Moby Offers his Music for Free

Message from Moby:

hi,
i'll keep this brief.
this portion of moby.com, 'film music', is for independent and non-profit filmmakers, film students, and anyone in need of free music for their independent, non-profit film, video, or short.
to use the site you log in(or on?) and are then given a password.
you can then listen to the available music and download whatever you want to use in your film or video or short.
the music is free as long as it's being used in a non-commercial or non-profit film, video, or short.
if you want to use it in a commercial film or short then you can apply for an easy license, with any money that's generated being given to the humane society.
i hope that you find what you're looking for,
moby

We applauded this decision by Moby and look forward to speaking with him about helping him offer his music and support his charitable causes.

Arcade Fire Interactive Video

I went to high school with Win Butler of Arcade fire and today I stumbled across this cool interactive video that they put out for Neon Bible which was released earlier this year. Director Vincent Morisset and producers Jean-Luc Della Montagna and Nú Films hatched this interactive music video for Arcade Fire. Click around on the page with your mouse and watch what you can do. It's not over the top or too overly complicated, but it is an engaging sidshow to the great music (if that is your taste), and a impressive example of the marriage of interactive digital content with a refined sensibility.

Review over at KillerStartups

I got an email yesterday from Gonzalo Arzuaga that we were reviewed over at Killerstartups.

"We wanted to let you know your company got reviewed in our blog KillerStartups.com.

There's only two ways for your startup to make it to our blog:
1) Any of our registered readers submitted it
2) Our editorial team found your company through our daily scan of the 'Top 100' blogs that write about Internet and technology.

You can read the review about your company here.

Regards,

Gonzalo Arzuaga
Co-founder – KillerStartups, Inc.
http://www.KillerStartups.com

Thanks for the shout out and if you do check it out, please vote for us by clicking on the "Killers" icon on the left hand side of the blog Title.

Some Cutcaster Coverage

Over at Museum of Modern Betas (MoMB), they have highlighted our site. YEEHAW. Since we are still in alpha and they are reporting on sites in beta we might have jumped the gun a bit but thanks to them for posting about us. To learn more about the site, check out our about us page.

Fotolog’s $90 Million Acquisition by Hi-Media Completed

Hi-Media, operator of one of Europe’s largest ad networks and micro-payment services, completed its acquisition today of Fotolog. It only took a few months and a few large legal bills I bet. The French Internet company had previously announced the deal last August but it is completed as of now.

Fotolog CEO John Borthwick is moving on to his incubator/investment fund Betaworks.

Breaking News

Corbis on the verge of Profitability. CEO Gary Shenk mused "I have the moment planned when I can send Bill Gates the first dollar." Bravoooo.

And in other news, Corbis laid off 3/4 of its staff today to get there.

Corbis offers Bloggers Ads with Corbis Images embedded in them ;-)

Corbis, Mr. Billy Gate's stock photography house, will allow users to download images for their blogs from its website free of charge. Butttttt.....

And there is always a but in these things. The catch is that each photo which is downloaded will either include an ad overlay on part of the image, or embedded advertising that pops up when a Web user runs a cursor over the picture. Each photo that is downloaded will also come with an embedded banner advertisement beneath the photo. The service will allow people with blogs to add copyrighted images legally, said CEO Gary Shenk at the Reuters Media Summit in NYC on Tuesday. The service is in beta testing right now.

Audience vs. Content

Which is more important? When building a website that is supported by both a strong community audience and a diverse body of content, what element do you need first to get growth going and then what do you need over time to keep it going?

Do you need quality content first to attract the audiences and build community or do you need the audiences to attract the better content and content creators? Which one should lead? Which one is more important?

This will then lead to a discussion on the "hub and spoke" distribution model and the "call and response" model that we will talk about in future blogposts. Discuss.

Free Photoshop Plugins & Filters

Hope some of these freebies can help you out. Take a look and let us know which ones you think are the best.

8bf Plugins - Here you get FREE AAA 8bf PLUGINS for PhotoFilter Studio and other photo editors. Windows only

Amphisoft - Free plug-in filters for Adobe Photoshop, Macromedia Fireworks, Photoshop Elements, JASC and
Corel PaintShop Pro, PhotoPaint and other image editors for Windows.

Cybia Plug-In Filters - Check this freeware filters pack out which includes 6 filters

DCFilters - They have large selection of filters including ones for bricks, edger etc..

Deep Paint 2.0 - This site offers a realistic painting experience for digital artists and graphic professionals. Very cool site

Des Filtres - You have to be a French speaker but there looks to be over 100 filters that are free.

Digital ArtShop - Large number of filters and plugins for you.

Flaming Pear - This is a link to the download page. The page includes filters and plugins, including Creative Pack, Mr.Contrast, Hue and Cry, LunarCell, Flood, Cool Designer Plugins, Solar Cell, Flexify, Photography Pack, Polymerge, Glitterato, India Ink, Tesselation, Patterns, Free Plugins, and more.

Free Photoshop Plugins - This site has a few free Photoshop plugins

GraphicXtras - A number of plugins for Photoshop, Flash, Illustrator, and other programs.

GoPog - Filters include Mono Renditionizer, Variable Blurrinator, Mono Renditionizer, Lab Overlayer, and more.

Harry’s Filters - Harry’s Filters is a free Photoshop-compatible plugin. It has up to 69 different image effects.

Little Ink Spot - Include chalkoholic for a chalk effect on your photos

Luce - Light effects.

Mehdi Plugins - Free Photoshop plugins include Absolute Color Blots, Contrast Balance, Color MegaMix, and more

MV’s Plugins - A number of Photoshop compatible plugins

Photoshop Filters Factory - Around 400 free Photoshop filters.

