ASCAP Seeking Royalties from YouTube Clips: MediaBytes with Shelly Palmer July 10, 2009

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ASCAP wants websites that embed videos featuring ASCAP members songs to begin paying royalties. The organization has already begun sending letters to bloggers, including Jason Calcanis, CEO of content generator Mahalo.com. While the organization is targeting specific commercial sites, YouTube, through which most embedded videos are served, has told targeted sites to contact them directly in order to settle the matter.

The New York Times first experiment with charging for online content may come in a $5 a month access fee. In a recent survey with the newspapers print subscribers, the Grey Lady also accessed if readers would pay “$2.50 a month for web access.” While the company desperately needs the increase in revenue, analysts are unsure of whether or not the shift will be able to save the Times.

Sprint reached an agreement with Ericsson and will turn its wireless network over to the Swedish company. The $5 billion deal, which greatly expands Ericsson’s reach, comes as Sprint tries to right its business by concentrating on “new products and customer retention.” Technically, Spring is not selling the network, rather handing Ericsson the job of managing it on a daily basis.

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is sueing Tagged.com over faulty membership issues. Cuomo is charging Tagged.com, a spam fueled social network, with running “deceptive e-mail marketing practice,” as well as “invasion of privacy.” The Attorney General claims that Tagged.com tried to trick users into giving the social network access to their digital address books, from which they would send more invitations.

Project Canoe will fail. So says Phil Leigh, Senior Analyst at Inside Digital Media in his new 71-page report entitled Future Developments in Video Advertising. I’m sure this news will be viewed as disappointing for David Verklin and his team.