This in from TechCrunch (and feels like it should be old news), YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley has hinted future plans of revenue sharing at YouTube in the coming months. While it seems like the writing was on the wall, it is interesting to see that YouTube is actually going to become more aggressive in monetizing its huge user base.

One issue is that users aren’t just used to free, but expect and defend that “right” vehemently. While this move would keep YouTube free, it would definitely add the scent of commerce and detract from the overall experience users have come to expect. In this market where there is, first, competition, and second, a free product, I find it difficult to believe that YouTube’s competitors will not slam YouTube’s experience to grab market share. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if Revver or its contemporaries suddenly become the next big thing, due to this attempt to monetize.

I do admit YouTube’s revenue sharing is a bit more compelling than plain old ad selling, because at least the producers of the videos will make money. That could be the carrot at the end of the stick that keeps YouTube’s inventory robust enough to continue its market dominance. As always, time will tell.

Continuing our coverage on Second Life, eBay announced today that auctions for items in Second Life will be exempt from eBay’s ban on items from virtual worlds or online games. The reasoning? “There is an open question about whether Second Life should be regarded as a game.”

Now, both the House of Representatives and eBay are taking Second Life serious enough to consider it “not a game.” If our government and a commercial giant believe Second Life to be a legit form of, well, life, I wonder how far behind a critical mass is. Philosophical debates about the merits of virtual reality aside, the implications for our society, human interaction and values is fascinating. As more governments go online, more companies, commerce, criminals, etc., when does this become something more than virtual?

Last night I had a chance to watch “This Film is Not Yet Rated”, a documentary about the rating/censorship of the MPAA. I think most people, including myself, don’t pay much attention to the ratings system in terms of the impact it has on the creators and producers of films- which is why I think everyone needs to watch this doc.

As it turns out, the MPAA rating system is an extremely secretive organization, comprised of anonymous “viewers” who sit in closed door sessions and (as the documentary purports) somewhat ambigiously assign ratings to films. Since the MPAA is comprised of major studios and distribution companies, any aspiring filmmaker is compelled to use the rating system in order to get their films to the public.

The secrecy issue aside, what hurts filmmakers is the fact that films rated NC-17 are essentially blocked from mainstream distribution. While that logic can be defended, what cannot be defended is the somewhat arbritrary and inconsistent scale that the secret reviewers use to rate movies as NC-17 or R.

One issue that the documentary exposes is the bias towards films with violence over sex. For example, movies like Die Hard receive an “R” rating, while films that expose genitalia receive “NC-17″. MY question is: are our so-called morals aligned? In Europe, the rating system inverts such prejudice- so that movies with a lot of violence are much more restricted than films with natural acts of love.

The documentary goes into much more depth and even concludes by revealing the names of the raters- which the filmmaker had uncovered with quite extensive dective work.

I urge everyone to rent this movie. Appropriately, it is only available on Netflix, as the MPAA rated it “NC-17″…this rating is quite hypocritical since the film is nothing more than a documentary and only includes very brief nudity in the form of movie clips. One can’t help but think the MPAA rating was chosen to prevent this documentary from widespread distribution.

http://www.netflix.com/MovieDisplay?movieid=70043954&nfse=Y

According to this article (reg required), there is some momentum towards at least testing a DRMless world of unrestricted mp3 downloads. The conclusions the article points to aren’t surprising. Namely, the labels were counting on legal downloads to offset the declining sales of physical media, and this doesn’t seem to be happening so far. Unrestricted mp3’s would (presumably) be a way to give a boost to the lagging growth of legal downloads.

I’m eager to see how these tests turn out. The most interesting questions in my mind are:

a) Can anyone (tech companies, copyright owners, etc.) offer a value proposition to customers that will compel illegal downloaders to stop illegally downloading, and is unrestricted use part of that equation

b) Can overall music listening be driven up enough to offset the leaking revenue from illegal downloads (unlikely, given all the other media competing for mindshare)

c) If value is indeed destroyed, particularly for the labels, what (if any) will be the downside of this? Retailers suffer as well, of course. But really, do we as the music listening public really still “need” the major labels to ensure high quality music is produced and distributed?
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/23/technology/23music.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Tech Crunch recently covered a pretty funny parody of Second Life, “Get a First Life.”  Second Life always seemed like a geeky, under the radar kind of phenomenon to me, but clearly, with the introduction of the House of Representatives to Second Life, this is becoming mainstream.  But I do wonder what the point of all of this is.

