Competition Commission Kills Kangaroo | Joint BBC, ITV, and Channel 4 Venture Dead

Posted on Wednesday 4 February 2009

Project Kangaroo, the joint venture from the BBC, ITV, and Channel 4 to bring online video to the masses, have been killed at birth by the Competition Commission. Hoping for a British answer to Hulu? It’s not going to happen.

Project Kangaroo was first announced way back in November, 2007. The joint venture between Britain’s three most popular broadcasters, the BBC, ITV, and Channel 4, was envisioned as a one-stop online video destination that could rival YouTube or Hulu.

Project Kangaroo Details

The ‘Freeview online’ was going to have over 10,000 hours of programming all available as VoD (Video on Demand). The project would have taken the BBC iPlayer model and expanded it to include a wealth of programming from the Beeb’s broadcasting rivals.

Six months later and Kangaroo hit a snag when the Competition Commission became involved after complaints from rival broadcasters, BSkyB and Virgin Media, who were bitter at not having been invited to the party.

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As eBaum’s World Goes Down, YouTube Remains Up | What Are The Differences?

Posted on Monday 2 February 2009

EBaum’s World has recently hit the headlines due to celebration at the site being taken over by new owners. The cause for celebration being the allegations of content stealing by eBaum’s World. But is YouTube actually any different?

EBaum’s World

EBaum’s World is a long-running and very popular site. Popular in terms of page views but not so popular with content creators. This is because for years there has been widespread accusations aimed in eBaum’s direction concerning the stealing on original content.

For the uninitiated, eBaum’s World is a depository for funny videos, games, pictures, and jokes. It’s mostly user-generated but with site editors also taking responsibility for uploading and managing material.

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