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03 January 2007, 15:18
Brazil court orders YouTube shut on celeb sex video (Daniela
Spanish Beach Scandal
SAO PAULO, Brazil, Jan 4 (Reuters) - A Brazilian court ordered the popular video sharing service YouTube, a unit of Internet search provider Google Inc. (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile , Research), to be shut down until it removes a celebrity sex video from its site, a judicial clerk said on Thursday.
 On September 18th, 2006 a paparazzo video showing Daniela on a beach in Spain having sex with her boyfriend, the Merrill Lynch employee Renato "Tato" Malzoni. The video clip was leaked on the Internet and uploaded at YouTube, but was deleted that same day. Even after deletion from YouTube the video is still available on various internet websites. Newspapers reported that computer networks crashed at stock markets in Brazil after many users tried to send and download the video Daniela Cicarelli, a model and ex-wife of soccer great Ronaldo, sued YouTube after a video of her apparently having sex in shallow water on a beach with her boyfriend was posted to the site.
The famous video of Brazilian MTV presenter Daniela Cicarelli (Ronaldo Phenomenon’s ex-wife) having ‘fun’ with her new boyfriend Tato Malzoni at the beach in Spain was definitely the hottest news in Brazil this week.
The paparazzo Miguel Temprano, who shot the video, said in an interview that he was only a few meters away from the hot couple and they seemed not to bother with his presence nor with all the people that were walking around.
The romantic duo spent 3 endless minutes (for Temprano, of course!) in the water. Now Cicarelli has been seen as the brazilian version of Paris Hilton. For days it was the most viewed video in Brazil.
Cicarelli and boyfriend Tato Malzoni filed to force YouTube to take the video down and demanded $116,000 in damages for each day the video remains up. Some copies of the video have been taken off the site but users have reposted it.
 Daniela Cicarelli is one of the hottest women in the world, formerly married to soccer star Maradona. The boyfriend is Renato Malzoni Filho.
Interesting that this video is banned on YouTube, but not on Google, and Google owns YouTube now. Go figure. The case dragged on for several months before they filed a third suit in December requesting that YouTube be shut down as long as the video is available to users.
Daniela Cicarelli has been a model since age 12 and won the Elite national competition at 14. She attracted attention in Brazil in early 2001 due to a Pepsi TV commercial and became very well known. In 2003 she began hosting a summer show for MTV Brasil, working in other shows on that channel since then. In 2003 Daniela started dating football player Ronaldo and this made her widely known in Spain as well, leading her to command fees ten times higher for appearing at fashion events. The court honored that request on Wednesday, but legal experts say the ruling by the Brazilian court could be difficult to enforce in the United States, where YouTube is based.
Last year, a Brazilian court demanded Google disclose data on local users of its social networking site Orkut who had pages with content supporting racism or child pornography.
This video was leaked on the internet on September 18th and was uploaded on YouTube, but was very soon deleted that same day. Google took down some of those Orkut pages but has said that under U.S. law it could not reveal user data.
Google was not immediately available for comment on Thursday.
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02 January 2007, 16:37
Porn industry may decide battle between Blu-ray, HD-DVD.
LG to End HD Format Wars
Just as in the 1980s, when the Betamax and VHS video formats were battling it out for supremacy, the pornography industry will likely play a major role in determining which of the two blue-laser DVD formats -- Blu-ray Disc and HD-DVD -- will be the winner in the battle to replace DVDs for high-definition content.
Could the HD-DVD vs Blue-Ray wars end with a whimper instead of bang? It sounds like a distinct possibility now that Korean-based electronics manufacturer LG announced that it will unveil the world's first dual-format high definition disc player next week at the Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas. That's right, Blu-ray and HD-DVD living in perfect harmony.