Photoshop Scripts Plugins - For all you Spanish speakers here is your site with freeware filters.

Photo-Plugins - These seem to be high quality Photoshop plugins including these plugins

Richard Roseman - Worth checking out.

Vector Plugins - Need to pull out your Japanese for this page but the plugins are still usable if you speak English.

Let us know which ones you like and we should include.

TV Guide announces Online Video Awards winners

TV Guide announced the winners in 18 categories for its inaugural Online Video Awards. Is it me or are a lot of the winners of this year Online Video Awards dominated by large networks?
Even among the nominees, many of the major broadcast and cable networks were represented along with other entertainment sites including Funnyordie (my favorite is Pearl the landlord which if you haven't seen you must), SuperDeluxe and YouTube. The winners were chosen by fans on TVGuide with over 1.75 million votes cast, and by TV Guide editors. I'm not sure how their votes were weighted.

Congrats to all the winners!

Holiday Gift Idea

Our friend, Thomas Laupstad, is taking his amazing Norwegian photos to the Big Time and putting together a 2008 calendar for all those that need help planning out their week while looking at great photos. He only recently took up photography with his Olympus camera and is pretty prolific about putting out his weekly "Shots from Norway" email. The calendar consists of 12 pictures that he has hand picked to represent each month of the year and from receiving his photos I can tell you that this could make a great holiday gift or make you happy that you are not in Norway during March ;-).

Check out Thomas's Cafepress shop to buy the calendar for $24.99.

Videos that add value...

In yet another addition to the growing number of sites that offer "productive" video content, including instructional videos (SuTree), etc...Emily Chang's eHub had a quick note on a new health video site called BeYOU.tv. The content offering is self-explanatory and the site is in beta, worth checking out if something like yoga is your thing. More importantly though, the question I want to pose is whether these new instructional video sites need to remain separate destinations, or can their content be amalgamated and distributed via a central marketplace (um...like Cutcaster)? Clearly each site can form separate distribution relationships with the Brightcoves of the world, but can their content exist on its own or is the website and what it offers (community aspect, look-and-feel, etc) necessary to sell the videos?

Shawn Mortensen's New Book

Shawn Mortensen has a great new book out. You may recognize a lot of his photographs.

Over the last fifteen years, Shawn Mortensen has photographed cutting-edge culture-makers while also revealing the gritty reality of urban street life and the world's political climate. Truly with his finger on the pulse, Mortensen took photographs of the "in crowd" before they were the in crowd. His subjects range from celebrities such as Gwen Stefani, Marcello Mastroianni, and Tupac Shakur to contemporary artists like Raymond Pettibon, Brice Marden, and Francesco Clemente. Yet these portraits are juxtaposed with haunting photo essays on the Zapatista movement in Chiapas, Mexico; the ghettos of Jamaica; and the landscape of Mongolia—often with startling results.

We have really enjoyed some of his cool work and its worth taking a look at his site when you get some time.

Thanks JB Mockus!

Thanks JB for all your feedback and suggestions. Our site is built and updated with knowledge and insight from people like you. We really appreciate your help and eyes.

JB is updating his companies site, nStreams, a web development and computer services company located in Bend, Oregon, but when it is ready you can check it out here. Thanks again and keep the feedback coming in addition to the great pictures ;-)

Thanksgiving Weekend

Hope everyone had a great weekend with their loved ones and got back to their home safely. The next few weeks are going to be very busy getting ready for the end of the year and the start of a new one. We're looking forward to a good push over at the Cutcaster site and continuing the discussion here on the Cutcaster blog.

Writer's Strike

Who can believe that this writers strike is still going on? It seems like its been going on for a whlie now and I'm not really sure why they can't come to a solution that is fair for everyone. All I can say is I hope this moves talent and content over to the web where the creators have more control over their content, distribution channels and can make more money by cutting out the middlemen in a lot of these agreements.

Anyone else have any thoughts on it?

BrightQube Video

Anyone have any experience with BrightQube who can share? This video from PDN PhotoPlus 2007's shows an interviews with Lee Corkran of BrightQube. He spoke with Inside Digital Photo TV's host, Scott Sheppard and gives us a brief overview.

He says "we are not looking for the buyer to change the way that they search for images but we're ultimately changing how they find images." Not a bad pitch and one I think will resonate. Corken says this a few minutes in, when highlighting the advance text search and then display. Interesting selling point and I think a good point to use with potential buyers.

If you think that stock photography is going the Getty/Corbis or microstock direction then BQ might have an opening with a novel User Interface...Time will tell.

Sony BMG and Yahoo get Cozy Over Produced Content

TechCrunch reported earlier that "Sony BMG Music Entertainment has agreed, in exchange for a slice of Yahoo’s advertising revenue, to let Yahoo’s users upload videos and music clips containing its produced content.

The deal comes just over a year since Sony made a very similar agreement with Google that also entailed the release of “thousands” of music videos on Google Video (and, soon after, YouTube as well). While Google has actually secured distribution deals with all four major labels by now, this deal is Yahoo’s first and it does not suggest that Sony will actively release produced content onto Yahoo Video.

Yahoo has also suggested that it will begin using “video identification and filtering technology” by early 2008, which sounds similar to the technology deployed by Google last month.

Yahoo Video, while a fraction of YouTube’s size in terms of users, comes in at second place among all video-sharing sites."

Happy Thanksgiving

Here is to being with the ones you love and to taking a much needed respite this Thanksgiving weekend. There is a lot to be thankful and it's important to always recognize that fact which can sometimes be overlooked during the rush of work and life in general. I wanted to wish everyone a great and safe Thanksgiving weekend. I'll be here in New York City and will be on email sparingly if anyone needs me. john AT cutcaster DOT com.

Interview with Alamy CEO James West

When you get a moment this is an interesting interview with James West, the CEO of Alamy. He is one of the younger leaders in this space and he definitely is innovative and not a part of the core group of old school folks. Take a look when you get a chance.

About the Image reported that, "The UK-based image portal, Alamy, recently took the unprecedented step for a privately held company of releasing its revenue figures to the public. The figures show a company on an impressive trajectory having grown total sales from US$129K in 2001 to US$24.2MM in 2006. Founded by its CEO James West and his uncle, Mike Fischer, in 1999, Alamy also manages to dedicate significant sums to medical research and invests in technology to reduce the company’s carbon footprint."

The article is interesting for Photographers and anyone following the business trends. They go over the effects of microstock, the falling dollar, editorial vs commercial client base and Alamy's Novel pricing approach which was still hush hush.

Working on the Kinks

Building a website can be very hard work. Trust us ;-) It's amazing how many little things you have to take into account. But its amazing to see things come together, hear peoples' reactions and get pumped up for any new features to roll out or when things are fixed and work right. Anyone who has built a website knows exaclty what i am talking about.

I just wanted to give everyone an update as to where we stand and what is coming. We are working on the site as fast as we can and fixing some of the bugs people have been finding. The homepage flash player will hopefully have the correct size thumbnails looping through. The photo spotlight on the lower left hand side of the homepage will be populated by thumbnails soon. Just working on how we want to display them. The upload process is smoothing out as we gear up for bulk upload and upload that supports IPTC data. I'm very excited about this. Also we are in discussions on a few large content partnerships that should help us immediately get traction with our contact list of potential buyers. While I can't talk about specifics I'm excited that a few of them will pan out.

Things we have almost finished and are still tweaking include our powerful pricing algorithm, which will be very helpful to people who are not entirely sure how to price their content and takes into account a huge amount of data to compute a valid market price. We are constantly tinkering with the algo and are making progress and learning a lot from it. We are working on our watermark for images. We have it set up for video at the moment but images is proving to be trickier ;-) Won't be long though.

While we haven't quite opened up the site to outside people we are inviting people and planning to move to just a registration process in just a little bit so you will be able to cruise around the site with no restrictions.

Things are looking good and only getting better.

Writers' Strike Accelerates Web Video's Move To TV

I think this is a interesting byproduct of the writer's strike and the ultimate dream of most producers of web content. The cross over to TV is a huge leap for all web video producers and highlights one of the major goals of this group. Fame has always trumpeted money and the crossover to a new medium is exactly what most want to accomplish.

NBC will start running the new Web show "Quarterlife," once passed up by rival ABC three years ago, on TV coming this January. The show was created by Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick of "thirtysomething" fame and hit the internet airwaves last week on MySpace.

The strike has forced networks to look elsewhere for content to replace their prime time shows and consider shows from the web that they once turned their nose up at. Will this last thought once the strike ends? With the quality of web shows getting better every year, its a natural progression for web video to move over to TV and something that I don't find that surprising. The web just provided producers a new and cheaper alternative to getting their content out there and thus we see a rise in the amount of content. So with or without the strike we were bound to see an increase in content in general and the natural progression and migration of tv to web and web to tv.

Tech / Media Peeps CEO Brunch

I had a nice brunch yesterday with plenty of interesting people who work in Tech, Media and the investment community at Gemma in the Bowery Hotel set up by Hilary Rowland of New Faces. It's fascinating to hear how each side views the other and how each other can work together to fill gaps in experience or knowledge the other side may be lacking. I was really impressed with some of the accomplishments and I was excited to see other people venturing out on their own and making a living doing what they love.

Some of the guest were from the Gathering, Right Media (sold to Yahoo), Getty Images, Conde Nast, Matrix Partners, Editor of an Aviation Magazine/Corbis rep'ed Fashion photographer, SocialDiva CEO, New Faces CEO, IACI Private Equity, and Paltalk. That just hit on the list of people who were sitting next to me ;-)

Make Money from your Photos

Has anyone heard of a new service called Photrade. It appears to offer an ad supported photo syndication service that brings photo monetization to a broader audience. Something that we are big believers in here at Cutcaster.

From what I can tell it is a free place to host your images but it can make you money. Its kind of like Flikr meets Mugshots meets Cafepress. We signed up for the side which is currently in closed beta.

Free Images, Clipart, Graphics, Banners and Icons Resources online

If you ever use images, clipart or animated images on your blog to liven it up a bit, but you want to use them legally and for free, here are some resources for you. Today's Cutcaster post will look at some of the free graphics and clipart resources available in the Web for anything graphics related and still provide some levels of protection:

FREE CLIPART RESOURCES
FreeGraphics.com
With it's extensive collection of free clipart, this well-designed site offers graphics in many categories, including animations, arrows, banners, buttons, fonts, interfaces, photos, templates, textures and wallpaper.

Hasslefreeclipart.com
An excellent graphics directory that includes various categories of free clipart. It also has reviews of other free graphics sites on the Web.

FREE ICONS & BANNERS
SmileyArena.com
With over 40,000 free smileys and other emot-icons, this well-organised site is great for free icons and banners.

Leo's IconArchive.com
Leo creates most of the artwork himself. This site has a cool collection of free useful and funny graphics, thousands of icons, caps, lines, flags, markers and bullets.

FREE PHOTO RESOURCES
FreeStockImages.com
This site has a vast selection of high-quality free photos and other stock images. It also allows photographers to upload their work here for free which is pretty normal but a nice feature. The categories are broken down for easier searching and include animals, architecture, backgrounds, digital art, nature, people, sports, as well as many more.

PixelPerfectDigital.com
Pixel Perfect Digital has a great collection of free high-resolution images, textures, backgrounds, illustrations, digital art, and stock photos, suitable for use in both personal and commercial design projects.

Remember when in doubt always provide credit where credit is due.

Looking for Free Audio Files

Here is a list of some places you can acquire free music for your projects. Most are offered under a Creative Commons agreement. Some Public Use

ccMixter.org - A site to try your hand at mixing and mashing music that is all offered under the CC.

TheFreeSoundProject - A huge collection of CC licensed sound effects files.

The below are free Private Use but may allow some public use - check out individual sites/artists for complete details.

ArtistServer.com - helps out smaller bands.

Jamendo.com - A full-length albums for download. Pay the artists on a donation basis or just spread the word about them. Think what Radiohead did a few months back.

PodShow.com - Have a buddy Greg Mand working over there if you ever need some help. This is a site that will fill your MP3 player with Creative Commons licensed music.

SoundClick.com - A site for signed and unsigned bands that want to be promoted. Sound Click offers free, downloadable, legal MP3s from some bands.

Android DEMO

Android Demo
Uploaded by Cutcaster

If you haven't seen what Google is up to lately you have to check out the above clip from Sergey Brin and Steve Horowitz, who discuss the availability of the SDK, that it will be open source in the future, and demo applications on the Android platform.

I like the idea at the end how they are offering 10 million dollars in prizes to developers. Cool way to call developers over to your platform.

Corbis Lays off more People

Corbis, the Bill Gates owned media company, announced that they have laid off 125 employees in an effort to streamline its customer service operations and sales team. According to people familiar with the situation, the layoffs were meant to streamline the sales effort and will entail shutting down some local offices (see Chicago, Montreal, Madrid, Hamburg, Amsterdam, Brussels, Singapore and Melbourne) and replacing them with regional sales centers (see NY, London and soon to be China) and outside sales teams for which the company is actively recruiting. A bit weird to be laying off sales people on one hand and then recruiting them on the other.

I really wonder how this will affect their acquisition of Veer's sales team and whether any of those people will be affected. It doesn't appear for the time being that it will.

So the Rumors are True- 2 Billion Photos On Flickr

2,000,000,000 is a lot of zeros. Flickr confirmed earlier that it had it's 2 billionth photo uploaded to the site. The now famous photo was taken by “yukesmooks” in Sydney on November 10th with a Canon EOS Digital Rebel XTi. Sort of a boring shot if you ask us but to each their own. Flickr stated that 3-5 million new photos are uploaded to the site daily. DAILY! Looks like they will have about 3 billion at the end of the month at that rate ;-)

If you are bored on Friday, you can apparently find various Flickr milestones by typing in the URL http://flickr.com/photo.gne?id=XXXXXXX, and replacing the X’s with the photo number.

When comparing this to other sites, Facebook has 4.1 billion photos on their site. That is a lot of drunk night out shots for one website ;-)

PACA - Legal Contracts

If you are in need of a template for some legal contracts before you sell your work check out the PACA website for a legal guide. It includes NDAs, Collection of Claims, Contributor Agreements, Distribution Agreements, any Website Agreements, Copyright Registration Forms, Infringement Letters, Litigation Forms and Release Forms. Just about every contract or "put you to sleep" material you could ever want in one place.

While you have to be a member to access the database, which costs a bit of cash but it might be worth it depending on the size of your archive and the number of employees you have. A good person to speak with is Nancy Wolf. Or you can copy and use the Cutcaster agreements if you want. We don't mind ;-)

Facebook Unveils AdWords For The Social Web

Here are some snippets from the Facebook press release.

Facebook Social Ads -- AdWords for Facebook's Social Web. The ease of getting a campaign started in Facebook Ads couldn't be more reminiscent of the self-serve interface that filled Google's long tail of advertisers, key to ensuring that there was relevant ad inventory no matter when, where or what the search. The importance of this is often over looked. In order to ensure that there will depth of ad inventory required to serve relevant ads to the billions of Social Web page views, this same long tail is required. Better yet, by facing the targeting and ad creation outward, Facebook has put the responsibility of correctly creating and targeting Social Ads in the hands of the many. Much as the industry of search engine marketing sprung up to optimize advertising communities and utilization of AdWords, and in the process improved the depth and quality of Google's paid results, Facebook looks to achieve the same result for its Social Web.

The word-of-mouth addition, which allows users to pass along their choice to click, purchase or engage with a brand, is the natural extension of performance advertising for the Social Web. That is, if your ad/page/product performs or converts, then the word-of-mouth component allows your campaign to build on its success. This will promote a type of quality never before seen in performance marketing.

Facebook Page -- building Facebook's Social Web. Facebook Pages does a couple of things for Facebook's Social Web. First, it adds inventory. On the Informational Web, if you are thinking about Nike, you go to Nike's Web site. On Facebook's Social Web, if your mind wanders to Nike, most likely because your mind was prompted by a social interaction or a Facebook Social Ad, you can go to Nike's Facebook page. The idea is that Facebook's Social Web continues to mirror the real Web, with two important distinctions. First, commercial profiles are created specifically to exist and participate in the Social Web. Second, the "financial filter" set by Facebook helps to ensure quality content, and a reduction of noise (in theory). This isn't revolutionary. In fact, MySpace has a healthy head start in figuring out best practices for creating profile pages for brands to give them a Social Web presence, but it's an important component of completing the Social Web ecosystem, especially in combination with Social Ads and the analytics.

Insight and Analytics: measuring what matters. Finally, Facebook has to give marketers the proper tools in order to define and measure Social Web campaign effectiveness. The tools look great, but their effectiveness is something that will have to be vetted with much more trial.

"Participation TV" Event

I went to an interesting panel discussion put on by the Producers Guild of America last night at the New School here in NYC with my friend Hilary Roland. In between a bit of laughter, we learned more about Participation TV and how Game Participation media is a new genre of production in which "call-ins" from audience members, cell phone text messages, and online votes are incorporated into television shows, ranging from American Idol to So You Think You Can Dance.The industry is projected to be a $3 billion market in the United States within the next five years. That's a lot of text messages and should make you stand up and notice.

Chris Pfaff led the panel, which featured Jeff Miller of Telescope, Donna Campbell, Executive Director, Ericsson Mobility World North America and Rick Mandler, Vice President and General Manager, Walt Disney Internet Group and ABC's Enhanced TV.

I personally found some of it useful and it did trigger some ideas for Cutcaster but most of it wasn't that new and sometimes a bit dry. I think they could have spent less time on the presentations which lasted 15 minutes each and more time on the Q and A which lasted about 10 minutes in total and was a bit more lively.

For those of you that don't know, and I am including myself in that group until last night, The Producers Guild of America (PGA) is the premier industry association for entertainment producing professionals.

For the most up-to-date information on the PGA New Media Council East, visit the blog.

And for all you fashionistas out there, I am sure there are a few of you, check out Hilary's revamped New Faces site.

And great to finally put Bill Sobel's name to the face. We had traded emails and now we have met. I'm gald to be a part of the master connector's world ;-)

Sad Day

I want to send out my thoughts and prayers to the McGowan family. Two days ago their youngest daughter, Jayne, was murdered in what appears to be a random robbery in Charlottesville, VA. The McGowans were our neighbors growing up, just three houses away, and we knew Jayne well so I am very sad to report this. The funeral is this Friday in Manlius, NY where I grew up. Life takes some very unexpected turns and I am shocked and saddened by this random act. My heartfelt condolences go out to Signe and Jim.

It's being reported at the moment that they have apprehended two suspects so I hope this helps the family somewhat in this sad time.

Welcome to Cutcaster

Hello Cutcasters,

The time has come.

At this very moment, we are turning the future of the Cutcaster, your community based content marketplace, over to YOU, the Charter Members of Cutcaster.

You have been selected because we think you have the brightest and most promising content. Now it’s your turn to act and earn.

Please join us at Cutcaster in a global toast to your future. Here’s to extraordinary moments of inspiration, success, and helping you realize your goals and turning your freelance work and shelved content into actual income.

Clink!

On the Homepage at the bottom in the footer there is an entry titled "Desired Content." Go there and have a look. Please let us know your thoughts and any questions.

“Here is to the beginning of a beautiful partnership”

The Cutcaster Crew

Click here to visit Cutcaster.

Another One Bites the Dust - Corbis buys Veer

Say it ain't so Joe. The last of the "Independents" feel like they are gone. We have always been a big fan of Veer. They have one of the best designed sites, reek of coolness, offer Veer merchandise to buyers who make large purchases which they use effectively to promote themselves and have very creative emails, which we actually open and enjoy here at Cutcaster. And now onto the sad news ;-)

Well, they are no longer independent but I hope they stay just as cool. Corbis, mighty Mr. Bill Gate's company, picked them up as well as some cool Veer merchandise at the same time for being such a great buyer ;-) today for an undisclosed sum of cash. Rumors of either Getty or Corbis gobbling them up had been swirling for the last month and was hitting the wires again today. Seems to me that Veer lacked a truly productive sales force to handle it's clientele and they reached a tipping point. They can now leverage the Corbis sales structure to handle that and Corbis gets the cool branding that Veer represented.

Here is a link to the press release.

We haven't heard anything more than grumblings at Cutcaster but has anyone heard what the price was? I'd say at least 8 figures in the range of 10-20mm but what do we know.

Getty's Stock Breaking out Today

My eye's are not deceiving me but Getty Images stock (GYI) is up over 31.50. It's at a 3 month high.

Disclaimer- This is not financial advice to buy or sell the stock.

VCR Law vs YouTube - Copyright Reform For The Digital Age

Things have changed a lot since Napster and YouTube busted onto the scene. VCR laws as we like to call them have been challenged by this new digital world. No one took into account what would happen in a digital world when they wrote the rules because there was no digital world at the time. What has popped up is a mismatch between technology and the law with copyright holders getting the bum end of the deal. There is a great article on the struggles between the rise of technology and protecting copyright. The Ars Technica news desk reported on a lobby group from the free-speech, fair-use side of the tracks who just presented a six-step reform program for outdated US copyright laws. Gigi Sohn, the president of Public Knowledge outlined the plan in a New Media conference speech at Boston University recently.

Here is a list of the points he made in his speech, which needed to be addressed and reformed.

1. Fair Use Reform. No less a lover of copyright than Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg recognized in the Eldred v. Ashcroft case that fair use is a critical factor in ensuring that copyright does not violate the First Amendment’s command that Congress “make no law abridging freedom of speech.” But with large copyright holders threatening litigation over even the most incidental uses of copyright, reliance on fair use has become the province of only the bravest of artists, academics and commentators. While one might argue that the flexible four-part legal test for fair use is a good thing because it allows for new fair uses, there are some uses, like commentary and criticism, which are explicitly set out in the law. It is time to add several more. Thus, I urge Congress to add incidental, transformative and non-commercial personal uses to the list of fair uses enumerated in copyright law. Congress should also expressly provide that making a digital copy for the purpose of indexing searches is not an infringement.

