With a new iPhone app called Limelight, Oliver Cameron (best-known as the co-founder of private social network Everyme) aims to answer the question, “What am I going to watch tonight?”

The app’s basic functionality is pretty straightforward. You can create lists of movies that you’ve watched (rating them between 0 and 5 stars) and that you want to watch. You can also browse lists of highly rated or popular movies in the app, as well as lists created by other users. (You can follow those users, too.) The ultimate goal, Cameron said, is to help users “organize your movie library” (library might not exactly be the right word for it, since it’s not necessarily a list of movies that you own — but I think it conveys the basic idea) and find new titles to watch.

A lot of this functionality is already available in other services. Netflix is famous for its algorithmically driven movie recommendations, and another one of my mainstays, IMDb, also has user ratings and a “watchlist” feature. But in those cases, those features are mixed in with a larger service, whereas Limelight has pared things down and is all about ratings and recommendations.

Plus, there’s a nice social component — something that Netflix, for one, is still struggling with. Similar to Amazon-acquired social reading service Goodreads, seeing your friends’ history in Limelight can be useful for finding new movies, and can also just be amusing. For example, I was appalled to discover that Verge writer Ellis Hamburger gave a five-star rating to Armageddon.

The app was built by 9:42AM, which is basically the team of Cameron and designer Marcelo Marfil. Cameron said the company’s goal is to “build simple products that work beautifully and have a defined need.” He described 9:42 (which is named after the exact time when Steve Jobs announced the iPhone) as a side project until he starts his next company. But he said this doesn’t mean he isn’t serious about these apps: “Making apps is a huge passion for me, so it’s a good way to keep creative before I start the next thing.”

As for Everyme, the startup doesn’t seem to have gotten much buzz since its big launch last year, and it launched a new service called Origami in the fall. (Everyme co-founder Vibhu Norby recently published a blog post recommending that startups avoid the big launch and instead focus on building a community, which is what he said he’s doing with Origami.) Cameron told me that he left because he was looking for a new challenge.

“I had been working on practically the same product for nearly three years, so it was time for a change up,” he said.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

The Fast & Furious movie franchise has earned the title of this week’s most engaged movie Facebook page. The page boasts a PTAT of over 2 million making it fourth fastest rising page among pages of all categories. The next top rising movie page received 468k engagements, 1.5 million less engagements than the Fast & Furious page.

This list of top gaining movie pages is compiled with PageData, which tracks page growth and engagement across Facebook.

#	Name	People Talking About	Daily Growth	Weekly Growth
1	Fast & Furious	3,250,183	0	+2,084,271
2	Iron Man	1,068,433	0	+468,335
3	Scarface™	516,794	-2,154	+433,643
4	Aashiqui 2	472,923	+43,502	+266,490
5	After Earth	394,926	+38,595	+210,175
6	The Hangover	558,421	+23,422	+198,569
7	Star Wars	359,569	0	+171,192
8	Ace Ventura: Pet Detective	171,054	+4,511	+164,668
9	A Walk To Remember	230,120	+5,853	+164,101
10	Juno	140,003	0	+134,029

In anticipation for the films release in the next few weeks, Fast & Furious has increased its marketing efforts by purchasing Facebook Ads. Much of these ads have been video page posts placed in both the news feed and the right ads column. Rather than promoting the most recent post on the page, it chooses to promote content that is more substantial such as a trailer or a video. This is the type of content that users want to engage with and hold a true interest in.

As it can be seen here, the page managers are using the Power Editor to promote and monitor their ad. Though this trailer was originally released on April 28, using it as an ad has increased how long the post has remained relevant.

Coming in second on this week’s list, Iron Man released the franchise’s second sequel this past weekend. Despite the movie coming in No. 1 in the box office worldwide, it still only garnered a 468k increase in Facebook engagements. It is clear that some of the page is purchasing ads for some posts, these ads are not rich in content compared to Fast & Furious. Instead of promoting a video, the page chooses to promote photo posts.

