News Blog

A computer peripheral maker filed suit against Apple and CBS on Tuesday, claiming the companies are infringing on its trademark for the "Mighty Mouse" device.

(Credit: Apple)

Maryland-based Man & Machine says it was selling its chemical-resistant and waterproof mouse to hospitals a year before Apple sold its single-button mouse of the same name.

CBS owns the rights to the Mighty Mouse cartoon and licensed the use of the name to Apple. The network was named in the lawsuit because Man & Machine says it doesn't have the right to license the name. Both Man & Machine and CBS have trademark applications for the name and are currently dueling for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's approval.

Man & Machine is asking for monetary damages and for a court to issue an injunction to prevent Apple from selling any more of its Mighty Mouse devices.

Note: CBS has agreed to acquire CNET Networks, publisher of News.com. The deal is expected to close in the third quarter.

(Credit: Redlasso.com)

Three of the largest broadcast TV networks have sent a cease-and-desist letter to RedLasso , a little-known but rapidly growing video syndication site.

Fox News Network, NBC Universal, and CBS sent a letter on Monday, accusing the company of "building a business based on the unauthorized syndication of" the content owners' news, sports, and entertainment shows.

RedLasso records TV shows and then indexes clips so users can find, pull, and embed them on other Web sites. Reporter Liz Gannes over at Newteevee.com saw this one coming. Two weeks ago, Gannes noted that RedLasso had grown from 2 million unique users in November to 24 million in April.

Gannes wrote: "Now might be a pretty good time to get permission."

She added later that RedLasso executives told her they were on good terms with broadcasters. The executives' assertions, however, are untrue, the networks said in their letter to RedLasso. In the letter, the entertainment companies wrote that such statements "falsely convey an affiliation...when there is none."

At a time when the networks are giving their content away for free, one has to wonder why RedLasso would even get into this business. Anyone can go to Hulu and grab embed code for many NBC Universal shows without violating the law.

I was in Los Angeles for the Digital Hollywood conference earlier this month and there was plenty of discussion about the influx of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs moving in to make deals with the studios. The big entertainment companies were more open to cutting deals than ever, insiders told me.

They also said that partnerships awaited those that could help the entertainment industry solve problems of advertising, marketing, and syndication on the Internet.

Executives from King of Prussia, Pa.-based RedLasso were unavailable for comment.

Disclosure: CBS has agreed to acquire CNET Networks, publisher of News.com. The deal is expected to close in the third quarter.

CBS has begun testing high-definition streaming video.

Buried in the lab's section of the network's Web site is a gallery of short HD clips from shows such as Jericho, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and Dexter.

TechCrunch was first to report the story and said the clips are available in H.264 format at 480p, with 720 p and 1080p coming later.

CBS has been overshadowed on the Internet in recent months by Hulu, the video portal operated by NBC Universal and News Corp. Hulu launched earlier this month and has attracted a score of content from other networks, studios, and sports leagues. Hulu has also begun testing high-definition streaming.

Wouldn't it be nice if you could find interesting things to read on the mobile Web much more quickly and easily?

Now, CBS Mobile says that it has just the feature on its mobile WAP site to help readers dig deeper into mobile Web sites and to find the stories they want to read much more easily. The media giant has partnered with a company called Aggregate Knowledge, which sifts through click-histories of every story on the site and looks at users in aggregate in order to find patterns in those clicks so that it can recommend the most relevant Web content based on what other people with similar tastes are reading and clicking on.

Screenshot of the "Your Headlines" box.

(Credit: Aggregate Knowledge)

The companies plan to formally announce their partnership on Wednesday, and the new feature will appear on the CBS Mobile Web site starting this week.

CBS hopes that by using the Aggregate Knowledge technology, which is already used on traditional Web sites like BusinessWeek.com and WashingtonPost.com, it will be able to deliver more targeted and relevant content to the people who visit the CBS Mobile Web site.

"What we are really trying to do is make the discovery of content on the phone much easier and more relevant than it is today," said Jeff Sellinger, executive vice president of CBS Mobile. "If we can make it easier to get to content that people want, they'll have a much better experience and they'll come back."

Mobile phones are highly personalized devices. And the general consensus among mobile experts is that people want highly relevant content when they search the Web from a mobile phone. They are typically looking for something specific, and they don't have the time or patience to click through several menus to find what they want.

