The guys from Monty Python have posted a video on YouTube to announce the creation of the Monty Python YouTube channel.  Do I even need to mention that it's funny?  It's Monty Python. Of course it's funny.

Vuze, previously known as Azureus, is yet another great example of how a technology that has commonly been used for negative purposes can be harnessed and made safe for the benefit of content creators, distributors and consumers alike.

Recently we've discussed how peer-to-peer (P2P) technology has allowed some legitimate websites to lower distribution costs for digital media. Vuze uses a special kind of P2P protocol with which you may or may not already be fam

iliar, called BitTorrent, which allows users to download scattered pieces of a file from many fellow users at once.  While you do have to download the entire file before you can play it, this kind of distribution can be very fast and quite robust.

This alternative to streaming allows Vuze to specialize in high-quality, even high-definition (HD) content. Almost 15% of the tens of thousands of available videos are HD, and Vuze sets a fairly high standard of quality for the other 85% as well.

Because of the security and speed of this platform, Vuze doesn't just offer video: music and even computer games are also available for download.

To take advantage of this technology, you do have to download Vuze's own desktop application, which is both a downloader and media player. In addition, it can be used to browse Vuze's searchable directory of media, which is also available at the website.

Unlike many sites using this technology, Vuze controls which content makes it onto the network, which minimizes piracy and unsafe activity. Because the site is secure and isn't crowded with low-quality content, Vuze has been able to sign on 150 content partners, including a number of major studios and networks.

But it's not all left to them. If you own good, quality content, you can publish it for free through Vuze, and while you can always make it available to others at no cost, there's also the option (for video and games) to monetize your content so that users either view advertising or pay directly (at whatever price you set) to gain access. Either way, you get half of the revenue that Vuze collects (well, net revenue for the advertising option). It's quite a simple process.

It's simple: Vuze is all about quality. Consumers who have become accustomed to streaming video of dubious quality may not know what they're missing; Vuze can show them.

We recently got a look at Cisco's Telepresence, a teleconferencing service that allows multiple users in multiple locations to have real-time face-to-face interactions. It's a very cool solution that allows businesses, their clients, or even just individuals to take part in high-def video, spatial audio conferences around a virtual conference table from anywhere in the world. There's a really good demonstration of the technology in this video on YouTube.

For people who remember the days of traveling around the world to meet with clients, colleagues, or business partners, this is really mind-blowing technology. But like a lot of the great new services and applications that are made possible by high-speed broadband Internet connections, fully realizing the benefits of something like Telepresence--or even a lower-budget alternative like a PC webcam and microphone--will depend on the ability to manage network traffic to avoid things like latency, jitter, and delays in data transmission.

It's one thing to experience a delay in a video stream when you're sharing a home movie of your cat doing something cute on YouTube. But when you're bringing together business associates in locations around the world for a negotiation, a meeting, or a training seminar--or more importantly, if you're a doctor monitoring a patient in a remote location--you definitely want a stable, reliable transmission. And that takes a reasonable degree of network management.

It's easy to argue against prioritizing some content over others, and for a lot of applications, best effort delivery makes sense--e-mails, Web pages, and non-streaming downloads, for example. But for streaming high definition content--whether it's for a Telepresence meeting, a remote surgery, a VoIP call, or even just a high-def stream of the Muppet Movie to your television--"best effort" just isn't always good enough.

UPDATE

Wall Street and Tech points out that Wachovia spent $1.5 million on Telepresence, but they say they've already made their money back in less than two years.

The firm has set up five telepresence studios -- conference rooms tricked out with Cisco equipment such as cameras, microphones and a large flat-screen, wall-mounted monitor -- two in Charlotte and one each in Richmond, St. Louis and San Antonio. Each cost slightly less than $300,000 to set up, but the audio and video quality, which I observed first-hand in an interview via telepresence last night, is excellent.  ...

Just by having executives use telepresence instead of traveling to certain meetings, Wachovia is saving $70,000 per month in travel expenses. The firm is starting to use telepresence for staff meetings across locations, particularly since the firm's latest studio is a CTS 3200 model, a larger room that seats up to 18 people in front of three 65-inch high-definition plasma displays.

...not to mention the reduced environmental impact.

Following up on our previous post about the Long Tail, it seems to me there is another problem with the Long Tail business model as it is often applied to the internet. Sustainable business models are usually...

1. Specialization - businesses sacrifice overall sales volume, but they make it up in per-unit profit. For instance, a jewelry store can sell only a few items a day, but the higher margins allow them to offer very specialized products and services which consumers seem to value.
2. Commoditization - businesses sacrifice per-unit profit, but make it up in sales volume. For instance, a grocery store can make only a tiny profit on each item sold, but the volume of product they can acquire and display allows them to offer the low prices and selection that consumers seem to value.

In both cases, the business models marry the various interests in a way that benefits producers, distributors and consumers. Alignment of interests = sustainability.

The "long tail" strategy assumes that you can sacrifice per-unit profit and sales volume on any given niche of products, so long as you can aggregate a little volume in a lot of niches.

There's certainly a lot of merit to the idea, but it falls apart if the incentives are not aligned for everybody. Wal-Mart and Amazon reduce the distribution costs, creating a new and/or bigger market for profitable production. But Wal-Mart and Amazon have to get voluntary cooperation from the people whose products they are selling. Their distribution model only works if it works for the creators. Likewise, it benefits Google, et al, to be a distributor for 1,000,000 different niches, because - even if consumers only buy 5 items in each niche - Google makes a profit based on aggregate sales volume.

What if one side of the producer/distributor/consumer triangle does not profit? What if the Long Tail model benefits only consumers and distributors, but not creators? In this case, 2 out of 3 actually is bad. Imagine if Wal-Mart didn't have to pay their suppliers, or even ask permission to stock their product. That would certainly lower prices for consumers and make life easier for Wal-Mart, but it's hard to see how this is fair for the suppliers, and how you would continue to get high-quality products. The distributors would control monetization, and creators would be unable to negotiate over their worth.

Lower quality content will drive out the higher quality content, and the best producers will be unable to compete at the commodity prices established by the distributors.

Wal-Mart can survive because, even if they reduce the potential margins, they still produce a profit for their suppliers. They would not survive if their business model involved most of their suppliers losing money. Ultimately, access to buy and sell 5 products in each of a million different niches is a good deal for the consumer and the distributor, but it's absolutely necessary that the producers have a say in the pricing and availability of their product, as well.

The lesson here is that incentives have to work for everybody. Content on the internet can be widely available without destroying the property rights of the creators; consumers can get easy access to content without relying upon distribution models that appropriate creative work without fair compensation.

We can all benefit here when we align those incentives in every direction. When that happens, we see much better products and a much more sustainable, creative internet.

If you like geeking out over Pareto and Log normal distributions or gazing at linear curves on XY graphs, Andrew Orlowski has an exclusive over at The Register which is well worth the read and raises new questions about the validity of the "Long Tail" as a business strategy.

The Long Tail is a business and economic strategy first coined by Wired's Chris Anderson back in 2004 which suggests that producers can make a killing selling a large number of unique, hard-to-find items, but that each individual item itself is sold in relatively small quantities. Anderson later published a book about his theory called The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More (2006). The theory of "The Long Tail" has been evangelized by digital natives as a way to profit from the Internet.

As Orlowski highlights, economist Will Page and Mblox founder Andrew Bud analyzed the value of the "Tail" in digital music by producing a spreadsheet with an eye-popping 1.5 million rows of data. What they discovered is that instead of a Pareto curve (a graph where the values are plotted and arranged in descending order - think a blob on the left with a really long tail extending out to the right), sales of digital music follow a Log Normal distribution - and in this case one in which 80% of the digital music inventory sold no copies at all.

As Bud explained...

Now we've seen what happens when tens of millions of choices are thrown in the air and land on the floor...There are Tails where the Tail lives as a kind of welfare state. Not this one. You starve in this Tail.

Orlowski also points out that according to Bud's and Page's analysis, 80 percent of the revenue in digital music comes from about 52,000 songs - the typical inventory of a record store.

