Checking In On Three Stories

I'm devoting this week to editing my newest manuscript.

I came across a couple of follow-up items to previous posts:

Story 1: On Friday, I posted about Jason Pinter's getting dooced from his job at Crown Publishing because he posted information that his employer felt should not have been made public in a blog.

Today's Publishers Lunch reports that Jason will be joining St. Martin's Press as an editor on Monday, March 26. "He will continue to acquire commercial fiction--thrillers and mysteries--as well as nonfiction in pop culture and other categories."

Story 2: You'll recall that Google purchased the social networking site YouTube on October 9th. Media companies had been complaining even before the deal was struck that the unauthorized download of music, movies and other copyrighted content was costing them billions. In the five months since the purchase, those talks have taken place directly with Google.

The companies making these accusations include five of the seven biggest media conglomerates: Disney, GE, News Corp, Viacom and Time Warner.

On Tuesday, Viacom sued both YouTube and Google in New York's U.S. District Court for more than $1 billion dollars, citing widespread copyright infringement. According to the Associated press, "Viacom claims that YouTube has displayed nearly 160,000 unauthorized video clips from its cable networks, which also include Comedy Central, VH1 and Nickelodeon."

Six weeks ago, potential licensing talks broke down between Viacom, Google and YouTube. Viacom demanded that YouTube remove more than 100,000 unauthorized film clips of programs like The Daily Show, The Colbert Report and South Park.

Viacom claims to have since identified another 50,000 unauthorized clips. The media giant said that YouTube's business, "which is based on building traffic and selling advertising off of unlicensed content, is clearly illegal and is in obvious conflict with copyright laws."

Story 3: From November 26 to December 3, I did a series of posts on Second Life, the online metaverse.

From today's Publishers Weekly: "Joining companies like Toyota and Reuters . . . Bantam Dell is establishing a commercial and social presence in the popular online virtual world Second Life. The Random House division is opening the Bantam Dell Book shop March 15 with a "live" appearance by virtual Dean Koontz, reading from his new novel, The Good Guy, scheduled to be published in May."

Back to editing.