viacom

YouTube defeats Viacom copyright lawsuit -- again

For the second time in the past three years, YouTube has beaten Viacom in a long-running copyright infringement case that accused the video-sharing site of turning a blind eye to illegally uploaded videos.

U.S. District Judge Louis Stanton granted the Google-owned video site's request for summary judgment on Thursday, agreeing that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's "safe harbor" provisions protected YouTube from liability.

Viacom, parent company of Paramount Pictures and MTV, filed a $1 billion lawsuit in 2007, accusing YouTube of encouraging copyright infringement and profiting when users upload unauthorized TV and movie clips. Google … Read more

Cowabunga! Nickelodeon comes to Hulu

Hulu viewers clamoring for " Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" won't have to wait much longer.

Hulu and Viacom today expanded their content partnership to bring Nickelodeon programming to Hulu Plus. Viewers will be able to watch the latest five episodes of current-season Nickelodeon shows on all devices that run Hulu's subscription service. All Nickelodeon programming will be available on Hulu Plus 21 days after airing.

Some popular shows include "iCarly," "SpongeBob SquarePants," and, of course, "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles."

"As of today, Hulu Plus is the only subscription-based on-demand Internet … Read more

Dish wants Viacom, MTV to sign on to Web service, report says

Dish Network is said to be asking cable networks such as MTV to consider offering their shows on a Dish-owned Web service, according to a published report.

In a Bloomberg story today, the news wire said talks have also involved Univision Communications and Scripps Networks Interactive, parent company of the Food Network.

Bloomberg says Dish's pitch to the TV companies goes something like this: offer a relatively small bundle of shows for Web viewing at a discounted price. Financial terms weren't included in the story. A Dish spokesman said the company wasn't offering "any guidance regarding … Read more

Amazon lands epic Epix film deal

Amazon has signed a Web licensing deal , allowing it to boast that it now rents movies from every major Hollywood studio.

Epix, the pay TV service, is giving the Amazon Prime Instant Video service access to such movies as "The Hunger Games," "Super 8," and "Thor."

The move was not unexpected.

Epix, a joint venture of film studios Paramount Pictures, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Lionsgate, had an exclusive Web licensing deal with Netflix, but that ran out in August.

Epix movies are still available on Netflix, but Epix didn't waste any time adding new distribution … Read more

Fringe benefits to Amazon Prime

Streaming you the top Friday headlines with the latest in 2D technology:

Amazon scored a licensing deal with Warner Bros. to offer more shows for Prime streaming, including West Wing and Fringe. Amazon Prime continues to step up the competition with Netflix. Prime costs $79 a year, which works out to be less than a year's subscription of Netflix.

The fight between Viacom and DirecTV is finally over. The 20 million subscribers of DirecTV can now access 17 Viacom channels, including MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon. On July 10, DirecTV turned off 26 Viacom channels over a payment dispute … Read more

DirecTV, Viacom make up: 17 channels restored

After more than a week of failed negotiations that led to a service cut-off, television giants DirecTV and Viacom have reached a new agreement that will restore many of the media conglomerate's popular television channels to the satellite service provider's 20 million U.S. customers.

The agreement, described as "long-term," will see 17 television channels -- including Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, MTV, BET and Spike, among others -- restored. Viacom cut service for the channels on July 10.

"We are very pleased to be able to restore the channels to our customers and thank them for … Read more

Viacom, DirecTV trade salvos in content battle

Viacom fired another shot at DirecTV today, telling DirecTV customers that the satellite provider won't compromise with Viacom to restore programming.

Viacom continues to keep 26 networks -- including MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, BET, VH1, Spike TV, TV Land, and CMT -- off DirecTV until the companies reach an agreement.

Viacom said in a blog post that DirecTV has "no intention" of working with Viacom and shows no "urgency" in compromising.

"We made a significant and comprehensive compromise proposal to DirecTV last Thursday that could have resulted in restoring all of our services to … Read more

Yahoo hack reveals most-used passwords

This Thursday, it's time to train your brain to win the gold in multitasking:

Seems to be the season for security breaches. This time, it deals with a subsection of Yahoo, called Yahoo Voices. Hackers posted more than 450,000 login names and passwords of Voices users, and it was said to be done as a wake-up call to Yahoo and others to step up security. The Voices section of Yahoo was slacking in security and did not hash passwords or require complicated strings.

CNET's Declan McCullagh wrote a program to comb through the most frequently used passwordsRead more

Viacom escalates DirecTV fight, pulls popular shows from Web

The programming dispute between DirecTV and Viacom is starting to affect the general population, with Viacom escalating the issue by pulling some of its popular shows from the Internet.

"The Daily Show," "The Colbert Report," and "Jersey Shore" are among the popular shows no longer available online as of yesterday. Other shows, such as "South Park," remain online, and back episodes of some pulled shows can still be found on Hulu.

DirecTV and Viacom have been arguing over how much a distributor should pay an entertainment company for content. Amid that fight, … Read more

Booyah for Ouya gaming console

The world is out for your wallet, but we'll never raise our prices. That's a Wednesday Update promise!

It's been a year since Netflix got itself in a mess with a bungled price-hike announcement, followed by the Qwikster embarrassment. I sat down with colleague Greg Sandoval to discuss his report on what went wrong at the once-beloved tech company. You can read his story and catch our full interview here: The inside story of Netflix's price-hike train wreck.

Games on Amazon's Kindle Fire will be adding achievements, leaderboards and the ability to save game progress … Read more