It unclear right now if LG has the blessings of Blu-ray camp (Sony and its partners) or the HD-DVD camps (Toshiba, Microsoft, et al), but the introduction of this drive could be good news for consumers and the movie industry, which has been scrambling to fill both format platforms with new content. Ron Wagner, director of IT operations at E! Entertainment Television Inc. in Los Angeles, said his company has already chosen the Blu-ray Disc format, in large part because of talk in the porn industry favoring it over rival HD-DVD.
Wagner said that while attending last year’s National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) annual conference in Las Vegas, more than one panel discussed “several major players in the porn industry going the Blu-ray route.” He said the rivalry between Blu-ray and HD-DVD was also the buzz around NAB 2006 last month.
“If you look at the VHS vs. Beta standards, you see the much higher-quality standard dying because of [the porn industry’s support of VHS],” he said. “The mass volume of tapes in the porn market at the time went out on VHS.”
E! Entertainment is using Blu-Ray discs primarily for Sony Corp.’s XDCam applications for acquisition of television programming materials. The television network, which has more than 85 million subscribers to its celebrity gossip and entertainment news, said it is not considering optical formats for long-term data archiving but will stick with magnetic tape for now.
Most industry watchers believe all format supporters got little more than coal this holiday season, and consumers generally ignored the new set-top players from Sony, Samsung, and Toshiba. There are laptops with the new players, (and some burners as well, but it's too soon to project sales penetration on those).
LG offered few details on its planned dual-format player launch at the CES Show, but its press release does make the company's goals clear: "LG expects this technological breakthrough to end the confusion and inconvenience of competing high-definition disc formats for both content producers and consumers." The pornography industry, which generates an estimated $57 billion in annual revenue worldwide, has always been a fast leader when it comes to the use of new technology, according to analysts.
Porn studio Digital Playground Inc., which claims to have produced the largest number of high-definition movies in the industry over the past three years, said it is choosing Blu-ray Disc for all of its “interactive” videos because of its greater capacity. It also selected Blue-ray because Sony chose the format for its PlayStation 3 (PS3) box, due out in November.
The co-founder of Chatsworth, Calif.-based Digital Playground, who goes by the one-word name “Joone,” said the fact that Sony chose Blu-ray guarantees his studio an instant home audience.
“PlayStation 3 is going to be the Trojan horse that will get a lot of numbers into the home theater systems -- the living rooms,” said Joone, who is also a movie director. “Technology-wise, we’ve chosen Blu-ray, which doesn’t mean we won’t support both formats ... but as far as having really cool technology and a lot of storage for future-proof, Blu-ray is a good format.”
TOKYO - The group supporting the HD-DVD optical disc format for high-definition video has received a boost in its battle against the rival Blu-ray Disc format with pledges of support from a number of Hollywood studios.
The format will be used by Paramount Pictures, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros. Pictures and New Line Cinema, the HD-DVD group said on Monday. It will also be used by HBO, Warner Bros. announced the same day.
The studios didn't announce the names or number of titles to be released using the format, and there was no mention of timing, with the exception of a pledge from Universal to have content available during the end-of-year holiday season in 2005.
"We want them to start releasing as many titles as soon as they can," said Yoshihide Fujii, president and CEO of Toshiba's digital media network company, a backer of the disk format. Blu-ray Disc and HD-DVD are the new optical-disc formats that are positioned as replacements for DVDs with high-definition content.
Blu-ray is not only backed by entertainment giant Sony, but Panasonic Corporation of North America, LG Electronics Inc., Philips Electronics NV and movie studios The Walt Disney Co. and Fox Filmed Entertainment. Blu-ray offers storage up to 50GB capacity, or up to nine hours of high-definition content. In contrast, HD-DVD has 30GB capacity and is supported by companies including Toshiba Corp., NEC Corp. and Warner Home Video Inc.
Paul O’Donovan, an analyst at Gartner Inc., said pornography’s support of either DVD format will be a “strong factor” to the uptake of the technology by the general marketplace, but even more critical is Sony’s adoption of the technology.