Why is this potentially significant? It may demonstrate that Internet consumers, and as importantly advertisers, are looking for high-quality content. User-generated content can be remarkably creative and engaging, but to date has been largely incompatible with product advertisers.

It's worth wondering if maybe that's why so many technology companies now seem to be in a mad-dash to cut entertainment deals with the producers of that high-quality content. MySpace Music for instance launched in October with the catalogs of the four major record labels and independent distributors. Ten days later it streamed its billionth song. YouTube and MGM just announced an agreement to show some advertising supported full-length television shows on the video sharing site.

Lots of TV networks have some online presence, and many of those have taken steps toward putting an appreciable amount of their regular video on their sites. Some have tried to develop complementary content so as to offer something special to keep viewers' attention.

But in terms of the breadth and sheer amount of content, and the evident attention paid to creating a tight online operation, there aren't many that match the ambition of MTV.com.

It's startling. For those of us who are old enough to remember, but young enough to have been paying attention, MTV gradually transformed from Music Television to Reality TV. MTV.com brings them both together, and adds a bunch on for good measure.

MTV didn't skimp on the "M." They advertise that they currently have more than 16,000 music videos--real, official videos--in their easily searchable database, which puts them in a league of their own. But that's just the flashy part; even a casual perusal of their pages shows an uncommon attention to detail. It all links together: music videos linking to lyrics, artist pages linking to photos and news about the artist, live performances, discography, and the link to the artist's website. You can even see what other videos the director has done.

That's saying nothing of the several dozen MTV Radio online stations, set up through a Rhapsody player. Rhapsody also invites users to buy songs from their MP3 store: if you like what you're hearing anywhere on the site, you can click the omnipresent Rhapsody link on the page and it will take you to search for what that artist has to offer.

They pull you in with free content, and if you want it "To Go," it's available for a small price. That, the MTV Shop, and the occasional ad are the only really visible ways that MTV is capitalizing on all that quality content.

MTV isn't just about the professionally produced content, either: it allows users to upload their own videos of live shows, as well as photos and text. And if the material is good, it might end up on the blog for the uploads section of the site (You R Here) or even on TV.

And that's only one of the five music-specific blogs run by MTV. They also have a newsroom blog as well as a blog for movies, another for comic book movies specifically (really), and one for video games. And the blogs aren't just tokens; they're all very frequently updated and they get the first shot at content from time to time (like newly released movie posters, or exclusive interviews).

Of course, that rule especially applies to the blog they run for their own (reality) TV shows. And MTV has individual pages and video for an obscene number of shows and specials. They have a page dedicated just to music from their TV shows. And they have mobile content for some of their most popular shows.

Then, MTV takes it a step further and holds it all together with a social network (as of this writing, the MTV community has over 570,000 people). Users can set up a simple profile which serves them on different parts of the site in different ways, like uploading content or joining a community.

All of this, along with a bunch of other content I can't possibly cover in a blog post, shows impressive attention to detail and a commitment to the online space as an integral part of their overall strategy and business model. It's a bold foray onto the web for an established content provider/creator. We're fans.

Here's an interesting new revenue model for non-commercial file-sharing. Yesterday MySpace and MTV Networks announced a partnership that will allow MySpace users to continue freely sharing their favorite videos and songs in exchange for revenue-generating opportunities on the copyrighted content being shared.

Here's the short version of how it works: Using technology by Auditude, content from MTV Network's channels--MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon, and Comedy Central--will be identified by its audio and video "fingerprint." Auditude then allows the addition of a video overlay to the content, showing users where to buy or view full versions of the content as well as ads for related goods or services.

This is similar to YouTube's "click to buy" feature except that the MySpace/MTV/Auditude solution is--for lack of a better term--way, way cooler.

Under click to buy, YouTube works with companies to provide links to products or services related to the video. That's a good first step, but since the links only appear below the official video posted by the partner, it doesn't fix the problem of non-commercial but technically illegal use of copyrighted content by your average YouTube users. If you make your own music video for your favorite song, the songwriter doesn't get anything, and your video will probably get yanked when the music label spots it.

