Digital Media

Stephen Colbert, the comedian, political satirist, and host of Comedy Central's "Colbert Report," is funny on his show. The animated characters on "South Park," created by Matt Stone and Trey Parker, are hilarious.

Google wants 'South Park' creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker to turn over documents, but according to Google's lawyers, the pair have been slow to deliver.

(Credit: Comedy Central)

But will they be as witty on the witness stand?

Colbert was recently questioned by Google attorneys during a legal deposition as part of Viacom's $1 billion copyright lawsuit against Google and YouTube. Viacom argues that YouTube encouraged people to upload unauthorized video clips from films and TV shows. The case is nearly three years old but could finally go to trial sometime this year.

Previously, YouTube requested that it be allowed to depose Colbert, "The Daily Show" host Jon Stewart, as well as other performers working under the Viacom umbrella.

According to court records, Google is trying to show that Viacom employees were among the people who uploaded thousands of the company's clips. If Viacom employees posted their own clips to YouTube, then Google's argument is that there is no way to determine which clips were pirated and which ones were uploaded with Viacom's blessing.

During last month's celebration of the 50th anniversary of Second City, the improvisational-comedy group, Colbert acknowledged giving a deposition to Google attorneys. Colbert's deposition, at the very least, sounded unorthodox.

Stephen Colbert

(Credit: Comedy Central)

Colbert told the gathering of comedians that there was some confusion about whether he was answering questions as himself or as the character he plays on the show; a bungling conservative talk show host.

"The whole deposition was in front of two people," Colbert told the crowd. "I had a coffee cup, and I would move it from side to side to differentiate who I was answering for. It was insane."

CNET has learned that Stewart also gave a deposition to Google attorneys. Stone and Parker were not required to give one. Instead, they were supposed to turn over documents to Google attorneys, which they have yet to do. The missed deadlines aren't amusing to Google.

In a December 21 letter to U.S. District Judge Louis Stanton, YouTube's attorneys asked the court to force Stone and Parker to produce the materials they requested. A representative of the "South Park" creators said Monday: "We intend to comply with the court order and produce the requested documents in a timely way."

I wonder how Cartman or Kenny would respond.

(Credit: YouTube)

Google won't officially unveil its Nexus One smartphone until Tuesday, when it has scheduled an Android Press Gathering. There are plenty of descriptions and images of the phone floating around the Web, though--a result of Google's decision to "dogfood" the device with employees.

And now, some video. Wednesday, a 10-minute clip of what appears to be someone taking the phone through its paces popped up on the Web. There's no sound, and the device appears to be configured for French speakers, so if you're an American with a short attention span, I'm not sure what the appeal would be. But some of you are going to want to watch it, anyway.

This normally would be the place where I'd embed the relevant YouTube video. But this is one video Google doesn't want on its video site, and the company is pulling the footage down as quickly as it can. (This is where I imagine the Viacom guys chortling and rubbing their hands).

That said, you can find the clip without much effort, particularly if you search other video sites not owned by Google. Have at it, if that floats your boat.

Story Copyright (c) 2010 AllThingsD. All rights reserved.

The music industry's patience with Muziic and the site's teenage founder may have finally run out.

Rio Caraeff, chief executive of Vevo, the recently launched Web site that features music videos from three of the top four recording companies, wants 16-year-old David Nelson to stop using the service's content and trademark. Caraeff e-mailed Nelson on Tuesday asking him to comply.

Vevo wants David Nelson, 16, to stop using the site's music videos but Nelson says he's done nothing wrong.

(Credit: Mark Nelson)

Nelson is the precocious high school coder who launched a music service last March that enables users to treat YouTube music videos in much the same way that song files are handled at iTunes. The videos can be sorted and added to playlists and perhaps more importantly, a user can listen to the music without having to watch ads.

I had anticipated the teen would get an adult-size smackdown much earlier than this. The major record companies have stood by and done nothing as Nelson used their content--with the help of YouTube's API--to build a site, a following, and now a burgeoning business. This is no high school science experiment. Nelson has begun selling ads and generating revenue, and the music labels have long signaled that they won't allow someone to profit from their material without getting compensated.