Critical to any effort to reform fair use is an amendment to the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA that would permit breaking a technological lock for lawful reasons. Something is amiss when most research universities must employ a DMCA officer to advise computer scientists and engineers whether they can engage in legitimate research, including research on computer security. Closer to home, the DMCA prevents lawful consumer uses like putting a legally purchased DVD on a video iPod. In order to make this amendment meaningful, the manufacture and distribution of circumvention tools must be permitted for lawful purposes.

2. Limits on Secondary Liability. The VCR, TiVo and the iPod did not become wildly popular because they were blessed by the copyright industries. They became wildly popular because they challenged the status quo. The Silicon Valley mantra of “innovation without permission” is the standard we should preserve in the law, and it should be done like this:

First, the Sony Betamax standard should be codified. Again, that standard protects a manufacturer or a distributor of a technology from liability for the infringing activity of others so long as that technology is capable of substantial non-infringing uses. Second, so-called statutory damages for secondary liability should be repealed. Should a technology not meet the Sony standard, the copyright holder is still entitled to actual damages if they can prove that there has been financial harm.

3. Protections Against Copyright Abuse. The Let’s Go Crazy Baby and the many other cases of misguided take down notices demonstrate that there is little risk for the copyright holder in issuing overbroad demands. These actions do have consequences for free speech — individuals may not know their right to contest the take down notice or they may not want to test the litigious nature of powerful corporate copyright holders. Currently, the DMCA punishes a copyright holder only if it “knowingly” sends a false copyright notice. To deter this scattershot behavior, the law should instead punish a copyright holder who “knowingly or recklessly” sends out a false notice.

Similarly, there should be relief for copyright abuse outside the realm of the DMCA. Congress should legislate an affirmative cause of action for allegations of copyright abuse, and the Federal Trade Commission should declare that notices, like those used by sports leagues that overstate a copyright holder’s rights are unfair and deceptive trade practices under the Federal Trade Act. You’ve heard the notices: “This telecast is copyrighted by the XYZ league for the private use of our audience. Any other use of this telecast or of any pictures, descriptions, or accounts of the game without the XYZ League’s consent, is prohibited.” The problem with this notice is that it completely misstates the law. The Computer and Communications Industry Association has filed a complaint asking the FTC to rule that these notices constitute an unfair trade practice.

4. Fair and Accessible Licensing. It is doubtful that there are ways to make copyright holders set reasonable prices to license uses of their works that are not fair use. Nor am I sure that it is fair to force them to do so, since after all, their limited monopoly gives them the right to license their works for a million dollars or $1, or refuse to license it to anybody at any price. We are starting to see copyright clearinghouses, like the Copyright Clearance Center, which allow for simple licensing and payment schemes. And of course there are alternatives to the current copyright regime such as the Creative Commons, which permits a copyright holder to license their works under terms more favorable than the traditional “all rights reserved” standard. For example, my work is made available under a Creative Commons license that permits any use so long as it is attributed to me, is for non-commercial purposes and anybody reusing my work makes it available under these same terms.

Music, which is already subject to a variety of government mandated license schemes, is another story entirely. Without getting too deeply into the weeds, suffice it to say that the business of licensing music is completely Byzantine, in large part because of the existence of numerous publishers from whom the rights to the musical composition must be obtained. A potential licensor must also get permission from an artist or record company for the right to the sound recording, but that is usually easier. Congress has made one failed attempt to simplify the clearing of the composition right — it should try again.

In addition, Congress must resolve the problem created by the Copyright Royalty Board’s recent decision to raise by 300-1200% the royalties that Internet radio services pay to record companies. The rate has now been set so high that it threatens the viability of all but the largest webcasters. While bills have been introduced in Congress to restore the rates to what they were before the Board’s decision, Congress should instead require over-the-air broadcasters to pay these royalties and set the rate across platforms of approximately 3% of gross revenues. Broadcasters’ exemption from this performance royalty is solely a historical accident and the result of tremendous lobbying power. But there is now no reason to treat them differently from satellite and Internet radio. One other caveat to requiring that broadcasters pay this performance royalty is that the artists should receive 100% of their share, and none of that share should be assignable to record companies for any reason.

Finally, the law should make clear the distinction between a performance and a download. A copyright holder should not be able to collect two license fees merely because a device that plays performances can also record them, particularly if those recordings cannot be moved from the device to other devices.

5. Orphan Works Reform. The by-product of the elimination of formalities like registration is that every time something is fixed in a tangible medium, it automatically receives copyright protection. This speech, for instance, is entitled to all the protections of copyright. The lack of registration requirements makes it difficult, in many cases, for an artist or educator who wants to license a work to find the copyright holder. When a potential user cannot find a copyright holder after a good faith effort, we consider the work to be an “orphan” work.

Because copyright infringement is a strict liability violation and damages can be as high as $150,000 per infringement, no one would dare take a chance on using an orphan work and risking the owner showing up and running to court. The result? Hundreds of thousands of works are languishing in the dustbin of copyright, unable to be used by anybody.

In 2005, the Copyright Office proposed that anyone who does a reasonable search for the owner of a copyright but nonetheless cannot find them should only be liable for “reasonable compensation” should the copyright owner resurface. Objections from photographers, book illustrators, textile and furniture manufacturers have held up potential legislation, but their problems are not so much with an orphan works solution than with the fact that it is virtually impossible to find visual arts like these using the Copyright Office’s text-only registry. Imagine trying to find the owner of a picture of Fenway Park when the only way the registry will permit you to describe it is as “a photograph of Fenway Park.”

Sophisticated image recognition technology permits the development of accurate visual registries, and Public Knowledge has advocated a system of Copyright Office certified competitive registries that operate much like the competitive domain name registries that have dramatically lowered the cost of obtaining a domain name. Congress should act to limit damages for the use of orphan works and at the same time open the door to the creation of a new registry that should greatly benefit visual artists.