O’Donovan said even though the Blu-ray format will be more expensive initially and will come after that of HD-DVD, the sheer support it is receiving from the entertainment industry, including pornography studios, will catapult it to a victory within a range of 18 months to five years.
Steve Hirsch, head of the adult film studio Vivid Entertainment Group, said he’s currently using the HD-DVD format because it was the first to be available, but his studio will begin burning to the Blu-ray format as soon as it’s available.
The support is a coup for the group because it is the first time that any Hollywood studio -- with the exception of Sony Pictures, which is owned by Blu-ray Disc-backer Sony Corp. -- have come down firmly on the side of one of the formats. In October, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. joined the Blu-ray Disc Association but stopped short of committing to release any content in that format.
HD-DVD and Blu-ray Disc use blue lasers in their optical systems. The discs are the same size as CD or DVD discs but offer data storage capacities several times greater than that of DVD. The extra capacity provides enough room to hold high-definition versions of movies and other content.
HD-DVD is backed by Toshiba Corp. and NEC Corp. and is being developed under the umbrella of the DVD Forum, the group that developed the DVD format. Blu-ray Disc has more major backers: Dell Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., Hitachi Ltd., LG Electronics Inc., Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd. (Panasonic), Mitsubishi Electric Corp., Philips Electronics NV, Pioneer Electronics Corp., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Sharp Corp., Sony, TDK Corp., Thomson Multimedia SA and Twentieth Century Fox. “The adult industry has always been ahead of the curve when it comes to technology. We don’t have any theatrical distribution issues, nor do we have 'big box' retailers, like Wal-Mart and Blockbuster, to cater to. We’re forced to find distribution wherever we can,” Hirsch said.
Hirsch, who founded Vivid Entertainment in 1984, said the porn industry -- just as in the 1980s -- will have a big influence on the outcome of the latest high-definition video-format wars. In the 1980s, Hirsch said VHS tapes started selling for $50 a piece, and Betamax sold for $55. “Therefore, we pushed VHS harder, and in that sense, we did have something to do with VHS winning out,” said Hirsch, whose studio pulls in an estimated $100 million in revenue a year.
“It was the adult industry who jumped right in and were putting movies on both VHS and Beta. We pushed the actual technology more than anyone else,” he said. “The adult industry has always been ahead when comes to technology.”
But not everyone believes the format war will be determined by the porn industry. Steve Duplessie, founder of research firm Enterprise Strategy Group Inc. in Milford, Mass., and a Computerworld columnist, said the porn industry’s influence over the fate of VHS and the upcoming high-definition DVD formats is overstated. Duplessie said VHS ultimately won over Betamax because Betamax was a proprietary format owned by Sony, while VHS was more open.
“I love the whole pornography concept simply because porn is still the No. 1 money-making use of the Internet," he said. "But I don’t believe the porn industry will drive the format. Like any other industry, it will supply what the consumer wants."
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Content
01 January 2007, 16:55
LG to End HD Format Wars (Blu-ray/HD DVD Dual-Format Player)
New disc may sway DVD wars
By Richard Siklos
Source
Consumers wary of buying new high-definition DVD players because of a technology war reminiscent of the days of Betamax versus VHS will soon have a new kind of DVD that might make the decision less daunting.
Warner Bros., which helped popularize the DVD more than a decade ago, plans to announce next week a single videodisc that can play films and television programs in both Blu-ray and HD DVD, the rival DVD technologies.
LG Electronics said Thursday that it would launch the world’s first dual-format high-definition video player capable of running both Blu-ray and high definition DVD formats.
The company will unveil the player at the Consumer Electronics Show to be held Jan. 8–11 in Las Vegas, U.S.
The dual player will hit stores by March in the United States, LG said. The company will announce detailed specs and prices at the electronics show.