Nelson might be the first prep schooler to do this, but certainly we've seen oodles of sites try to use unlicensed music in a similar way, and how many of them have been sued into oblivion?

It probably isn't relevant that he's just a kid. Digital music is a high-stakes game and the grown-ups aren't playing around. Nelson was bound to run into trouble sooner or later.

What likely set off Vevo managers is that Nelson recently launched a new site and incorporated Vevo's material, once again with the help of YouTube's API. Then, Nelson announced this week that music fans could enjoy Vevo videos at Muziic but without all the ads. Vevo offers videos free of charge and ads are its main source of revenue. On Tuesday, Caraeff sent Nelson this e-mail:

"I kindly advise you to immediately cease the use of the Vevo Logo, trademark and any other references to our corporate name," Caraeff wrote. "With regards to the use of Vevo licensed videos...they are also being used directly without our consent...You can be assured that changes are being deployed to the API in question immediately, however I am still going to ask you directly to cease the use of Vevo videos from within your service."

Bono, Lady Gaga, Schmidt at Vevo bash (photos)

Vevo executives confirmed that preparations are being made to make Vevo's content inaccessible through YouTube's API.

But Nelson has no intention of backing down.

He says he will stop using Vevo's trademark if that's what they want. But when it comes to the videos, he says he has adhered to all of the requirements of YouTube's API.

Nelson thinks that Caraeff may have the wrong idea about him. He says he's a friend to the music industry and to artists. He said that it's been wrongly reported that Muziic strips out the ads that accompany YouTube and Vevo videos. He says ads have not been delivered to Vevo videos yet via the YouTube API. That's not his fault, he says.

"We have not taken any actions to circumvent the delivery of 'pre-roll' advertisements," Nelson said in an e-mail. "The syndication of advertisements through the YouTube API is beyond our control."

It's going to be interesting to see what occurs here over the next couple of weeks. Most likely, Vevo will remove content from YouTube's APIs and the issue will be behind us. But what happens if Nelson irritated somebody at the labels? When you talk about companies that have run afoul of the music industry, they are typically venture-backed and employ lawyers and staff and own office space and coffee machines.

In Muziic's shoestring operation, you have David and his dad, Mark, working out of their home in Bettendorf, Iowa--population 32,445.

Call me a handwringer but maybe Nelson should avoid confrontation and look to cut a deal. His service is impressive regardless of his age and maybe he and the music industry can find common ground.

Yesterday, I compiled my list of the five most welcome products for digital audio that came out in 2009. Today, I'm following it up with my list of the year's five biggest digital audio duds.

An image from the infamous online commercial for Songsmith, Microsoft's reverse-karaoke software.

(Credit: Microsoft)

Zookz. The breathless pitch got me interested: a mysterious online service was getting ready to compete against subscription-based download service eMusic. But where eMusic limits users to a set number of downloads, this mystery service would offer unlimited music and movie downloads. How could this be? Wouldn't users just download all the material they wanted then cancel their subscriptions? How could content owners let this happen?

The trick: Zookz was based in Antigua, and according to the company, this meant it wasn't subject to those silly little things known as U.S. copyright laws and royalty rates. Unfortunately, the country of Antigua didn't agree, and days after the public beta launched, Zookz disappeared into the digital ether with a promise to refund subscribers' money.

Jango Artist Airplay. I liked Jango's online radio service back when it launched in 2007. This year, in what looked like a desperate bid for new revenue, the company launched a service called Artist Airplay, in which bands could pay for placement on appropriate Jango stations. While Jango's CEO tried to tell me this was a reasonable new marketing opportunity, I saw it as a new form of the old pay-for-play deal that beginning bands often fall for.

