Cathedral, Burghley House, Royal Crescent, Bath, Blackpool Ballroom, Scottish Parliament Building, and Trafalgar Square. The visualizations are compiled from numerous photos stitched over digital wireframes. And will be featured in the BBC series, "How We Built Britain."
Submission + - How big will iPhone become?
palewook writes: "Combine an iPod with a BlackBerry, toss in the Apple marque and Apple's marketing power, what do you get? Around 2009, when the lower cost version of iPhone appears, Business Week believes the yearly market for iPhones will be over 10 billion dollars a year. Its an interesting prediction, if those numbers come to pass, iPhone could become 10% of Apple's yearly market cap."
Submission + - Safemedia's CEO tells Congress, he can stop P2P.
palewook writes: Yesterday, Safwat Fahmy appeared in front of the House Science and Technology Committee. During Fahmy's testimony, he claimed Safemedia's "P2P Disaggregator" technology uses traffic-shaping systems and network-filtering systems that can destroy contaminated P2P networks. And Clouseau will make it impossible to send or receive any illegal P2P transmission on any installed network. However, Clouseau allows tunneling and SSH and never opens packets to determine file legality.
Submission + - Pac-man tribute goes live on Xbox Live today.
Submission + - Generating 'sound' electricity from heat.
palewook writes: The University of Utah published an article about physicist Orest Symko, who has successfully created a device that turns heat into sound and then into electricity.
Submission + - New version of Democracy Player released
Palewook writes: The last version of Democracy Player, version 0.9.6 and the final beta, was released early this morning. Democracy player does: AVI, MPRG, Quicktime, WMV, XVID, RSS, BitTorrent, High Definition, your playlists, 100s of free channels built-in, YouTube, Yahoo Video, and other sites. Versions are available for GNU/Linux, MacOS and Windows.
This is the open source internet video player which received the $100000 Mozilla grant last week. The nonprofit group which produces the player is also hiring for several positions.
Submission + - 24 + 4 = 3 years
palewook writes: TorrentFreak reports a man who uploaded 4 episodes of 24 to a youtube type site, LiveDigital.com, faces 3 years in the federal pen.
Submission + - Fight the machine.
palewook writes: Arstechnica
posted that an RiAA defendant is going after the 'RIAA for fraud, conspiracy, and extortion.'
Submission + - Coming to a dorm near you?
Submission + - world's largest radio telescope could lose funding
Submission + - Congress members with RIAA pockets.
palewook writes: The Consumerist posted a story containing the contact information of 50 United States Representatives & Senators who accepted RIAA money during their last election campaign. Seems like a good time to let a few people know how you feel about RIAA shills.
Submission + - media.guardian gets the Dr Who story right (guardian.co.uk)
palewook writes: Source: media.guardian.co.uk
Doctor Who boss may regenerate
Ben Dowell
Thursday May 31, 2007
The BBC has insisted that the future of Doctor Who's executive producer, Russell T Davies, "has not yet been decided" in spite of reports today that he will quit the hit show after the next series.
A BBC drama spokeswoman said that Mr Davies has signed up to oversee this year's Doctor Who Christmas special and 2008's fourth series.
However, she added that his involvement with Doctor Who after that has not been confirmed.
"Discussions have not begun so we cannot say if Russell will be involved or not," she said.
A senior BBC Wales drama source told MediaGuardian.co.uk that Mr Davies may be preparing to leave the show.
"Russell has always said that he wouldn't be with the show forever and he has made no secret that the hours are quite exhausting," the insider said.
"But there isn't any way it would be axed even if he left. He loves the show and he does feel that maybe it would benefit from some new blood."
Today's Sun claimed that the show will be axed after the fourth series because of the decision by Mr Davies to quit as executive producer.
The Sun reported that Mr Davies and "senior staff have hatched a plot to hand in a group resignation in summer 2008 and that the show will end after series four".
It quoted a "source" who said that Mr Davies had become fed up over an exhausting workload of 16-hour days nine months a year.
Mr Davies has been the creative driving force behind the Doctor Who revival, which has been a resounding critical and ratings success, and his departure would be a blow for the BBC.
As executive producer he has taken on a "show runner" role, overseeing all creative aspects of the drama and in particular leading the team of Doctor Who writers, as well as scripting individual episodes himself.
The showrunner role is common on long running US TV drama and comedy series, but not often seen in the UK.
However, if Mr Davies does leave Doctor Who, the BBC will want to keep such a popular show going by bringing in a new executive producer to take over his creative responsibilities.
To contact the MediaGuardian newsdesk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk
