The Social

NEW YORK--One of the most troubling things about the proliferation of hate speech on social media sites is the potential exposure to young people, Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center said here on Wednesday.

The Los Angeles-based Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights advocacy group, had just released its annual "Digital Terrorism and Hate" report, which this year is focused on the proliferation of hate and intolerance on social networks. The audience consisted primarily of students from Manhattan's Independence High School who were enrolled in a class about genocide and ethnic violence and who had been invited to listen to the presentation and provide their reaction to the conclusions.

"As more and more people are going to MySpace, YouTube, and especially Facebook, the extremists...they're going to exactly the same neighborhood," said Cooper, who met with Facebook representatives in Palo Alto, Calif., earlier this year to voice concerns about the amount of content promoted by extremists on the social network.

The timing was especially apt considering the recent prominence in the news of Holocaust denial groups on Facebook, and the social network's insistence that such groups would only be removed if they directly advocated violence or threats. That, company representatives said, is what falls under a violation of the site's terms of service.

It's obviously an extremely contentious issue. TechCrunch blogger Michael Arrington posted a long entry last weekend accusing Facebook of hypocrisy for letting Holocaust denial groups to remain intact whereas all forms of nudity are 100 percent banned on the social network. Some commenters applauded his stance against Facebook, whereas others accused Arrington of "page view trolling" or argued that "allowing these groups to post in public places like Facebook makes it easier to create tabs on when merely speech (though appalling) turns into a push for violence against the hated group."

Facebook employee Ezra Callahan joined the debate, posting a long "note" on Facebook about why he supports the company's decision to leave some of the Holocaust denial groups intact. Callahan, who is Jewish (as is, he pointed out, company founder Mark Zuckerberg), wrote, "I find the mounting pressure on us to remove Holocaust-denying groups incredibly frustrating. I feel no shame at all working at a company that holds free speech as its core ideal in setting content guidelines, even if the end result is the occasional presence of content that I find personally outrageous and offensive."

"Silencing stupid people is not how you make stupid people go away. It's by pointing out how stupid they are and bringing those people into the light of day so everyone with a shred of common sense can see who they are and remember never to give them an ounce of respect in any aspect of life," Callahan wrote. "You do not combat ignorance by trying to cover up that ignorance exists. You confront it head on. Facebook will do the world no good by trying to become its thought police."

Callahan, as many commenters on his original post pointed out, may not be justified in saying that Holocaust denial groups that don't directly incite violence shouldn't be removed from Facebook. At the event Wednesday, Cooper suggested that when it comes to an atrocity on the scale of the Holocaust, anything promoting denial of its existence amounts to advocating violence.

But Callahan does have a point. If Facebook aspires to a culture of free speech, where should the line be drawn? There are a lot of fringe ideas and beliefs in religion, culture, and even academia that the Internet has allowed to bubble to the surface, from theories about 9/11 having been carried out by the Bush administration to environmental extremists who believe it's a moral and just act to vandalize Hummer dealerships. Many gay rights activists would say that some very mainstream religious denominations' views of homosexuality are tantamount to hate speech, and some animal rights activists would undoubtedly argue that a Facebook group for hunting fans serves to incite violence.

The issue also stands when it comes to comedic and satirical content on the Web. Should YouTube pull a clip from the movie "Borat" in which star Sacha Baron Cohen performs a "folk song" promoting the marginalization of Jewish people, because the three-minute clip doesn't explain that what appears to be a vicious anti-Semitic tirade is actually a satirical routine performed by an edgy Jewish comedian?

Cooper made it clear in his talk on Wednesday that there is no way to eradicate hate speech on the Web, bringing up a screenshot of a prominent white supremacist on YouTube who has been banned by the Google-owned video-sharing site over 60 times and keeps coming back.

"If they're spending all their creative time on hate, they will more often than not find ways to come back," he explained.

Cooper said that what's more important--and why the centerpiece of the announcement was the presence of a class of high schoolers--is education and awareness. The Wiesenthal Center distributed an "action plan" for parents that advocated tips like "make sure your child understands the difference between legitimate criticism or analysis or hate that seeks to rewrite history," and "communicate and challenge your kids: just because it's posted doesn't make it true or real.

Facebook might not be right in refusing to take down all Holocaust-denying content, and indeed, the social network is in a tight spot here. But here's where it's right on: A precedent could be set here that's dangerous at worst and annoying at best (see what happened when LiveJournal started purging its ranks of accounts that housed tawdry "Harry Potter" fan fiction) if Facebook doesn't handle the situation carefully. When it comes to the young and impressionable, deciding where to draw the line should be up to parents and educators, not the technology company that built the site that lets you "poke" your friends.

Simon Wiesenthal Center's 2009 report, "Facebook, YouTube +: How Social Media Outlets Impact Digital Terrorism and Hate"

(Credit: Simon Wiesenthal Center)

Crackle, the video site owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, has expanded its feature film lineup, which means that you can now watch "Groundhog Day" or "Spider-Man 2" at the office, if your boss isn't looking.

Crackle now hosts "nearly 100" full-length features, according to a release, and "dozens more" are on the way. There's also a pop-culture trivia game called "Crackle Cinemactive."

What's not clear is whether these movies will soon be on their way to YouTube, where Sony is one of a number of content partners that will be bringing TV and movies to the Google-owned video-sharing site. YouTube has agreed to use a Crackle player when showing Sony content, and Crackle will get a cut of the ad revenue.

Sony launched Crackle two years ago, a year after it acquired video site Grouper for $65 million. Unlike bigger video hub Hulu, a joint venture between NBC Universal and News Corp., Crackle has a target audience: men ages 18 to 34. That's what Sony hopes will make it more advertiser-friendly.

"Our movie lineup is unmatched online," Eric Berger, Sony Pictures Television's senior vice president of digital content, said in a release. "These are the movies that matter for guys 18 to 34, and this is the next step in creating our direct-to-consumer network."

Updated at 1:25 p.m. PDT.

Google-owned video-sharing site YouTube is silencing music videos in the U.K. after negotiations with the country's Performing Right Society (PRS for Music), which collects licensing fees for artists and labels, failed.

"Our previous license from PRS for Music has expired, and we've been unable so far to come to an agreement to renew it on terms that are economically sustainable for us," a statement from YouTube read. "There are two obstacles in these negotiations: prohibitive licensing fees and lack of transparency. We value the creativity of musicians and songwriters and have worked hard with rights-holders to generate significant online revenue for them and to respect copyright. But PRS is now asking us to pay many, many times more for our license than before."

The YouTube statement continued: "The costs are simply prohibitive for us--under PRS' proposed terms we would lose significant amounts of money with every playback. In addition, PRS is unwilling to tell us what songs are included in the license they can provide so that we can identify those works on YouTube--that's like asking a consumer to buy a blank CD without knowing what musicians are on it."

But a statement from PRS for Music claimed that Google doesn't want to pay enough for licensing fees.

"PRS for Music is outraged on behalf of consumers and songwriters that Google has chosen to close down access to music videos on YouTube in the U.K.," read a statement from the industry group, which noted that Google rakes in billions of dollars in revenue. "Google has told us they are taking this step because they wish to pay significantly less than at present to the writers of the music on which their service relies, despite the massive increase in YouTube viewing."

A report from the BBC suggests that the change will take effect later on Monday.

Royalty fees in the U.K. reportedly caused streaming music service Pandora to pull out of the country (along with other non-U.S. markets) two years ago, and many smaller players in digital media are currently feeling the pain. PRS for Music has also targeted small businesses in the U.K. for playing radios publicly, which the group says is a form of piracy.

Since it only pertains to music videos, this won't affect, say, Queen Elizabeth's royal YouTube channel. But U.S. digital media companies, particularly when it comes to music, have repeatedly encountered rough seas abroad.

One of the most high-profile has been Apple's iTunes, which several years ago came under scrutiny from one European government after another, typically concerning digital rights management restrictions in its iTunes Store. But music videos have been contentious both in and outside the U.S., with labels apparently unclear as to whether the best strategy would be to ink deals with YouTube--where they have less control--or go at it on their own. Much of the controversy comes from the fact that the music industry says it just doesn't profit much from having its videos on YouTube.

Sources told CNET News earlier this month that YouTube was working with Universal Music Group to create a standalone site "closely linked" to YouTube, a shadowy project that has been described as a Hulu for music videos. And Viacom has created its own hub, MTVMusic.com. It's complicated enough in the U.S.; bringing overseas players and viewers into account opens many new cans of worms.

It's rare that you get Chad Hurley, co-founder of the Google-owned YouTube, and Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, on a panel together. But they were on Friday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and we tuned in via Webcast.

Not surprisingly, neither Hurley nor Zuckerberg dropped any bombs. They've been trained in the ways of the Force, after all. But here's what they said in response to the panel's final question for them: where do they see their companies being in five years?

Also not surprisingly, both founders expressed confidence that, yes, their companies would be around. Hurley's answer was basically that YouTube has become so ingrained in digital culture that it's here to stay. "We've seen people expressing their thoughts, sharing their experience," he explained. "We have the Queen (of England) on our site, we have the Pope on our site, we have the White House on our site." YouTube was also acquired for $1.65 billion by Google, so its future is decently stable.

He was more coy when it came to the question of whether he would still be at YouTube in five years. Hurley's answer was simply, "Life is short."

Zuckerberg, meanwhile, put forth the argument that Facebook solidified its survival by two things: staying in touch with what kinds of information people want to share, and being willing to evolve to fit that; and second, launching its third-party developer platform to establish itself as more than just a standalone service.

"Any individual application, yeah, probably will kind of grow and fade over time," Zuckerberg said. "Facebook will always be this hub where we've mapped out who people know, and where people are going to share information." The platform, he said, is open and flexible enough to satisfy the digital world's "constant need for new, more efficient applications."

We admire their optimism--but let's see what the markets have to say about it.

NEW YORK--Not so long ago, Web video start-up Joost was looking a lot like the Waterworld of Web 2.0.

"We had a company and a product," the company CEO Mike Volpi said here in an interview at Joost's office, a brightly lit space a few blocks from Union Square that the company moved into several months ago. "It didn't work particularly well. We needed a new company, culturally, product-wise, target market wise."

Volpi now hopes that he can steer Joost's trajectory away from something like one of those big-budget movies that tanks at the box office, and turn it into the equivalent of a runaway DVD hit.

Built by Skype and Kazaa founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom and originally known under the shady codename "The Venice Project," Joost was buzzed about long before its launch as a potential "YouTube killer." It was pumped full of venture capital from both Silicon Valley firms and entertainment-industry stalwarts (including CBS, which now publishes CNET News) excited about the possibility for an online video hub free of the piracy issues that continue to plague YouTube. At its initial launch, Joost invite codes were traded around the blogosphere like currency.

But after high-profile content partnership announcements from CBS and Viacom, the big-name deals stopped rolling in and the limited selection became a target of criticism. Then, NBC Universal and News Corp. launched their joint venture, Hulu, and achieved a reaction opposite to Joost's--ridiculed and nicknamed "Clown Co." before its launch, the video portal was a surprise hit.

The Joost model--a downloadable peer-to-peer video client--became swiftly outdated as streaming video took off. "In Internet years, that was a long time ago," Volpi said of the company's decision to originally structure its software around a download."A lot of content owners were very concerned about basic Internet security. That was the reality two and a half years ago."

Joost then had to deal with some particularly negative press. Bloggers turned up the vitriol. A feature story in Portfolio magazine described the company's path as going from "from superhero to life support." Joost enjoyed a brief moment back in the spotlight, or at least on the desktops of bored office workers, when it streamed all of the NCAA's "March Madness" tournament games live, but it quickly fell off the radar again.

Volpi, a former high-profile executive at Cisco who was long rumored to be a potential successor to CEO John Chambers, joined the Joost in June 2007, shortly after its commercial launch. The buzz was fading, but the declarations of death hadn't yet set in.

In due time, the start-up ditched its peer-to-peer model altogether and started developing a Web-based version. "Three months after we launched, we got out of beta on the client app," Volpi said. "We shut it down and started developing the Web app."

Joost also quietly slimmed down its employee headcount from nearly 200 employees to just shy of 100. Its lofty international ambitions were trimmed back to focus on the U.S. market. Though Volpi is based in London, Joost's hub is now the 45-employee New York office. They're closer to the media and entertainment industries now, Volpi explained, as well as to the people they need to negotiate with regarding digital rights.

"As a company, internally, we finally turned the corner in the late summer," Volpi said. Now, several months later, he believes it's paying off.

Joost redux
In October, Volpi said, the site pulled in 600,000 unique visitors in the U.S. and 600,000 abroad. In November, that was up to 1.2 million in the U.S. and 1 million elsewhere. That's very small compared to YouTube's 100 million viewers or even Hulu's 23 million, according to the October numbers from traffic firm ComScore, but it shows that Joost indeed still has a pulse. There's enough funding to last "well into next year," Volpi added, and said that he hopes to make Joost profitable late in 2009.

It charges between $10 and $45 for advertising CPMs, not far off from the $25 to $35 reported for Hulu a few months ago.

The new Joost has an iPhone app, something that Hulu doesn't have yet. It also has Facebook Connect built in, as of last Friday, and Tuesday announced a deal with nine new independent music labels to bring more music videos and concert footage to the site. On that note, there's something else: new Joost, unlike the old Joost, has a target demographic. The average user is only 25 or 26 years old, viewers skew about 60 percent male, and advertisements have a clear bent toward the coveted 18 to 34 age bracket. Some of its biggest hits have been music videos and Japanese animation, Volpi said.

But even though things have been looking up, Joost's challenges are far from over. You can't simply scrub away bad press, and the recession will obviously make things even more difficult. There's also the fact that in addition to Hulu and YouTube, it now also faces competition from the likes of Sling.com, MTVMusic.com, and a host of others.

"Like all interesting markets there's a ton of people trying to do the same thing," Volpi said of the glut in online video. "(We're) less focused on the competition and more focused on trying to find the right answer."

So if he had to go back and change things, would he have gotten rid of the buzz? Volpi said he's not sure.

"It's a mixed bag. Being honest, had that hype not existed, I think the whole market would be in a different place," Volpi explained. "In some ways, obviously, it hurt us because it's an enormous challenge living up to those expectations."

"But you can't have your cake and eat it too," he concluded. "You've just got to live with that. That's a consequence we got as a result of the exposure in the early days."

Disclosure: CBS Corp., which publishes CNET News, is an investor in Joost.

Well, the Golden Globe nominations are out and everyone's buzzing about how Tom Cruise's fat-suit performance in Tropic Thunder is up against the late Heath Ledger's turn as the Joker in The Dark Knight. (Gee, wonder which one will win.)

But on the Web, there's another set of awards announcements making the rounds. The AOL-owned meme-culture blog Urlesque has announced the winners of its first annual "Urlies." The goofy categories include "Make It Stop" (winner: Rickrolling), "Breakout of the Year" (winner: the "Puppycam" craze), and the "WTF of the Year" (winner: the photo of the "Montauk Monster").

The best part, however, is an Oscars-inspired tribute to the Internet's veritable glut of funny cat videos. Worth a watch, embedded below:

Right now, the most famous classical musician on YouTube is arguably Nora the piano-playing cat. She, sorry to say, probably isn't eligible for "YouTube Symphony Orchestra," a new competition from the Google-owned video-sharing site.

Musicians from around the world (legitimate ones: I'm looking at you, Modded Guitar Hero Controller Guy) are invited to audition by submitting videos of themselves performing "Internet Symphony No. 1," an original piece written specially for YouTube by Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon composer Tan Dun, in addition to a "talent video."

Judges come from the London Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, and a number of other high-end orchestras--they'll winnow the selections down to a set of semifinalists by February 14.

Then, YouTube members will vote on their favorite semifinalists, and winners will be announced on March 2. The prize? A trip to New York for three days of a "classical-music summit" with conductor Michael Tilson Thomas and a performance at the legendary Carnegie Hall.

YouTube has sponsored competitions before, like the "Democracy Challenge" filmmaking competition, but this is the first one open to anyone from any country, the company said.

I hope that they at least invite Nora to watch. I'm sure she can sit still.

(Credit: Howcast Media)

Facebook, Google, and the Google-owned YouTube are among the sponsors for the Alliance of Youth Movements Summit, an event taking place at New York's Columbia Law School from December 3-5.

Along with other collaborators--which include the U.S. Department of State, MTV, Access 360 Media, and start-up Howcast--the event hopes to "find (the) best ways to use digital media to promote freedom and justice, and counter violence, extremism, and oppression."

The companies have amassed 17 leaders of different activist groups and hope to bring them together to come up with a common set of principles and strategies, inspired by a movement against a Colombian extremist group that was formed and organized on Facebook.

"Aided by social-networking technologies, the organization inspired 12 million people in 190 cities around the world to take to the streets in protest against the FARC, an extremist group that has been terrorizing Colombia for more than 40 years," an announcement of the summit read. "The magnitude of the marches illustrated once and for all that the FARC lacked a strong support base. Within days of the protests, the FARC witnessed massive desertions from their ranks."

Speakers at next month's summit include Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskowitz, actress and talk show host Whoopi Goldberg, and State Department Undersecretary James K. Glassman.

The State Department has already partnered with YouTube for its "Democracy Challenge," a moviemaking competition in conjunction with several film schools. And in the wake of the 2008 presidential election, Facebook has been stepping up its activism and outreach efforts; earlier this fall, it sponsored the ServiceNation summit.

The biggest hit on YouTube this week might not even be a video.

A couple of radio DJs from Montreal--Marc-Antoine Audette and Sebastien Trudel, who are known as the "Masked Avengers"--managed to get in a phone call to U.S. vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, claiming to be French president Nicolas Sarkozy. They then posted an audio clip of the five-minute stunt to video hub YouTube--and according to just about every major news outlet, this appears to be legitimate.

Does anything scandalous get said? Not really. Palin sticks to her usual talking points, but doesn't seem to pick up on the fact that "Sarkozy" comes across as quite the buffoon, even when he implies that a recent adult film depicting a Palin lookalike was a "documentary" and when he says (in French) that he would love to go hunting for baby seals with her.

The "Masked Avengers" have pranked heads of state before, including Sarkozy himself. But given all the fever about Tuesday's hotly contested election, in which Palin may or may not be elected as the country's first female vice president, this could be their biggest contribution to the history books of hilarious and head-slapping media hoaxes.

It'd be in good company: it comes almost exactly 70 years to the day after the legitimately freaky War of the Worlds radio stunt.