6. Notice of Technological and Contractual Restrictions on Digital Media. While there is not a lot of love from copyright reformists and consumers for digital rights management technologies, the fact is that for good or for ill, they will be used in some way, shape or form on digital media for the foreseeable future. However, if these technological locks are going to restrict lawful uses of that media, at a minimum, copyright holders should be required to provide clear and simple notice of any technological or contractual limitations on users’ ability to make fair or otherwise lawful uses of their products. This gives the purchaser the information she needs to decide whether or not to purchase the product. As Boalt Hall Law Professor Pam Samuelson has urged, failure to notify a purchaser of a copy protected CD, for example, should be considered an unfair or deceptive trade practice under the Federal Trade Act, and failure to notify the purchaser of the prohibition on circumvention of the copy protection should be a defense against any DMCA claim. Similarly, any failure to notify a purchaser of any licensing restriction should invalidate that restriction. Long click through licenses in tiny print would not qualify as notice.


To end the speech, Sohn said that it's time to stand up against an entertainment industry that's "turning 'fair use' into what Lawrence Lessig calls 'the right to hire a lawyer.'" The debate comes down to this. We definitely need something to guide us and protect us after the Fair Use Act failed to provide the necessary reforms and protection.

Photo Agency Rumors flying

Keep an eye on the blogs later as I am hearing that their is an aquisition about to be announced in the photo agency world ;-) That's all I am hearing.

Follow Up to Radiohead's Music Model

We reported on Radiohead's move to put their latest album online for "pay what you want" prices. Early results are streaming in from comScore, which show that about 6 in 10 downloaders, rode the free gravy train, and didn't pay a thing for the album since it was made available online on Oct. 10. Looking at this worldwide, 1.2 million people visited the album's Web site last month, which is a pretty good amount of traffic but nothing what I would have thought for the amount of publicity this move got and the fan base that Radiohead had. A "significant percentage" downloaded the record on the site. This is all according to comScore estimates.

Looking closer, 38% of all downloaders worldwide paid something for the album, bless their generous hearts ;-), while 62% downloaded it for free. Rock on Freeloaders. Paying downloaders forked over an average of $6, with U.S. consumers paying almost twice as much ($8.05) as those from other countries ($4.64).

Between the "freeloaders" and paying downloaders, overall revenue came to an average $2.26 per album. If you figure that the band most likely would have gotten between $3 and $5 per album through their label it doesn't look that good monetarily but what were the intangibles.

Success or Failure aside, we have to look at the intangible factors that could translate down the road into increases in ticket sales, a new audience who downloads the music for free to test against their taste preferences, more publicity due to this move, increased goodwill from consumers and other revenue brought in down the line. We will just have to wait and see but this is really a great case study for how to sell your own media online when you have an audience.

Google Announces Android and Open Handset Alliance

Here is the press release:

Despite all of the very interesting speculation over the last few months, we’re not announcing a Gphone. However, we think what we are announcing — the Open Handset Alliance and Android — is more significant and ambitious than a single phone. In fact, through the joint efforts of the members of the Open Handset Alliance, we hope Android will be the foundation for many new phones and will create an entirely new mobile experience for users, with new applications and new capabilities we can’t imagine today

Android is the first truly open and comprehensive platform for mobile devices. It includes an operating system, user-interface and applications — all of the software to run a mobile phone, but without the proprietary obstacles that have hindered mobile innovation.

We didn't really find anything concrete in the call or press release in terms of products or services. However by going mobile, this represents a major growth opportunity for Google, which wants to bring the Internet (along with search and contextual ads) to your phone. The software development kit will be available on November 12.

For more info on the man behind the Google Phone, Andy Rubin, check out the NYTimes article.

How long does it take to produce video?

An interesting post from andydickinson.net expanded on a previous article where it was claimed that it can take up to 1 hour of total production time (from pre-prod to shooting to editing) for every 1 minute of useable video footage (for journalistic purposes). Read the article for the details, but more importantly, this is a crucial cost metric to understand for anyone that would ever think about buying stock footage (or requesting a certain clip). Of course it would depend on individual circumstances, but if you can assign a dollar figure to that production effort, you could really get a good estimate of how much money and time you save by purchasing content from a third-party site.

If anybody wants to venture a guess as to how much you think 1 minute of journalism-focused video production costs, we'd love to hear it!.

Video and Image Stabilization from News Videographer

News Videographer is a great blog for multimedia journalism, constructive criticism of your journalistic work, reviews of video gear, software, online distribution and general news about most things related to Internet video. Something we are very interested in here at Cutcaster.

Angela Grant does a super job with the articles with the help of a few contributors. Kevin Jacobus wrote a piece on techniques for improving video and image stabilization. He outlines some methods which are particularly important for anyone shooting their own content. To paraphrase Kevin:

1. Electronic image stabilization in camera. Don’t use it.

2. Optical image stabilization on the lens. Some lenses have optical image stabilizers that manipulate a prism to steady the image.

3. Mechanical stabilization. A tripod or monopod.

Some are obvious and some are not. For more information check out the article and keep up the good work Angela and Kevin.

Getty Revenues below Expectations

Getty Images, the stock image provide, had revenues of $209mm in the third quarter which came in again below expectations. Mike you were right and I was wrong about it being a short on bad news. The market obviously didn't find too much wrong with it as the stock is up 9%. Can you say short squeeze?

Here are some notes from the conference call which were paraphrased from Seeking Alpha.