With regular marketing, everybody pays more or less the same amount for the same class of services and the music sinks or swims on its own merits. With pay-for-play, artists buy exposure. There's only one problem: the resulting conflict of interest drives discerning listeners--including people who might actually pay you for your music--away. Jango Artist Direct may not be as stark as those pay-to-play "showcases" and "band battles" where all the audience members are other bands and their friends, but I believe it's better for beginning artists never to start down this slippery slope. Then again, I thought users would never be ignorant enough to click on search advertisements in massive numbers, which is one reason why Sergey Brin and Larry Page are multibillionaires and I'm not.

Vevo. As long as we're talking about Google, let's talk about YouTube, which the search company owns. It's a great source for music videos, and its APIs have formed the basis for music-finding apps like Muziic and TubeRadio. Users love it. Unfortunately, the companies and artists who own the copyrights to many of those music videos don't love it--the videos are expensive to produce, and the ad revenues from YouTube and other online video sites are scanty to nonexistent. Google is also lukewarm about music videos on YouTube, finding that the cost of policing copyright and complying with take-down notices is more than the money they can earn from selling ads.

In December, two record companies--Sony and Universal--joined together with Google in a new joint venture, Vevo, to address the problem. This was supposed to be a back-end business-to-business kind of deal, where YouTube users wouldn't know (or care) that certain videos were actually being provided exclusively by Vevo, which would sell short video advertisements to run before them. Unfortunately, the glittery launch party drew undue attention to Vevo's own site, causing its servers to buckle under the load. The entire episode left music fans scratching their heads.

Songsmith. The idea wasn't all that bad. Karaoke is fun. Making music on computers is fun. So why not, reasoned some Microsoft researchers, create a program that fills in audio accompaniment as users sing. Unfortunately, the $29.95 price and unbelievably mockable promotional video turned Songsmith into an Internet laughingstock. Later videos featuring Songsmith's accompaniment to the vocal tracks of songs like Queen's "We Will Rock You" and Van Halen's "Running With the Devil" highlighted the silliness.

CMX. In August, reports broke that the four major record labels were considering a new type of "digital album" format that would include album art, lyrics, and extra content. There was just one problem: Apple was already building its own competing format, code-named Cocktail and eventually released as iTunes LP. I think the entire concept of a digital album is weird anyway: I'm not convinced that lack of album art is a big reason why users are buying singles instead of albums. (The real reason is the Chumbawamba factor, or the fact that a lot of albums contain only one or two good songs.) And iTunes LP doesn't exactly seem to be taking off, although some of the extras--outtakes and videos--are actually quite valuable. But creating a competing format that wouldn't be supported by Apple? That's just plain dumb. To be fair, we haven't heard anything about CMX since iTunes LP launched. Here's hoping this product is killed before it's ever born.

Concert footage and other music videos from Brit band Muse were available at Hulu on Tuesday.

(Credit: Screenshot by Greg Sandoval/CNET)

Hulu's foray into music videos took another small step on Tuesday, when it struck a deal to offer some video content from Warner Music Group, one of the four largest recording companies.

The partnership calls for Hulu to offer concert footage and music videos from a handful of Warner acts, including Jason Mraz, the rock band Paramore, and alternative group Muse. CNET reported seeing Muse's content at Hulu earlier Tuesday.

To be sure, even with the addition of Warner's acts, Hulu's music video library is modest, at best. In addition to Muse, Hulu cut a deal last month with EMI to access select concert footage and music videos of some of the label's artists. That agreement was believed to be Hulu's first label deal.

YouTube is supposed to be the digital era's version of MTV. The Google video site has penned agreements with Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner, and EMI, but that doesn't appear to be stopping Hulu from striking deals with some of the labels.

Warner is a likely candidate to test the waters with a new music video outlet. The company has always said it seeks wide distribution of content and doesn't want any one distributor to have exclusive access. Now throw in a nine-month feud between Warner and Google over the terms of their music-licensing agreement, and what you have is an open door, however small, into which Hulu could squiggle.

Clips from a handful of bands aren't enough to make Hulu a power in music videos, which, incidentally, are the most-watched fare at YouTube. But at the very least, the labels do appear to be looking for more control of their content.