No other companies could make a dual player because it is very difficult to make a single tray that reads both formats,’’ LG spokesman Kim Kyung-hwan said. ``We expect that this product will help the next-generation DVD market grow rapidly.’’ Warner Bros., a division of Time Warner, plans to formally announce the new disc, which it is calling a Total HD disc, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Tuesday.
Two rival camps introduced high-definition DVD players last year: a consortium called Blu-ray, backed by Sony and others, and a group called HD DVD, backed by Toshiba and Microsoft. Retail and media executives say this clash of corporate titans and their incompatible machines has left some consumers bewildered and has slowed the introduction of what is intended to be the next great thing in home entertainment.
Executives at Time Warner and its Hollywood subsidiary hope to spur sales of new DVD players and movies by gaining the support of retailers and cajoling rival studios into making their film and television libraries available in both formats on a single disc.
In addition to reviving the ghost of the war that marked the introduction of videocassettes in the 1980s, the high-definition battle has been exacerbated by the decision of several major studios to support only one of the technologies.
Blu-ray and HD DVD are high-density optical disc formats. They are competing to become the industry standard and are expected to replace DVDs as early as this year.
Sony and Samsung support Blu-ray, while Toshiba is leading the HD DVD side.
Samsung introduced the world’s first Blu-ray player in June at $999 in the United States and 1 million won in South Korea.
Toshiba’s HD DVD player has been sold for $499 since early last year.
Until now, there has been no player capable of reading both formats. Thus, for instance, a copy of 20th Century Fox's Ice Age: The Meltdown is available only on Blu-ray, while Universal's The Break-Up can be viewed only on a disc and player built with HD DVD technology.
Barry M. Meyer, the chairman and chief executive of Warner Bros., said in an interview that the company came up with the Total HD disc after concluding that neither Blu-ray nor HD DVD was going the way of Betamax anytime soon.
"The next best thing is to recognize that there will be two formats and to make that not a negative for the consumer," Meyer said. "We felt that the most significant constituency for us to satisfy was the consumer first, and the retailer second. The retailer wants to sell hardware and doesn't want to be forced into stocking two formats for everything. This is ideal for them."
In a world besotted with gadgetry, few consumer products have generated as much excitement--and head-scratching--as high-definition television. Flat-screen, high-definition TVs have been flying off the shelves for the last year and are now as common in homes as coffee pots. Yet few people are actually watching superclear high-definition programming.
The day we've dreamed of has finally come. No, our parents aren't getting un-divorced, nor is Timmy coming back from that "dog farm" he got sent to—LG's just announced the world's first dual-format Blu-ray/HD DVD player to be unveiled at CES. Launch? Some time in early 2007.
We cannot wait!
LG Electronics (LG), a leader in consumer electronics and mobile communicati ons, announced that it will launch the world's first dual-format high-definition disc player, capable of playing both Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD content. The unit will be released in the United States in early 2007. Details will be provided at the 2007 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), held January 8-11 in Las Vegas. Part of the disconnect is the lack of high-definition programming on cable and satellite television, and the additional outlay for decoder boxes and premium channels needed to get it. The rival movie player technologies have further blurred the outlook for high definition. Richard Greenfield, an analyst at Pali Capital, predicted in a recent report that this would be the first year since the introduction of the DVD that consumer spending on the discs would decline, putting pressure on the studios that rely heavily on them for profits.
For now, Sony; Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which is owned by private equity firms in partnership with the Comcast and Sony; 20th Century Fox, a division of the News Corp.; and Walt Disney Pictures are all exclusively releasing their DVDs in Blu-ray.
Universal Studios, which is owned by General Electric, is releasing only in HD DVD. Warner and Paramount Pictures, a division of Viacom, are issuing DVDs in both formats.
Behind these allegiances are complex strategic questions revolving around everything from manufacturing costs to profit margins, debates over each format's technical strengths and weaknesses, and how these players relate to Microsoft and Sony's video-game strategies.
