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Christopher Slaughter
CEO
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We’re very sad to report a loss in the CASBAA family; Elemental founder and CEO Sam Blackman has died at the age of 41. Sam was a leading figure in the tech community in his home base of Portland, Oregon, and since bringing Elemental into the Association in 2012, he had also become well known in CASBAA circles, speaking at a number of CASBAA events. In 2015, he and his partners sold the company to Amazon, and rebranded it AWS Elemental. The company has issued this statement:
AWS Elemental has lost a passionate, visionary, and humble leader and the world has lost an inspiring human being dedicated to community. Sam’s spirit will always be at the core of what we do. Sam loved his work, but his greatest love was for his wife and children. Our thoughts are with his family and all those he touched on his journey. The Blackman family has asked that in lieu of flowers, donations be made to three organisations that work in areas Sam was most focused on addressing – hunger, the environment, and education. They are the Oregon Food Bank, the Forest Park Conservancy, and Rosemary Anderson High School.
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Kevin Jennings
Vice President
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| Some surprise news from Down Under as American broadcaster CBS has announced it has entered into a binding agreement to buy the business and assets of troubled Australian free-to-air broadcaster Network Ten. The deal, for an unspecified amount, includes Ten’s main channel, its two digital terrestrial television channels Eleven and One and the catch-up TV streaming service Tenplay. CBS will also launch CBS All Access as an SVOD service in Australia and will provide immediate financial support to ensure Ten’s continuing operations. As Ten’s largest creditor, CBS is currently a key supplier of programming to Ten and a 33 percent shareholder in Ten’s digital channel, Eleven.
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John Medeiros
Chief Policy Officer
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| I’m always amused when a new journo, or boffin, or politician, discovers that Gee Whiz, there’s a lot of pirated content on supposedly legit Big Internet websites. Shocked, shocked…… But here’s a concrete idea to deal with that: this researcher says that narrower “safe harbor” exceptions would increase liability for piracy, and cause a greater differentiation online between legit sites (which would have a greater motivation to keep their gardens clean) and dirty dodgy downscale piracy sites.
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John Medeiros
Chief Policy Officer
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| And while we’re on the subject of safe harbors: The Australian government last week announced its much-awaited decision on what to do with recommendations by the Productivity Commission to bring in a fair use system, and extend larger safe harbors to Big Internet. Answer: they’ll consult on it some more. Well, that’s a better outcome than endorsing the PC’s cockamamie idea that “the way to deal with piracy is to make it easier.” Here’s the official statement, and a lawyerly analysis. Not surprisingly, creative industries reacted favorably.
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Mark Lay
Vice President, Singapore
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| Lots of stories this week in the OTT space. The biggest VOD event of all time, the Mayweather-Mcgregor fight last weekend, resulted in serious outages that exposed limitations of streaming tech. Though, according to Irdeto, this didn’t seem to stop the 3 million people who watched illegal streams of the fight. Turner India and Amazon Prime Video have announced a strategic tie-up that will see Cartoon Network’s popular kids shows play on Amazon Prime Video. Digiday takes a look at how live video is evolving, in 4 charts. Why Apple and Facebook Should Spend More on Video (subscription, but the chart really puts TV spending in perspective.) For those who didn’t go to the Philippines in View event in Manila this week, during the OTT panel we learned that companies are exploring numerous methods of how to crack the OTT business model code. TV[R}EV believes that Apple should Give Away Their New TV Programming For Free….ya, that’s exactly what the pay-TV industry needs, more programming being given away for free. #sarcasm. These stories and more, continually updated at the CASBAA OTT Group newsfeed.
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John Medeiros
Chief Policy Officer
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| It’s been an eventful month for those who watch the evolution of China’s IP policy: the annual crackdown got under way. The Donald announced a Section 301 trade proceeding against Chinese failure to protect IP. At an APEC meeting, China’s commerce ministry acknowledged the IP situation in the mainland was “not perfect.” (Masters of understatement, they are!) And on Wednesday, there was a bare-bones announcement that new IP protection measures (not yet explained) are being introduced. Lots of smoke – any fire? Stay tuned……
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John Medeiros
Chief Policy Officer
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| And for those who delight in Kim Dotcom-watching: if he can stay out of jail, he’s working on helping creators increase online earnings through a Bitcoin-based micropayment system. Just stay tuned to see how THAT one turns out…..
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