The example Aggregate Knowledge uses is suppose a user reads an article about "super delegates." He might be led to a story about the upcoming democratic primaries because others who read about the super delegates went on to read about the primary.

The CBS Mobile Web site will display suggested articles in the form of "Your Headlines." Because content suggestions are user-driven, they change throughout the day based on natural shifts in interest from morning news, to feature articles, to breaking stories and trends.

CBS is using the technology initially to help direct relevant news stories to users. But in the future it could use it to also deliver targeted advertising to cell phone users.

For example, if someone is reading a story about new high-definition TVs, a link might appear next to the article that says, "People who read this article bought this Sony TV."

It will be interesting to see how well the technology actually works in this capacity. Also, once you throw advertising into the mix, mobile operators will likely be looking for their cut of the revenue. So it could take awhile for CBS Mobile and others to hash out a deal to include targeted advertising. Even though mobile operators say they want to offer advertising, they have been slow to try it.

CBS Radio has agreed to share online streams from all 140 of its stations with AOL's online radio service.

According to an announcement posted to CBS's Web site, the media conglomerate will now power AOL's Web radio. Financial terms were not released.

"CBS Radio will drive advertising sales for AOL's more than 200 award-winning stations," the companies said in the statement, "in addition to its own online streams of more than 150 radio stations and custom channels."

In the spring, CBS plans to release a new online music player that will allow audiences to toggle between stations, song titles, and album information.

Warner Bros. Entertainment Group is tired of guessing about how the studio's content will appear on the Web or handheld devices.

That's why the company has built a new media center designed to test how consumers respond to Web sites, consumer electronics, and video-on-demand services that feature the studio's movies and TV shows.

The company behind such films and TV shows as I am Legend, Michael Clayton, and ER, has outfitted the media center with Xboxes, PSPs, iPods, Macbooks, varying brands of PCs, DirectTV, and a plethora of cable subscription services.

The company will bring in everyday consumers and watch how they interact with Web sites, gadgets, or video-on-demand services that feature Warner content. With the help of eight pan-zoom cameras built into the ceiling, researchers will monitor the respondents, according to Bruce K. Rosenblum, the executive vice president in charge of the media center.

"We're not operating in a vacuum anymore because of this center," Rosenblum told CNET News.com on Thursday. "We want to get smarter and understand these technologies a bit better. Warner Bros can just assume about the deals we do. I think it's important that Warner knows the experience."

The studios know that they can't rely solely on the TV set or VHS recorder anymore. Fans are consuming films and shows on video-game consoles, music players like the iPod, and mobile phones. Rosenblum said Warner Bros. modeled its media center after one built in Las Vegas by CBS.

The differences between the two facilities are that Warner was designed specifically to test emerging technologies and is on-site.

Rosenblum decline to discuss costs of building the center. He did say that companies owned by Time Warner, the studio's parent company, are welcome to use the facility.

CBS Evening News series

I caught CNET Editor at Large Brian Cooley on the CBS Evening News report last night, "The Secret Lives of Teens." In the second installment of this three-parter, which featured a tug-of-war between a daughter and her mother concerned about her risky online behavior, Cooley observed that, "This is just the return of the Cold War, with different players. Instead of the U.S. and Russia, it's Mom and Dad versus Joey and Bill." Cooley talked about parental control technology but added that, "In the end, this points back to the parenting relationship, and it moves away from technology when you really have to make a difference in their lives...you cannot rely on software."

I agree with Cooley's conclusion. Online safety for teens is a complex issue that cannot be covered in one blog post, but the CBS Evening News series gave me a lot of food for thought. They posed the question, is parental spying on teen Internet use an "invasion of privacy or smart parenting?" and I wish the CBS series had given more consideration to the possibility that digital spying is a misguided parenting practice.

Updated 12:30 p.m. PT

A coalition of major media and technology companies that notably does not include Google appears to be getting serious about copyright on the Internet.

A who's who of media companies--CBS, News Corp.'s Fox Entertainment Group, NBC Universal, Viacom, and Disney--as well as Microsoft and the News Corp.-owned MySpace, along with video-sharing sites Dailymotion and Veoh Networks released a set of guidelines Thursday designed to halt online piracy.