Earlier this month, Universal and Sony launched Vevo, a standalone music video site technologically backed by Google.

Warner is also exploring its own online video-advertising strategy. Certainly, for the labels, competition between YouTube and Hulu is good.

Updated at 1:32 p.m. PT to reference the official announcement of a Warner Music-Hulu partnership.

Susan Boyle's first appearance on "Britain's Got Talent" tallied the most worldwide views on YouTube for 2009, the video site said Wednesday.

The video of the once-unknown singer captured more than 120 million views.

Her video was followed "David After Dentist" (37 million views), "JK Wedding Entrance Dance" (33 million views), "New Moon Movie Trailer" (31 million views), and "Evian Roller Babies" (27 million views).

YouTube also looked specifically at which music videos tallied the most views for the year.

Pitbull's "I Know You Want Me" had more than 82 million views this year. That was followed by two Miley Cyrus songs--"The Climb" and "Party in the U.S.A"--with 64 million and 54 million views, respectively. The Lonley Island's "I'm On a Boat" and Keri Hilson's "Knock You Down" rounded out the top five.

You may notice that Michael Jackson videos, surprisingly, didn't capture more views than the top clips of the year. According to YouTube, the pop star's "Thriller" video was one of the fastest rising searches but it failed to acquire enough views to push it into the top five most-viewed videos.

Vevo CEO and President Rio Caraeff more or less confirmed on Wednesday my suspicion that the music service was not created to serve a new need for consumers. Rather, it was built to help advertisers and content owners (including labels, artists, and music publishers) capitalize on music videos, and to help Google (YouTube's owner) offload some of the cost associated with administering rights to them. In other words, this isn't a business-to-consumer play, it's more of a business-to-business arrangement.

Vevo's launch glitches appear to have been resolved.

(Credit: Vevo)

As he put it: music videos are popular online, fans like them, and content owners think of them as premium content. But they're too widespread, appearing on YouTube, AOL, and many other sites, and the user experience is way too varied--when a user searches on a song name at YouTube, they might get multiple copies of the exact same music video, plus user-posted remixes, live versions shot with a cell phone camera, and even parody versions. More generally, music videos grew up as a promotional tool for albums, and advertisers and users have come to see them as a commodity rather than prime product. Consequently, advertisers haven't been willing to pay much to place their messages next to them, and online music videos have lost money at a "staggering" scale.

Vevo is meant to provide an online clearinghouse for label-approved music videos--the kind of professionally shot videos that often cost half a million dollars or more and used to form the backbone of MTV. Vevo will be the exclusive distributor of these videos, and will handle all licensing and ad sales, although partner Google is handling the actual video hosting and streaming. In other words, if you're running a video site and you want to post a video that's in Vevo's catalog, Vevo will be your only source. By enforcing scarcity, giving advertisers a central place to buy ads, and controlling the user experience--for example, ensuring that there aren't many copies of the same video on YouTube--Vevo believes that advertisers will be willing to pay much more to appear next to these videos. So far, this seems to be true: according to Caraeff, advertisers have been willing to pay between $25 and $40 per thousand views (CPM, in advertising parlance) for Vevo-provided videos, compared with average market rates of $3 to $8. Caraeff claimed that artists and publishers will get about 50 percent of all revenues from these ads--a much higher percentage than they earn from recordings. This is why Mariah Carey and U2 were so excited about the launch.

Interestingly, Vevo will also curate unlicensed videos. For example, if somebody creates a remix of a Beyonce song with an associated video, and it becomes a runaway hit, Vevo might try to claim the video, add it to the Vevo catalog, and handle licensing for its content owners. Caraeff claims they're not going after the home video of your dog skateboarding to your favorite song, but professional-looking videos that have never been claimed, and therefore aren't making any money for anybody. (YouTube doesn't sell ads against unclaimed content for fear of copyright liability.)

So what's in it for Google? Simple--although YouTube has tons of viewers, it also has more inventory than it can sell advertisements against. Licensing for music videos is complicated, and not in Google's core area of expertise. Google is happy to hand this task off to Vevo and accept a lower percentage of advertising dollars because it believes the cost savings and higher CPMs will eventually make business sense.

