Google Pitches YouTube Movie Streaming To Studios: Report

Google is in talks with major studios to launch a paid movie streaming service on YouTube by the end of the year, according to the Financial Times. Streaming movies would cost about $5, and titles would be available on the same day as their release on DVD and other Internet video-on-demand channels, according to the Financial Times’ unnamed sources.

YouTube has long viewed itself as a potential partner with studios not just for film advertising and promotion, but digital distribution as well. In January, YouTube tested $3.99 streaming movie rentals of five independent films in a campaign with the Sundance Film Festival.

RIAA Presses For Anti-Piracy Procedures In Google-Verizon Proposal

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and 12 other music industry trade groups have sent an open letter to Google CEO Eric Schmidt, seeking more information on how the company’s joint proposal with Verizon for an open-Internet framework would accommodate digital content protection efforts.

“The music community we represent believes it is vital that any Internet policy initiative permit and encourage ISPs and other intermediaries to take measures to deter unlawful activity such as copyright infringement and child pornography,” the letter reads (via Digital Media Wire). The letter also urges for the tech companies to honor a distinction between “lawful and unlawful activity” online.

Backstory and analysis at Ars Technica.

Yahoo Interested In ‘Considerable’ Hulu Stake, Says Analyst

The second-most-popular search service would consider acquiring a stake in Hulu if the online video site goes public, says Jordan Rohan, an analyst with Stifel Nicolaus (via Bloomberg). For Yahoo, ownership in Hulu would shore up its position in digital entertainment as well as raise its profile among advertisers. Hulu’s estimated $200 million in revenue this year “implies superior monetization” compared with Google’s YouTube video site, Rohan adds.

In related news, “Modern Family” producer Steve Levitan vocalized his previously reported anti-Hulu stance on Twitter earlier this week (via Forbes). “Some estimate Hulu IPO could bring in $2Bil,” Levitan posted Aug. 18. “What will the content providers get? Zero. What is Hulu without content? An empty jukebox.”

Levitan’s position has not gained much traction in Hollywood’s C-suites; “Modern Family” remains one of Hulu’s most popular shows. But Wall Street reacted with more caution than enthusiasm to the broadcaster-owned video site’s prospective IPO.

Time Warner Cable’s Britt: New Net Neutrality Regulations Would Risk ‘Unintended Consequences’

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Time Warner Cable chief executive Glenn Britt says that new regulations for Internet service providers could carry “unintended consequences” if they wind up being outmoded by the ever-competitive broadband marketplace.

On the Google-Verizon policy proposal, which calls for an exception to open-Internet principles for new services and mobile/wireless networks, Britt offers: “Virtual private networks already exist. [Critics of the Google-Verizon proposal] are ignoring the fact that these services have been in place for many years. If there were a prohibition against that, then corporations couldn’t do business the way they do it today internally. If IBM wants to pay me to lay a cable from one place to another using Internet technology, should that be prohibited?”

Google Defends Net Neutrality Proposal

In proposing that the wireless broadband space remain free from government net neutrality regulations, Google acknowledges that it has shifted from its previous position. However, it’s all “in the spirit of compromise,” the company says in a follow-up corporate post.

Google’s chief Washington counsel, Richard Whitt, cites three factors driving the company’s strategic shift. “First,” he says, “the wireless market is more competitive than the wireline market, given that consumers typically have more than just two providers to choose from. Second, because wireless networks employ airwaves, rather than wires, and share constrained capacity among many users, these carriers need to manage their networks more actively. Third, network and device openness is now beginning to take off as a significant business model in this space.”

More on Google’s previous stance — and on why it wants the proposal considered by Congress instead of the Federal Communications Commission — at Ars Technica.

Media Companies Respond To Google-Verizon’s Net Neutrality Proposal

Google and Verizon are receiving pushback from many media companies, but praise from some, on their proposal to keep mobile networks and the development of “new entertainment and gaming options” (among other services) outside the government’s net neutrality framework.

Among those criticizing the proposal is Facebook, which advocates the application of open Internet rules to mobile networks (via the Wall Street Journal). IAC chief Barry Diller, meanwhile, called the proposal a “sham,” according to the New York Times.

Yet some agree with the proposal’s call for the government to allow broadband providers room to develop new products, such as a premium tier for content access. Danny Stein, the chairman of eMusic, tells the New York Times that while Internet access should remain open and neutral, “that doesn’t mean there can’t be premium options to appeal to some amazing consumer experience outside of the garden of net neutrality.”

Google-Verizon: Proposal Critics Say Companies Want Loophole For ‘New Entertainment Options’

“We want the broadband infrastructure to be a platform for innovation,” the chief executives of Google and Verizon state in a joint proposal, announced yesterday, for how the U.S. government should regulate Internet services. To this end, the two companies press for broadband providers’ right to develop “new entertainment and gaming options,” among other new products, that are separate from traditional Internet access and hence not subject to the same government regulations.

Google and Verizon stress that under their proposal, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) would monitor the development of these new online services, to ensure that “they don’t interfere with the continued development of Internet access.”

But the proposal has been met with outcry from media watchdog groups, along with a terse response from the FCC.

Andrew Jay Schwartzman, SVP and policy director at advocacy group Media Access Project, sees in the new-services proposal potential for a loophole that “may make some services unaffordable for consumers and access to those services unavailable to new start-ups” (in an interview with the New York Times).

The FCC, for its part, bridles at the corporations’ attempt to redefine the government’s role in net neutrality.

“Some will claim this announcement moves the discussion forward. That’s one of its many problems,” FCC Commissioner Michael Copps says in a statement (.pdf). “It is time to move a decision forward — a decision to reassert FCC authority over broadband telecommunications, to guarantee an open Internet now and forever.”

Warner’s Digital Music Biz Slows; Bronfman Optimistic About ‘Mobile Space’

As Warner Music Group reported a loss for its sixth consecutive quarter, the company said its digital business — which now accounts for 27% of total revenue — grew by just 2% (via WSJ). But CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr. says he is optimistic about the prospects of music services for mobile/wireless devices — a space that Google and other “major corporations” might enter over the next 12 to 18 months. All Things Digital and paidContent have the close read on Bronfman’s earnings-call comments.

Setback For Spotify’s U.S. Prospects

Spotify, the European streaming music provider, is approaching its licensing negotiations with U.S. labels entirely anew, in efforts to launch some version of its proposed “freemium” service Stateside before the end of the year, according to Billboard. The music trade magazine’s sources say negotiations “have reverted back to square one.”

Hailed as a pioneering model for digital music distribution, Spotify’s proposed mix of free ad-supported streams and paid subscriptions threatens to be a non-starter with labels in the U.S. —  even as the likes of Apple and Google are rumored to be hashing out details with labels for their own streaming music services.

More analysis at All Things Digital, which raises the question of whether all four major label groups, or just some of them, are holding up the Spotify launch.

Google Adds Music Licensing Counsel

With its hiring of music licensing attorney Elizabeth Moody, Google may be taking another step toward the development of its own digital music service, Billboard reports. Moody has worked as an associate at the law firm Davis Shapiro Lewit & Hayes, which according to Billboard has represented MySpace and other services in their licensing negotiations with labels.

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