Notably absent from the list is Google, which unveiled filtering technology for its YouTube video-sharing site on Monday. Sources familiar with the coalition plan say Google was involved in the talks at one point, but backed out shortly before making its own announcement. Disney and Microsoft initiated the effort, multiple sources said.

"Initially Disney reached out directly to us," Veoh Networks CEO Steve Mitgang said in an interview with CNET News.com.

In response to questions, Google released a statement from YouTube Engineering Director Jeremy Doig: "We appreciate ideas from the various media companies on effective content identification technologies. We're glad that they recognize the need to cooperate on these issues, and we'll keep working with them to refine our industry-leading tools."

A YouTube spokesman who asked not to be named says Google had talked to Disney about the guidelines but Google and YouTube executives decided not to join the alliance because they were worried that creating "industry-wide mandates" would stifle innovation.

A source close to the deal hinted that the longstanding billion-dollar lawsuit between Viacom and Google over copyrighted content on YouTube may have played a role in Google's decision to back out, citing the possibility that it could have affected how the litigation would unfold. And another source familiar with the alliance finds fault with the fact that Google's new filtering system doesn't actually block infringing content from being posted, but supposedly removes it from the site within minutes. The media group's guidelines call for "blocking infringing uploads before they are made available to the public.

"It's unprecedented that these disparate companies have come together," the source says. "It's a real loss that Google isn't a part of this."

The companies expect to implement the guidelines before the end of the year, another source at one of the companies says. It hasn't been made clear whether this will mean we'll be seeing more announcements and partnerships--or more specifically, whether the two video-sharing platforms involved in the alliance, Veoh and DailyMotion, will become more attractive business partners for the major media and technology companies involved.

"Our goal is to be a vital partner for premium independent and individual producers. We're already a partner to CBS," Veoh's Mitgang said, referring to the company's new online video-sharing network. "We are actively working with everybody on the list regarding this."

Representatives from multiple companies involved in the initiative emphasized that it's not a closed partnership and that other corporations may be introduced into it as well--provided they are willing to adhere to and support the guidelines.

"The principles acknowledge a collective respect for protecting copyrights and recognize that filtering technologies must be effective and are only a part of what is necessary to achieve this goal," a joint news release said.

The guidelines also call for companies to: balance the legitimate "fair use" rights for using copyrighted material, promptly address claims that content was blocked in error, and upgrade technology "when commercially reasonable."

Protecting fair use--which allows people to post excerpts of copyright content and use content for educational purposes and for parody--is important, says Ken Boehm, chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center, which monitors copyright issues online.

Boehm criticized Google for not joining the effort. "Google is continuing to play hard ball," he says. "They are going to use their market share and economic power to just hold off any kind of reform or compromise."

Several sources say plans have been made for representatives from some members of the new alliance--though it's not yet clear which companies--to head to Washington, D.C. soon to meet with members of Congress on the matter. Rather than move to encourage more legislation, it's to educate lawmakers on the issues and show them that occasionally-sparring media and technology companies can handle this on their own.

A full list of the principles involved in this new set of guidelines, which emphasize high-tech filtering, quick removal of pirated content, and promotion of infringement-free digital content, are publicly available at the new site UGCPrinciples.com.

The news was originally reported by the Wall Street Journal earlier on Thursday.

With contributions from CNET News.com's Elinor Mills.

Pirates getting in the way of business? Let's form Voltron.

(Credit: TV Tokyo)

The announcement has been made--read CNET News.com's full coverage here.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that an impressive cast of major media and technology companies plans to announce a high-profile list of joint guidelines for preserving copyright and fighting piracy online. Sources told The Journal that the companies involved include media moguls CBS Corp., NBC Universal, News Corp.'s Fox (and its MySpace social network), Viacom, and Disney, as well as tech icon Microsoft and French video-sharing site DailyMotion.

It's unclear whether these are the only parties involved in the deal. Inquiries to several of the companies allegedly involved in the agreement went unanswered.

The most notable party absent from the group is Google, according to The Journal's Kevin Delaney. Apparently, the Mountain View, Calif.-based tech titan had been in talks about joining but did not go through with it. Google is the parent company of YouTube, the wildly popular video-sharing site that had come under fire from media companies for making it easy to share copyrighted content.

Google recently announced an antipiracy technology initiative for YouTube.