The FBI has arrested a man who impersonated publishers and literary agents in order to fraudulently obtain hundreds of pre-release novels and other books in electronic form. Filippo Bernardini, 29, who worked at UK publisher Simon & Schuster, was detained upon arrival at JFK International Airport yesterday.
Source: FBI Arrests Man For Fraudulently Obtaining Leaks of 100s of Pre-Release Books * TorrentFreak
Popcorn Time, the app that was once popular for making pirating movies as easy as watching Netflix, has shut down. Its original developers took the service down and abandoned the project merely a few days after it launched in 2014. But since the project was open source, other developers were able pick up where they left off, and it’s been killed and revived a few more times ever since.
Source: Illegal movie streaming service Popcorn Time shuts down
A survey of U.S. listeners by Acast and Nielsen finds nearly 40 percent of respondents said they wanted podcasts from YouTubers and influencers, outranking interest in shows from music and TV personalities. “We anticipate that this consumer desire will drive content creators who are looking to please their fans to pick up microphones and test the waters in podcasting this year,” Tommy Walters, Acast’s North America Commercial Insights Manager, said.
According to new figures confirmed by the UK’s official recorded music trade org, the BPI, the British market saw 147.2 billion total on-demand audio streams in 2021. That was up by 7.9 billion – or 5.7% – on 2020’s total haul (139.3 billion). This might sound like a lot… but when you compare it to the trends of previous years, it’s really not.
Source: The brakes have been slammed on audio streaming’s growth in the UK. Is the US next?
Don’t you hate it,” says Jon the Robot, gesturing with tiny articulated arms at an expectant crowd, “when you’re trying to solve inverse kinematics equations to pick up a cup and then you get ‘Error 453, no solution found’?” The crowd laughs. “Don’t you hate that?” The prospect of an AI that understands why we are laughing, and that can generate its own genuinely funny material, is sort of a holy grail for a subset of AI researchers.
Source: Artificial Intelligence Can Now Craft Original Jokes—And That’s No Laughing Matter
User-created content accounts for 39% of media hours consumed by Americans weekly vs. 61% for traditional media, a Consumer Technology Association study found. Specifically, among all Americans 13 and older, “watching traditional TV content” had 18% share of weekly time spent with media, compared with 16% for UGC videos.
Source: User-Generated Content Represents 39% of Time Spent With Media: Study
Some 60% of global users think the content they pay for is not “relevant” to them. Over one-third believe streaming platforms are becoming too pricey. As a result, 33% will “somewhat” or “greatly” decrease spend on media and entertainment across subscriptions and one-time purchases in the next 12 months.
Brands like Muzak have made a big business out of building catalogues of licensed audio content for commercial venues — the infamous “elevator music” — and today a company that’s aiming to do the same for video has picked up a big round of funding as its business continues to see strong momentum, despite the many dampeners brought on public life from the Covid pandemic.
Though the incidents have been documented on a number of platforms, OpenSea, the world’s largest NFT marketplace, is at the center of the current controversy, with high-profile creators such as RJ Palmer and Loish taking to social media to denounce the thefts. Many artists say their work was initially seized from DeviantArt, a popular online art community that has over 70 million registered users and half a billion pieces of art.
Source: Artists Say Plagiarized NFTs Are Plaguing Their Community
New streamers Paramount+ and HBO Max saw large gains in purchase consideration intent in a year that saw muted growth on that indicator, due to the pandemic dynamics, reports Morning Consult. The rankings were determined by measuring the share who said they were considering purchasing from each brand between October 1-October 26, 2021 and subtracting the share who said the same between January 1 – January 31, 2021.