Rocketboom did a great interview with Rep. George Miller in Second Life, and when pressed with the question, “why is the House in Second Life?” he gave a typically political answer, that had a lot of words but not a whole lot of substance.  And I admit, the idea is cool, but I question the actual usefulness.  I suppose the obvious reason for public discourse in Second Life is to enable an interactivity to the political process not really available elsewhere.  But does it scale?  Isn’t it limited to those with a) a computer, and b) the inclination to get deep enough into Second Life to get to the House of Representatives?

I have no doubt more is in store for this project, and only time (and those parties involved with the project) will tell what the future holds for Second Life and politics.  This is going to warrant monitoring, and expect to see more here on the DMEC blog about Second Life.

Here’s a link to Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, on his reaction to the iPhone “press”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5oGaZIKYvo&eurl=

Personally, I think he makes a salient point about the iPhone’s price and its appeal (or lack thereof) to business buyers. But I also think he’s pretty over-confident about the Zune.

In my opinion, Microsoft doesn’t do a very good job segmenting their business customers from their consumer customers…Even in this short speech he muddles the two…

What do you all think about his position?

Internet radio isn’t new, but there are some interesting new players making some noise. Pandora is an East Bay company with an oft-debated formula for serving up tunes you may be interested in hearing. It employs musicians to exhaustively analyze songs and catalog the style of vocals, the tempo, the instruments used, just to name a few of the 400 attributes. I can’t imagine who even thought of 400 attributes in a musical selection, but that’s how many they claim to analyze. The debatable part is whether that type of formula will result in new songs that you actually like.

Well if you don’t want a group of bleary-eyed underpaid musicians (I guess I’m probably describing most musicians here, not just the ones toiling away classifying samba/swing/waltz/disco), how about the rest of the online community? That’s what last.fm is betting on with its social music philosophy. Instead of serving up sounds that match musical attributes, last.fm uses collaborative filtering to see who else is listening to the same things and gives you something from those members’ playlists.

Check them both out and let us know what you think!

One of the few worthwhile daily e-mails comes from the Urban Dictionary. The e-mail contains the “Urban Word of the Day,” a usually hilarious slang term that defines something from today’s culture. Previous UWOD’s include unprotected sleep (when you turn off your alarm instead of hitting snooze), wii-kend (devoting an entire weekend to Nintendo Wii play), and today’s entry, blogorrhea (To write a blog entry just for the sake of posting an entry, not because you have anything interesting to say).

Netflix announced today that they will be offering digital downloads to the PC, in addition to its regular, snail mail DVD business. Their model is pretty interesting, as they don’t charge subscribers anything extra to use the service, and instead give each subscriber a fixed amount of movie watching time (18 hours per month for $18). The movies are streamed, not downloaded, which immediately necessitates a fast internet connection, low fidelity, or, most likely, both.

When compared with similar offers from Apple, Amazon, MovieLink, and impending offers from Blockbuster, the home movie-to-PC field suddenly looks very crowded. I definitely wonder if all of the investment today is worth it. There is no doubt that downloads are where the movie business is heading, but I don’t know if the shift is going to happen soon enough to warrant the immediate spending frenzy.

Looking into my crystal ball, I’d guess that some company (i.e. Cable companies) will have the infrastructure, subscriber base, and on-line partner to dominate this market. Movies on demand are already commonplace and quite successful in terms of viewing quality and immediate delivery. Building a full video store seems to me to be the next logical step. On the other hand, cable has such an old-media mentality, I wonder if they are smart enough to leverage their current competitive advantages. Maybe they should ask the Music Business for some advice.
What do you think?

mob-or-so . . . That’s what my phone number when I was a kid spells. Want to see what your phone number spells?

http://phonespell.org

Now you too can waste 45 minutes typing in everyone’s numbers just like I did.