Finally, about the botched launch: As Caraeff explained, Vevo was basically a B2B play, and the company didn't expect many users to visit its site on the first day. But the publicity created by the big launch party drove massive interest, and the company got more traffic in its first hour than it expected for its entire first year. For what it's worth, the company has added 32 servers in the last 24 hours, and I'm now able to get videos to play on the site with no problem.

In addition, Vevo didn't think it was critical to launch with a full complement of content--remember, it's mainly a back-end and clearinghouse for YouTube and other sites, and if you were watching videos there yesterday, you'll still be watching those same videos there tomorrow (as long as a takedown notice hasn't been issued). So Vevo launched with only about 15,000 videos from Sony and Universal Music. In January, it will add about 30,000 more from EMI and several independent distributors.

I still don't understand why they launched Vevo.com as its own Web site, but at least I understand the thinking behind the company. It won't change my behavior--I'm still going to YouTube, and if a video happens to be provided by Vevo, I'll know that the artists are making some money from it. Fair enough.

On August 1, 1981, a cultural and entertainment juggernaut flickered onto TV screens and rocketed out of obscurity with these six words: "Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll."

With that, the iconic cable network, MTV, was launched and a popular entertainment category--music videos--was born. Now, 28 years later, MTV has largely abandoned the genre and the record industry is preparing for the debut of a possible successor.

On Tuesday, video start-up Vevo is scheduled to launch. Supported by three of the top four largest record companies (sources say EMI has agreed to provide content to the site) and backed by the technological muscle of YouTube, Vevo is a Web site that will feature videos from many of the world's biggest recording stars, including U2, Cold Play, the Black Eyed Peas, Lady Gaga, Avril Lavigne, Bruce Springsteen, and Pearl Jam, according to the site's backers.

The move comes three years after Google's YouTube began proving that the masses still love music videos. Professionally made music clips are by far the most popular fare on the Web's No. 1 video site, accounting for 14 of the 25 most viewed clips ever. The labels involved with Vevo boast a combined total of about 15 billion views on YouTube.

Much of the music industry, including a score of independent labels that have recently signed on to the project, think it's time for music videos to take the next step in their evolution. They want a standalone site packed with high-definition clips from marquee acts.

Don't look for any user-generated content on Vevo, according to Doug Morris, chairman and CEO of Universal Music Group, the man who came up with the idea for the service. He said he wants to offer music fans as well as advertisers a more polished digital stage. That's one of the main reasons the venture was built, to charge advertisers premium rates in exchange for premium content.

Another motivation for building the site was to give the music industry a greater say in what happened to its content.

In an interview with CNET last week, Morris made no bones about the fact that by launching Vevo, the music industry is serving notice: no longer will middlemen or third parties profit from the labels' video content without giving up a fair share.

"What we're really doing is taking back control of everything," said Morris, who operates the largest of the top four recording companies. "This is us taking control of our future...Vevo enables us to provide consumers with about 80 percent of all the music videos in the world. So, this is really like MTV on steroids. We're starting with that kind of audience. But now we're in control of it. We don't have to go through a middleman anymore."

The problem as defined by the music sector started with MTV and extends all the way to YouTube.

When MTV was created, everyone told the labels not to worry about getting paid because the cable channel helped promote artists. "It was good exposure," they were told. The experts said the same thing in 2006 when YouTube started to emerge as one of the Web's favorite music sources. For a long time, the record companies seemed happy to go along, even as MTV built a financial empire from the videos.

But this time around, the music industry can't afford not to be the one who cashes in. The rest of the business is in decline, as CD sales shrink and profit margins on downloads are sliver thin. Record execs have been criticized for not finding new revenue models, so that's what they are trying to do. They believe there's new money to be had from the videos, even as they readily acknowledge that getting to it hasn't always been easy.