(Blu-ray players are built into the new Sony PlayStation 3, while Microsoft is selling HD DVD drives that attach to its Xbox 360.)
LG expects this technological breakthrough to end the confusion and inconvenience of competing high-definition disc formats for both content producers and consumers. Another wrinkle is plans by LG Electronics, and possibly other gadget makers attending the Las Vegas conference, to announce new DVD players with drives for both formats; however, such players will most likely be initially more expensive than other players.
Jeffrey L. Bewkes, the president of Time Warner, said the Total HD disc has a better chance of catching on than dual players. Research commissioned by Warner indicates that consumers are willing to pay several dollars more than current high-definition DVDs for a disc that works on both players. At the Web site for Best Buy, Warner's Superman Returns DVD was selling yesterday for $19.99 in its standard format, $29.99 for Blu-ray and $34.99 for HD DVD.
The High-Def DVD Format War is Over: LG Announces Dual-Format Player
With just days before the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, LG has pretty much guaranteed that their representatives be swamped. They've announced that they'll be releasing a combo HD DVD/Blu-ray player in early 2007, ending the should-I/shouldn't-I conundrum that has plagued the two formats since even before they were introduced. I rather expect that Toshiba, RCA, Sony and Samsung are now bracing for a sudden nosedive in their HD DVD and Blu-ray players Still, it is not clear whether news of Warner's Total HD disc would convince the studio heads who are backing one format or the other to release their wares in both. Sony, of course, has placed a big bet on Blu-ray's success and does not want to relive the sting of Betamax's defeat. The number of studios committed solely to Blu-ray has been seen as a competitive edge, particularly because HD DVD came to market several months ahead of Blu-ray.
And HD DVD's boosters say they doubt gaming fans who have been snapping up the just-introduced PlayStation 3 will take advantage of its built-in Blu-ray player and buy movies as well as video games.
In recent interviews, executives at Fox and Disney were unequivocal in their support for Blu-ray. They said they believed that releasing DVDs in both formats would only prolong confusion and the emergence of a winning format. "I think the fastest way to end the format war is through decisiveness and strength," said Bob Chapek, the president of Buena Vista Worldwide Entertainment, the home video arm of Walt Disney.
“LG expects this technological breakthrough to end the confusion and inconvenience of competing high-definition disc formats for both content producers and consumers,” the company said.
The battle for supremacy in the market for next-generation DVD players, which show content in high-definition formats, has intensified since Toshiba and Sony launched competing advanced DVD models in 2006.
Toshiba is leading a group of manufacturers that includes Microsoft and Intel which are supporting the HD-DVD format while the majority of consumer electronics and PC markers, including Samsung Electronics, Matsushita, Dell and most of the Hollywood studios, are firmly in the Blu-ray camp. The controversy is spreading to the video game console market as Sony’s PlayStation 3 includes a Blu-ray player while Microsoft is using the HD-DVD drive in its Xbox 360. Like other Blu-ray proponents and partners, Chapek said that he favors Blu-ray because of its greater storage capacity and other attributes. HD DVD offers the same vivid picture by storing less information on its disc, which means fewer minutes of video and other features. However, among its perceived advantages, HD-DVD players are less expensive. (Both formats can play standard DVDs.)
Because of manufacturing complexities, the Total HD disc will not contain a standard format version, said Kevin Tsujihara, the president of Warner Brothers Home Entertainment Group. However, several months ago the company filed patents for a new disc incorporating all three formats, which it could produce in the future.
Tsujihara described the new disc as an elegant way for studios to make their content available more widely "in a way that is not conceding defeat" for the format they have been backing.
In the short term, Total HD would actually add to the number of formats retailers will have to stock, raising it from three to four. However, Irynne V. MacKay, senior vice president for entertainment products at Circuit City, said she supported the idea because it took pressure off consumers puzzling over which format to invest in. "The simpler the future is for us, the better," said MacKay.
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