The Internet hasn’t been good for the movie or music industry, at least in terms of providing a new way for the distribution of content which takes away the need for traditional companies.

But does that excuse the movie industry starting to spy on what we do with our Internet connections, and share with others across our network?

Here, Art Brodsky of Public Knowledge looks at the issues surrounding a speech given by Dan Glickman, the chairman of the MPAA:

Glickman’s Spying Is No Game

Hollywood for years has had a fascination with spies. Some are action spies, like the various incarnations of Bond, James Bond, or cerebral spies like Alec Guinness’ masterfully subtle George Smiley. 

All sorts of people have played TV spies, from Robert Culp and Bill Cosby to Patrick McGoohan, Robert Goulet and the fabulous Lady Diana Rigg and Patrick Macnee.

There have been spies who watch and listen to us without our knowledge. Gene Hackman had a creepy turn as the telephone eavesdropper (technically not a spy, although he spied) in “The Conversation” in 1974. 

Ten years ago Will Smith’s “Enemy of the State” played off of the then-paranoid “fantasy”, now a reality, of the all-hearing National Security Agency (NSA). The current crop of Bourne films shows a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) with the technical capability to listen and see anything and anyone at any time.

It wouldn’t be an issue if Hollywood’s fascination with monitoring our words and images was confined to fiction. But over the past couple of months, the fourth wall has been broken and Hollywood is now setting itself up to play a new spy game for real. 

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In our four part interview series with Dr. Gerry Purdy, VP and Chief Analyst with Frost & Sullivan, we are discussing different elements of the mobile video market.

In Part 1, we explored the future transcoding market, and the impact mobile video will have on transcoding and the challenges that await this year.

In Part 2, we discussed the impact that the Apple iPhone and YouTube have had on the mobile user experience, as well as the complexities of mass video distribution.

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On the digital media website Contentinople yesterday, Frank Smith talked about a comment that Philip Inghelbrecht of video sharing site YouTube made during a Digital Hollywood Media Summit in New York.  

Inghelbrecht remarked that 10 hours of fresh content is uploaded to YouTube every minute… which is quite plainly amazing.  

Frank’s post also went on to talk about the strain the volume of new media content is putting on storage, exceeding current capabilities, with an estimated 281 billion Gbytes uploaded in 2007 based on an IDC study sponsored by EMC Corp. 

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Hulu eventually launched on Wednesday to an almost equal amount of hype and cynicism.

While some people, such as former CEO of Disney, Michael Eisner, are convinced that due to emerging services like Hulu, Internet content will equal television withinin the next five years, others are less convinced.

Eisner is already producing his second digital-only series to prove his point. But what’s the reality of Internet video content?

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The last year has seen a bitter war raging between manufacturers, movie studios and retailers over what would become the high definition format of choice for the future of DVD.

But with Direct Downloads from the Internet growing at a massive rate over the same time period, is there actually a future for physical discs to be fought over in the first place?

Here, Gigi Sohn discusses how yet again Hollywood seems to be missing the bigger picture, and failing to grasp how new mediums are making the old guard obsolete.

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The BBC iPlayer is seemingly proving more popular than anyone could have predicted, with its success even prompting estimates for total UK online viewing to be scaled dramatically upwards.

When the iPlayer was originally announced and released in a public beta last year, the BBC were criticised for only offering the service to people using Windows based operating systems.

Public Dissatisfaction Worked

As a public broadcaster, with a duty to provide content for all, this is a valid complaint as it immediately stopped anyone using an Apple Mac or Linux based computer from accessing the service.

The BBC listened to the arguments, and took on board the views of the 16,000 people who felt angry enough to sign an online petition, and the service was relaunched over Christmas with Mac and Linux support, albeit offering just streaming content rather than downloads.

This, coupled with a marketing campaign over the holiday season has seen the iPlayer grow vastly in popularity, and the service saw over 1 million downloads in the first 20 days out of beta.

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Are you still doubting that the business of television is changing at an incredible rate?

The role of traditional TV is being altered on a daily basis, as consumers ready themselves for a dramatic changing of the goalposts.

The interactive television company Ensequence has recently announced the results of an Harris Interactive online survey which shows that consumers are more than ready to change the way they interact with their televisions in 2008. 

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