Auditude, on the other hand, seeks out the copyrighted content, whether it's officially posted by the network or posted by a user. I can put a funny clip from the Colbert Report on my MySpace profile to share it with my friends, Auditude can sniff it out and add links to buy or watch the whole episode, and MTV Networks gets the traffic or revenue generated by the links. Auditude also has the very cool benefit of detailed analytics. As RWW explains it:

With Auditude ads - and the analytics to monitor them - MTV Networks can build a mini-Nielsen-esque view into how their content is being used on MySpace. They'll be able to see any number of interesting metrics and trends. Who is uploading content? Which shows get posted most? Which shows get watched most? What are the demographics of the people posting the shows? Which users are getting the most click-throughs?

This is a win-win-win situation. MySpace wins because its product retains its value to its users--in fact, it may prove that MySpace becomes even more valuable to its users. Users win because they get to continue sharing files in a non-commercial manner. And MTV wins because it captures revenue for its content that otherwise wouldn't have existed and gets information about the people consuming its content.

The internet is having a profound political impact - both on voters and campaigns, as Mark McKinnon has explained at Internet Evolution. But the New York Times says the media is also aggressively responding to the new culture of the internet, embracing new approaches to content distribution...

Shortly after 9 a.m. on Oct. 19, Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama for president during the taping of "Meet the Press" on NBC. Within minutes, the video was on the Web. The 2008 race has blurred online and offline media. But the clip was not rushed onto YouTube; it was MSNBC.com, the network's sister entity online, that showed the video hours before television viewers on the West Coast could watch the interview for themselves. [...] But as NBC's decision to release the Powell clip early shows, the networks and their newspaper counterparts have not simply waited to be overtaken. Instead, they have made specific efforts to engage audiences with interactive features, allowing their content to be used in unanticipated ways, and in many efforts, breaking out of the boundaries of the morning paper and the evening newscast.

In the past, there has been a conflict of incentives for creators between "allowing their content to be used in unanticipated ways" and protecting the content they spend a great deal of money to produce. While virtually everybody acknowledges that creators should own, and benefit from, the fruit of their labor, many also acknowledge that people should be able to excerpt content in order to report - or, yes, remix - the original content in non-commercial ways. But where is the line between protecting the rights of creators and giving consumers more access to, and freedom to use, content?

It's an extraordinarily difficult question, and many have wrestled with how and where to draw the line.

However, that knot may finally be untangling and in some rather unexpected ways. Instead of having to choose between the rights of creators and more open content distribution, creators are embracing technology to allow both goals to be achieved. The New York Times describes how NBC is embracing internet distribution, but they're far from alone.

• Viacom, another Arts+Labs member, is also exploring ways to accomplish both goals with MTV.com, "embrac[ing] the consumer-led digital revolution".
• Google, the Authors Guild and the American Association of Publishers are creating a Registry for authors and expand access to books "in ways Google never could have done alone."
• WashingtonPost.com's most popular video programming recently has been its live coverage of this year's political conventions and election night, and The Wall Street Journal is aggressively rolling out new bite-sized video documentaries accompanying their news articles.

These are all entirely new initiatives, new models of distribution and in many cases are blurring the lines between what we've traditionally thought of as separate and distinct industries. Who would have thought for instance that yesterday's newsprint would graduate to online print, video documentaries and live video coverage.

The bottom line is that surprising and positive effects are emerging out of the laboratories of these new distribution models. Creators are developing better content, better methods of content delivery, and engaging internet consumers in entirely new and unique ways.

The Cato Institute will continue its exploration of the vigorous debate about copyright and intellectual property at a book forum at 12 noon on Monday, November 10th, featuring Michele Boldrin (author of Against Intellectual Monopoly) and Rob Atkinson, Founder and president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. The event is free of charge and you're encouraged to attend or watch the event live online. Cato's Jim Harper has written about the event here. According to his blurb:

Michele Boldrin and his coauthor David K. Levine argue that intellectual property laws are costly and dangerous government grants of private monopoly over ideas. Their book Against Intellectual Monopoly seeks to show through theory and example that these legal regimes are not necessary for innovation and are damaging to growth, prosperity, and liberty.