Micropayment is good and "the use of and demand for visual content primarily in online usage is exploding.": Thank you very much. Getty CEO Jonathan Klein has just finished his opening remarks, and said nothing about Getty we didn't already know. He twice stressed that Getty's new $49 web-resolution images are a "super low resolution" product. (Fact check: Resolutions of the $49 images are typically 338 by 506 pixels, which is pretty low.) Sure that doesn't make the photographers happy to hear this. Klein also said, "Micropayment is very good for the visual content industry," and noted that it is disproportionally good for Getty, since it owns market leader iStockphoto. "The key difference is iStockphoto's highly profitable e-commerce based business model. Revenues generated here are from the licensing of images through e-commerce not by advertising." And he again mentioned plans for Getty's as-yet-unlaunched consumer Web site. Anyone know what this is going to be called? Is it called Greenfield?

In the Q&A, Klein says the company is considering web-res pricing for its video products. Klein earlier acknowledged that footage was in a "transition" period" and under "a two year investment program into ad content." "Footage will become much bigger, bigger business for us in the future. Our overall cost familiar with the increasing demand for digital video, as bandwidth constrains disappear and video finds its way from big screens to smaller screen, and the web and mobile devices." Klein did water down his excitement by saying that, "You will notice on the numbers that it has not been a great year for footage and 2007 has been very much a transition year for our footage business. We do expect double-digit growth in 2008 and beyond." Good news for Cutcaster.

The $49 question: Klein answered a question about the critical reaction from photographers that greeted his company's $49 web licensing price. "The communication with the photographers didn't clearly enough outline what we had in mind," Klein says. The $49 images, he says, can only be used online. "It's a super, super low resolution image. It cannot be used in any other way." He noted that once Getty explained why it was offering this product (to attract web users who were shopping elsewhere, resulting in declines in RF sales at low resolutions), photographers were "much more comfortable." I don't know if I believe that. From our conversations with photographers they still seem pretty upset and i sense a defection of sorts from Getty because of this and other reasons. "We created a new product for a new market and they're feeling much more comfortable and confident about it." As evidence, Klein noted that blogs and forums had been quiet for several weeks about this topic. Shout out to the Cutcaster blog here. He said low-resolution RF volumes have recovered to the levels they were at in the last quarter of 2006. Many of those buyers are lapsed customers or completely new customers. He added: "Frankly, we had very little pushback from the photographers we work very closely with. Some of the pushback was from people we had very little relationship with who felt it was an opportunity to make a point, and we respect that." Ouch.


The shares whipped around a bit after the news. They are up now in a down tape. I was amazed at how much they talked about microstock and recognize this growing trend, whether good or bad for the overall market space. I think they are happy as clams that they bought and got Bruce L. to come in and help them with their technology. It had been 5 years since the Getty website was relaunched with new changes last August.

Consumer Selling and Buying of Images and Footage - Copyright Issues

We keep coming back to Copyright issues because they are so important to the integrity of our marketplace but also because many people look at them as a gray area and don't really understand what they can and can't do. While there may be hundreds of legal details involving the use of copyrighted materials, the basic principles of the U.S. and international copyright laws are pretty simple -- if it is an "original work of authorship," you may not use it without the permission of its creator. And just to be safe, always ask.

Copyright laws state that any "original work of authorship" is protected
from the moment of its creation. It is very important to understand that
such a work need not be registered with the U.S. Copyright Office to
enjoy copyright protection. Infringements can result in severe penalties
as well a significant legal expenses which is no fun for anyone but the lawyers.

The U.S. Copyright Law is simply the governments best attempt to provide
creative people with the legal clout to benefit financially from their
creations. It is not, as some seem to think, a roadblock to the
dissemination of information. In truth, lawmakers have bent over
backwards to make sure information is widely disseminated. A "fact" is
never copyrightable.

On the Cutcaster website there will be information about creators and any restictions that may be associated with a particular video or photo.

Students and others interested in using photographs without charge can
find many usable stock photos by going to any internet search engine such as
Google or Yahoo and typing in "free photography" of "free stock photography." If you need help let us know.

For more information click here or to see Cutcaster's Copyright Policy click here.

Photographers on Imagestate

We are very sorry to hear this for those affected but wanted to report on it in case people had news. StockAsylum posted some important information for professional stock photographers who had images with Imagestate or Heritage Image Partners, Ltd. An organization that represents professional stock photographers is appealing for information about a British stock photography distributor that will be dissolved on Jan. 12, probably without paying its photographers and, perhaps, without returning their images.

"If any reader has any information about the location of contributor property or current contacts for Imagestate, Heritage Image Partners, Ltd., or (bankruptcy administrator) Kroll, please contact SAA," Stock Artists Alliance said in a prepared release.

What a nightmare on the day after Halloween. Scary stuff indeed for anyone that makes a living off their images. About the Image wrote, "In addition to losing out on payments many contributors are now worried original images will not be returned, Sumner reports. "We have gone through a long list of contacts trying to get work returned as Imagestate seems to have a revolving door employment situation," he says. "It's been impossible to get answers or action on any of these issues, and there's been no communication from them at all to explain to photographers what's going on." This highlights one of the biggest fear contributors have to photo agencies. That the agency closes up shop, doesn't pay you, and you can't erase your images from the database so they are out of your control in the content abyss.

The organization also encouraged stock distributors doing business with Imagestate to communicate with contacts at the company. Let us know if you need anymore information about this or your stories.

I'm still not sure how they raised 2mm dollars and announced it the day before all this took place. Strange.

We promise you this. Cutcaster will never act like this if things turned south. We would never hold the images, allow people to delete them immediately and there would be a steady stream of information either on the blog, our forums, over email or calls with concerned parties. That was the pledge we made when we started Cutcaster. To always be here and available.