A Pew Research Center report released this week shows that 30% of adult American Facebook users get some of their news from Facebook. That's about 20% of the adult population of the US. But most of those people don't see Facebook as the primary or most important way they get news. Rather, news consumption on the platform tends to be incidental or accidental with other activities.
The issue of piracy -- its causes, its persisting reality, its effects -- have been debated to the moon and back. Numbers tell a story rooted in fact, however, and according to some statistics assembled and compared by a couple sources, lack of legally available digital movie options consistently results in an increase in piracy, something perhaps not surprising to those who have found themselves frustrated at the inability to find a movie through preferred online stores.
The long-awaited Unu gaming system is set to ship in the next month or so and is available for pre-order now, Unu has announced. The system includes the Unu tablet with Android, a docking station with an HDMI cable for your TV, and the AirMouse remote control. A separate gaming controller is also available at an additional price.
Pirates, you have scholarly advocates in the London School of Economics. The LSE's Media Policy Project has published a report entitled "Copyright & Creation: A Case for Promoting Inclusive Online Sharing", and it argues that copyright infringement is not harming the creative industries nearly as much as is common believed. The authors even go so far as to assert that putative laws aimed at curtailing the "inclusive collaborative digital culture" actually stymies artistic expression and, by extension, the industries' long-term economic prognosis.
Apple has launched a new section on iTunes called "Employees on iTunes". All the media in that section was created by, or at least influenced by, Apple employees. And it's all free. And you can't have any--unless you work at Apple. Apple news source 9to5Mac revealed recently that Eddie Cue, Apple's Senior Vice President of Internet Software and Services, recently sent out a company-wide internal memo recognizing that the company is teeming with creative energy.
The team at RockStar games have wasted no time capitalizing on the popularity of not only the game Grand Theft Auto V itself, but the music gamers are able to listen to inside the vehicles of the game. This is otherwise known as GTA Radio, having become a rather interesting side-project and powerful result of the GTA Effect - aka the opening up of games to an "open sandbox" bit of gameplay allowing the user to make the game what they want it to be. It's also part of the ever-expanding world of in-game earning, though in this case you'll need to actually exit the game to purchase each individual track.
Mentioned almost as a footnote in today's release on their larger SteamOS headline, Valve has let it be known that they're entering into deals for multimedia delivery as well. Speaking on music, TV, and movies specifically, Valve has suggested that both SteamOS and Steam - the software client you use on your Windows, Mac, or Linux machine today - will be working with new media services soon. This set of services will likely converge on apps like Netflix and Hulu, while it's possible Valve will be bringing on their own media additions to their already successful Steam Store for games.
Target has been beta testing a video rental and download service called Target Ticket -- a service similar to Walmart's Vudu and Redbox Instant -- with select individuals, something that will change soon. Reportedly, workers of the franchise have received notification that the service will soon launch for the public, and with it will be the option to buy or rent digital downloads.
Mainstream news outlets heavily rely on user-generated content already, but in a bid to boost it even more, NBC has bought Stringwire, a social video streaming company that allows for real-time sharing of videos recorded with smartphones. NBC thinks it'll be the next generation of news coverage.
Roku has been busy with the updates lately, having released Redbox Instant in its channel store earlier this month, and now rolling out an update for its iOS app. With the mobile update comes a new feature for Play on Roku, which was first seen back in late 2012: video streaming. There's no mention of the feature coming to Android.
Late last month, a failure to negotiate fees between Time Warner Cable and CBS resulted in the first company dropping the latter one from its service in many markets, causing about 3 million people to lose access to the network. Although a truce was offered earlier this month, the spat continues, and in its wake leaves a long trail of spiked piracy rates.
The six-strike copyright system was leaked and talked about at length for many months, delayed once, and eventually launched back in February of this year. With it comes a series of warnings and eventual punishment on the behalf of many big-name ISPs for those caught pirating. Now sources have come forward to the folks over at Variety claiming that Comcast is working on an alternative system.
