June 2012

TV audiences who watch online and through mobile devices may be looking better to advertisers and networks. A new study by ComScore and the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement found that people who watch TV online in addition to the traditional way spend more time consuming the content. According to the study of 10,000 consumers, people who view programming through TV and online spend 25% more time viewing than those who engage only through regular television. "Consumers who build online video into their TV experience appear to be an important core constituency for media brands," the study’s authors wrote.

The State Department has signed a no-bid, $16.5 million one-year contract with Amazon to provide Kindle Touches -- 2,500 of them to start, preloaded with 50 titles each -- for its overseas language-education programs. So why has the government decided the Kindle is the best e-reader — and what is Amazon providing for all that money?

In a document justifying the no-bid contract, the State Department says it’s identified “the Amazon Kindle as the only e-Reader on the market that meets the Government’s needs, and Amazon as the only company possessing the essential capabilities required by the Government.” It has international 3G, text-to-speech features and a long battery life, which “other e-readers such as the Barnes and Noble Nook, the Sony Reader Daily and Kobe [sic] e-Reader cannot provide.” Less clear is why 2,500 Kindle Touches are worth $16.5 million. The Kindle Touch 3G is $189; multiplied by 2,500 (which is the figure to start in the first year), that’s $472,500. I’ve asked the State Department for elaboration, but according to the agreement, Amazon is responsible for shipping the Kindles overseas, providing 24/7 customer service (something a smaller company, including Barnes & Noble, might have had trouble handling), sharing data on how the Kindles are used to access content and pushing serialized content to the Kindles regularly. Amazon is also responsible for disabling “standard features, as requested by DoS, for the device such as individual purchasing ability.”

This just in from Geneva: The United Nations has no plans to seize control of the Internet.

The Web-snatching black helicopters have not left the hangar. Internet conspiracy theorists will be disappointed. The latest one, fueled by “open Internet” groups, Internet companies like Google and some US lawmakers, was that mouse-clicking bureaucrats at U.N. headquarters in Geneva, supported by governments suspicious of the United States, were scheming to take over the Internet itself. The plot went something like this: At a meeting in December of an obscure UN agency called the International Telecommunication Union, Russia, China and their ilk would try to wrest oversight of the Internet away from the loose collection of public and private organizations that do the job now, handing this responsibility to the ITU. All sorts of bad things, from censorship to the breakup of the Internet, would ensue. Time for a reality check. Documents prepared for the December meeting, which leaked out last week — yes, on the Internet — show that there are no proposals to hand governance of the Net to the ITU. The union insists that it has no desire to play such a role. And even if some governments would like to give the agency increased regulatory powers, the United States and other like-minded countries could easily block them.

Google has reached an agreement in France that could bring back to life thousands of out-of-print works.

The French Publishers’ Association and the Société des Gens de Lettres, an authors’ group, dropped lawsuits in which they contended that Google’s book-scanning here violated copyright. Google agreed to set up a “framework” agreement under which publishers would be able to offer digital versions of their works for Google to sell. “Our hope is that these path-breaking partnerships will help jump-start the emerging French electronic book market,” said Philippe Colombet, head of Google Books France. While e-book sales have surged in the United States, they have been held back in France, and across much of Europe, by disputes over rights and other issues. The deal is modeled on agreements that Google struck separately with two leading French publishers, Hachette and La Martinière. Under all of these agreements, the publishers retain control over many conditions of the book-scanning project, including which titles are made available.