As we said before, Arts+Labs falls on the side of those who believe that artists have a right to be compensated for their work. It is an important part of our mission "to ensure that artists and innovators can easily and effectively share their creativity through new distribution channels online, secure in the confidence that their rights will be respected and their ingenuity rewarded."

In testimony to the Senate Finance Committee earlier this year, Rob Atkinson pointed out the following:

As a net exporter of manufacturing know-how as intellectual property, the United States is more dependent on protection of intellectual property (IP) than other nations. Over 50 percent of U.S. exports depend on some form of IP protection, compared to less than 10 percent 50 years ago.

The ideas in Against Intellectual Monopoly pose an obvious challenge to this source of American economic strength. You can hear both sides at the Cato Institute Book Forum, noon on November 10th.

Several websites are advertising themselves as online television networks, and several television networks have made much of their content available on their websites. Let's take a look at a site that's trying most straightforwardly to bring the home cable experience to the internet: TidalTV.

What sets TidalTV apart is just how badly they want to be the on-your-monitor version of regular TV. The most notable feature upon entering the site is the digital-cable-like channel guide, complete with programming schedules for every channel.

In truth, the channel guide is superfluous, since everything is available on demand. Although you can certainly just tune into a channel and let it play like TV, you can also move forward or backward at any time, or even go to shows that aren't on the current schedule, by clicking any of the category tabs at the top of the screen.

Since TidalTV is all about professional, branded content, their depth and variety are entirely dependent on their partnerships with official content providers. TidalTV is relatively new, just in open beta at the moment, but it has partnerships with 57 of these providers. Unlike many sites, several of Tidal's partnerships are news sources like CNBC and the Wall Street Journal, or even the Weather Channel - another aspect of TidalTV bringing it closer to regular TV.

And like most sites, yes, TidalTV does have short, marked commercial breaks during each show.

TidalTV aims to keep loading times very low, to allow for quick channel-flipping and to keep the experience more TV-like. As a result, the video isn't premium quality. It's just supposed to be easy, uncomplicated, and user-friendly: no need to download any extra software, no social network profiles or recommendations or ratings. You just go to the site and it starts playing. You change the channel, and maybe you look for on-demand content. That's all there is to TidalTV.

There's usually a big market for user-friendliness and simplicity, if it's done right. Whether TidalTV can pull it off in a market with many competitors, time will tell.

Arts and Labs Co-chairs Mike McCurry and Mark McKinnon released the following statement on Google's decision to end its agreement with Yahoo:

Consumers have made clear that they want as many online alternatives as possible. To address Internet consumers' diverse interests, online innovators are continually developing new business models to provide consumers with an expanding variety of legal content.

Termination of the Google-Yahoo partnership, which would have allowed one company to control online advertising, keeps the door open for vibrant online competition. By preserving competitors' ability to create new business models for Internet services, today's developments should enable Internet users to enjoy the full benefits of creativity and innovation.

Government scrutiny of this deal worked to help protect innovation and competition on the Internet. The entire Internet ecosystem - consumers, creators, innovators, and companies - will be better off as a result.

As our About page points out, Arts+Labs is "a collaboration between technology and creative communities that have embraced today's rich Internet environment to deliver innovative and creative digital products and services to consumers."  A Presidential campaign is a perfect storm of conditions for the innovation and presentation of great content and valuable content delivery efforts.  

Ustream.tv is providing some of that tonight, with election night coverage on a variety of channels - both viewable at UStream and embeddable at your site.  According to Ustream.tv, they're featuring the following channels tonight...

• Rock the Vote - Rock the Vote and Warner Brothers is partnering with Ustream to live stream its phone bank from New York all day on Monday and Tuesday. 
  
• ABC News - ABC News will be streaming all of their live election coverage on Ustream.
• PressPassTV - PressPassTV, a 4-time Emmy winning site, brings live interviews and chat with professional athletes from around the world on Election Day with Ustream.
  
• OneNewsNow.com - OneNewsNow.com will be doing live Christian Conservative election coverage from 6 p.m. to midnight Central Time on Election Day. Get a Christian world view of the election results. Live blog on onenewsnow.com, by SMS text, email or call OneNewsNow with comments.