Newspapers, TV stations and other news outlets that have seen their revenue siphoned away by online platforms could get an assist from Congress under legislation that a House panel took up Friday. If passed, the legislation would grant news organizations a four-year exemption from antitrust laws to band together to negotiate compensation from online platforms that use their content, including Facebook and Google.
Source: House Panel Weighs Moves to Rein in Big Tech, Aid Media
Livestreaming went from niche to mainstream in 2020, bringing in $610 Million from over 115 million fans, according to new research from MusicWatch. An estimated 115 million people watched a livestream in the fourth quarter 2020 on platforms ranging from the popular site Twitch to Mandolin, one of the new music-focused streamers to have sprouted during the pandemic.
Google launched a scathing attack on Microsoft Friday, accusing it of trying “to break the way the open web works in an effort to undercut a rival.” Google is upset about what it believes is an attack by Microsoft to undermine the company’s efforts to support journalism and publishers. In January, Google threatened to remove its search engine from Australia, in response to a law that would force Google to pay news publishers for their content.
Source: Google slams Microsoft for trying ‘to break the way the open web works’
Christie’s auction notes that the sale makes Beeple one of the world’s three most valuable living artists. Christie’s detailed that the bids exploded in the artwork’s final two hours at auction, moving from nearly $14 million to over $69 million as the bids poured in.
Source: Beeple’s $69 million NFT sale marks a potentially transformative moment for the art world
Music creators and executives seem to agree that something has changed — even if they don’t entirely understand it. Deadmau5, Grimes and Shawn Mendes have already sold NFTs — although not albums — following the lead of digital artists like Beeple, who has generated nearly $80 million auctioning off NFT artwork since December.
Source: NFTs Are Booming and the Music Biz Desperately Wants In
There is no such thing as “the blockchain.” There are many blockchains, and they are effectively competing for market share in a battle that will have winners and losers. So the blockchain your NFT calls home could be just as important to its value as whether it was created by Rob Gronkowski or the CryptoPunks team.
Google revealed its plans to withhold U.S. taxes on YouTube income in an aptly titled article, “U.S. tax requirements for YouTube earnings.” Creators enrolled in the YouTube Partner Program – i.e. those who monetize their videos – may see their worldwide earnings docked by a significant 24 percent if they fail to submit their tax info via AdSense prior to Monday, May 31st, 2021.
Source: YouTube Unveils Plan to Automatically Deduct U.S. Taxes From Creators
The popularity of video and other streamed content like podcasts is continuing to grow at a breakneck speed, and today a startup called Epidemic Sound, a marketplace to source the background music for that media, is announcing a huge round of funding to scale along with it.
Source: Epidemic Sound raises $450M at a $1.4B valuation to ‘soundtrack the internet’
On the heels of a heated standoff between platforms and publishers in Australia, U.S. lawmakers reintroduced a piece of legislation that would allow the news industry to collectively negotiate content deals with tech companies. The Journalism Competition and Preservation Act is sponsored in the Senate by Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and John Kennedy (R-LA) and in the House by David Cicilline (D-RI), Ken Buck (R-NY) and Mark DeSaulnier (D-CA.)
Source: Lawmakers want to empower publishers to collectively negotiate with Facebook
As the original has been destroyed, the NFT could be characterized as an unauthorized reproduction. Unless the terms of sale included a transfer of ownership of the copyright in Morons, Injective Protocol’s actions could arguably constitute copyright infringement.
Source: Fungible Banksy: NFTs, Copyright and Digital Art Collide with the Burning of Morons