Morris remembers seeing a video from a Universal artist posted to Yahoo a couple of years ago and asking one of his employees what the portal paid for it. The exec told Morris the video was considered promotional and Yahoo paid nothing.

Promoting what? The video was five years old and Yahoo was pocketing the ad money without sharing it with the creators, Morris recalled telling the employee.

"I then called up (former Yahoo CEO) Terry Semel," Morris said. "And I said, 'Terry, we want to be paid.' Semel replied 'Absolutely not.' Then, we took our videos down from Yahoo and AOL and their viewership declined, at which point they came back and they paid us. They paid us a percentage of a cent for each view."

Morris isn't implying that Vevo's music clips will no longer be used to promote music or that Vevo plans to charge to watch videos. No, they will still be offered to viewers free of charge.

What is changing is that music videos, which often cost tens of thousands of dollars to produce, won't be treated as loss leaders anymore--not in this economic environment.

Nonetheless, Vevo faces plenty of challenges.

Nobody has proven whether advertisers are willing to pay top dollar for online videos, even professionally made music videos. There's also the question about whether interest in the genre will wane just as did with previous generations of music fans. After all, MTV switched to reality shows for a reason, no?

Rio Caraeff, Vevo's CEO, says the music video is only one of the site's features. The obligatory playlists will be available but music lyrics will also be offered. Visitors will have more access to their favorite performers than ever and Vevo's video quality will be as much as three times as what is typically available online.

All these upgrades were absolutely necessary to draw the kind of top advertising dollar that label honchos seek, according to Caraeff. He said typical ad rates for Web video run somewhere between $3 and $8 for every thousand views. Vevo's mission is to attract rates of $25 to $40.

"Successful was how we felt about YouTube, in terms of the shear popularity of our programming," Caraeff said. "But what we felt was that there could be a better way to drive a business around it. Advertisers had some reticence and some reluctance to fully embrace music videos on YouTube. We felt that there was work to be done to restore the premium luster and really create a better experience for advertisers."

In the short run, look for Vevo to be an online music store where downloads are sold as well as the merchandise created by artists, such as clothes and perfumes. In the long run, a music-video subscription service could be rolled out, one that offers full-length concerts.

"I do believe we will have a subscription service where we will stream live concerts from all over the country to viewers for a monthly fee," Morris said. "This is futuristic. We have not built this yet, but we're working on it."

You know that apocalypse thing we're always being told might be just around the corner? Well, do you feel the chilling breeze? Do you feel the troubled twittering in the trees?

For here is a tale that I know you will discuss with your loved ones, perhaps with other people's loved ones, even with your psychological professional, the minute you hear it.

It appears a man called Dana Hanna is standing at the altar on November 21. He utters those most solemn vows about how he will love and obey or whatever it is that married people claim to do these days.

The officiant pronounces that Dana and his lovely bride, Tracy, are now married. Does Dana weep? Does he kiss his bride?

Ah, no. For Dana's Twitter moniker is TheSoftwareJedi and his first loyalty is to his digital followers. So, much to his wife's surprise, he whips out his cell phone and updates his statuses on both Twitter and Facebook. Right there at the altar. He also hands his wife's cell phone over to her.

Now that he has uploaded the evidence (which we're assuming isn't staged), Dana insists that this was all done for fun.

Indeed, he explained on YouTube: "I have a lot of family scattered around the country and we all use Facebook a lot to keep in touch. So when Tracy and I were engaged, most of my family found out via Facebook because we updated our statuses."

If you're wondering what it is he tweeted from the altar, here it is: "Standing at the altar with @TracyPage where just a second ago, she became my wife! Gotta go, time to kiss my bride. #weddingday"

However, another tweet sent on Monday night by Hanna, who is chief architect of NextDayPets.com and president of Torian Technologies, might perhaps offer an even greater insight into his complex and socially networked psyche: "Just changed over the laundry for @TracyPage and was thrown off by the fact a bra was in there. Not used to living with a woman again."

Oh, Tracy, are you sure about this? I only ask because I just tried to access the Tracy Page Twitter feed and received the message "this page doesn't exist."