Los Gatos, Calif. – Netflix (NASD: NFLX) said on Wednesday that chief
financial officer Barry McCarthy has stepped down to pursue executive
opportunities outside the company. The company said McCarthy, who served as
Netflix CFO for 11 years, will be replaced by David Wells, vice president of
financial planning and analysis.
Related Links:
http://netflix.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=43&item=378
Mountain View, Calif. – TechCrunch has posted a screenshot
of what it says is Google’s (NASD: GOOG) forthcoming social media service, dubbed
"Google +1." The service appears to reside on Google properties, and
includes a "share" button and "loops," which are thought to
be Google’s name for "groups." In a statement to TechCrunch, Google
did not deny the authenticity of the screenshot, but noted it has "already
confirmed that we are focused on incorporating social elements across
Google."
Related Links:
http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/07/google-plus-one-pic
Los Angeles – Video game publisher Ubisoft has inserted a
novel anti-piracy scheme into its "Michael Jackson: The Experience"
game for the Nintendo DS, punishing gamers trying to play pirated copies of the
game with noise from vuvuzelas — the horn noisemakers made popular during the
World Cup. "The development team worked this feature in as a creative way
to discourage any tampering with the retail version of the game," Ubisoft
told Wired.
Related Links:
http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2010/12/michael-jackson-vuvuzela/
San Francisco – Twitter has expanded its roster of partner
services hosting third-party content users can view when thy click on a tweet with
multimedia links on Twitter.com. Users could already view photos and video from
Flickr, YouTube and Brightcove, and will now additionally be able to view and
listen to content from Blip.tv, Instagram, Rdio, SlideShare and Dipdive. Rdio
members will be able to listen to full-length songs when Twitter users tweet a
song link.
Related Links:
http://blog.twitter.com/2010/12/now-playing-on-newtwitter-embedded.html
New York – CBS Interactive president Neil Ashe is stepping
down from his post, All Things D reported. Ashe was formerly CEO of CNET, which
was acquired by CBS (NYSE: CBS), and replaced Quincy Smith as head of the company’s
interactive division. No details were provided on Ashe’s next move or his
replacement at CBS Interactive.
Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/34edtko
(All Things D)
Los Angeles – Blockbuster on Wednesday began offering
rentals of two films — "Inception" and "Knight and Day" —
from its Blockbuster Express rental kiosks 28 days earlier than rivals Redbox
and Netflix, but with a premium first-night rental charge of $3. The films will
be available in some 900 Blockbuster Express kiosks owned and operated by NCR.
Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/2b7nxs4
San Francisco – Location-based social network Foursquare is
now receiving 2 million "check-ins" and adding 25,000 new users
daily, CEO Dennis Crowley told the Le Web conference, TechCrunch reported. The
average user checks in 3-4 times per day. Crowley also revealed that Foursquare
turned down an acquisition offer in the ballpark of $140 million.
Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/2bc24cx
(TechCrunch)
Toronto – Licensed lyrics database LyricFind has launched a
new program that offers websites and apps the ability to offer licensed song
lyrics for free, but bundled with ads as a means to pay rightsholders. Once
certain traffic levels are met, the publisher shares in the ad revenues. Early
adopters of the service include Muziic and Lyrics.net.
Related Links:
http://www.lyricfind.com
New York – RightsFlow said on Wednesday that performing
rights organization ASCAP will offer its members the company’s mechanical
licensing services. ASCAP members will receive a 25% discount on usage of
RightsFlow’s Limelight online utility.
Related Links:
http://www.rightsflow.com
Stockholm, Sweden – An as-yet-unreleased cable within the
possession of whistleblower site WikiLeaks purports to show the U.S. actively
compelled Swedish authorities to take action to protect copyrights, and pursue
file-sharing hub The Pirate Bay, TorrentFreak reported, citing Swedish
Television.
Pressure from the U.S. led to a raid by Swedish authorities on The
Pirate Bay’s servers in 2006, but in 2008 the U.S. Embassy also reportedly gave
Sweden a "to-do" list of six items related to battling online piracy — five of which had been addressed a year later.
Swedish Justice Minister Beatrice Ask denied Sweden responded to any U.S.
pressure, and countered that the writer of the unreleased cable made the
remarks in a bid for a pay raise.
"We all knew for a long while that the
US was behind the raid and pressured Sweden, but that they’re still doing it
was news to us," Peter Sunde, one of the four convicted operators of The
Pirate Bay, told TorrentFreak.
"And that the Minster of Justice just says that
the cable writer is lying ‘to get a higher salary’ shows that she doesn’t even
care if her government is corrupt."
Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/24vt4od
(TorrentFreak)