Visit PageData to see more about the top talked about movie pages as well as other categories.

Article courtesy of Inside Facebook

One of the worst kept secrets about YouTube is that it’s just teeming with full length movies, and I’m not talking about the ones that Google wants you to pay for. They’re not all that hard to come by despite the fact that uploaders presumably don’t want them getting yanked immediately, but those movies are there if you know where to look.

Thanks to a new (well, new to me anyway) web app, finding them just got a whole lot easier. Say hello to Pegleg, a simple, smart, and terribly handsome way to dig up those flicks on YouTube.

The concept is simple enough — Pegleg’s front page shows off all the films that users have already found, and those looking for something specific can either drill down by certain criteria or punch in the name of a movie they’d like to see. If the flick in question has already been added to the Pegleg collection you can watch it immediately. In the extremely likely event that the movie you’ve been jonesing for isn’t there yet, Pegleg will display a list of YouTube videos it thinks could be what you’re after, along with a little notification showing you how sure it’s actually a full-length movie based on the clip’s running time.

Right now Pegleg plays home to nearly 900 YouTube movie links that users have added to the system, with some of them naturally worth more of your time than others. It’s a remarkably polished project especially considering that Pegleg’s creator, Toronto-based developer Mina Mikhail, was mainly looking for a way to get better acquainted with developing in Meteor. Still, as neat as the project is, it’s very possible that by shining a light on all of these films lurking on YouTube Mikhail is actually making them (and potentially event Pegleg itself) a more prominent target for copyright takedowns. Over the past few days alone some 20 links were removed from Pegleg because the films they pointed to were removed by YouTube.

As far as Mikhail is concerned though, that’s just the nature of the beast. Takedowns can and will happen, but he finds it unlikely that these sorts of film uploads will ever completely disappear from YouTube. As some films are unceremoniously yanked from YouTube, others will certainly be uploaded in their place, and the ceaseless dance between copyright holders and YouTube-savvy film buffs continues on. Mikhail doesn’t intend for Pegleg to go dark anytime soon unless something truly dramatic happens, but let’s face it — people are going to upload and share these movies on YouTube no matter what ultimately happens to Pegleg.

“I’m not aiming to subvert the rights of content owners,” Mikhail notes in a blog post. “Pegleg is simply a response to the actual, current behaviours of friends and film-lovers around the world.”

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

My Leave of Presence: An update http://
j.mp/YRRHq8

—
Roger Ebert (@ebertchicago) April 03, 2013

Only a day before legendary film critic, Roger Ebert, passed away, he tweeted a final farewell at the Chicago-Sun Times, promising to pioneer new digital projects, in addition to a hefty schedule of movie reviews. At the ripe age of 70 and the cheery survivor of salivary cancer that left him him without a jaw or voice, Ebert proved that neither age nor disease could stand in the way of a pioneering mind.

After cancer stole Ebert’s powers of speech, he turned to Twitter, becoming an instant sensation. “But there’s something seductive about it: The stream, the flow, the chatter, the sudden bursts of news, the snark, the gossip, time itself tweet-tweet-tweeting away,” he wrote for the Times.

As of less than a month ago, his movie whit was still sharp as ever.

G.I.JOE: RETALIATION. Maybe you should just play with your dolls instead. Richard Roeper's review on my site: http://
j.mp/111oN7L

—
Roger Ebert (@ebertchicago) March 30, 2013

He even braved the stage at TED, giving a speech entirely read by Apple’s monotone voice app, and the help of his close confidants. “People who need a voice should know that most computers already come with built-in speaking systems,” he said, ” I’ve got to say, in first grade, they said I talked too much, and now I still can.”

His optimism for technology is worth quoting, at length:

All of this has happened in the blink of an eye. It is unimaginable what will happen next. It makes me incredibly fortunate to live at this moment in history. Indeed, I am lucky to live in history at all, because without intelligence and memory there is no history. For billions of years, the universe evolved completely without notice. Now we live in the age of the Internet, which seems to be creating a form of global consciousness. And because of it, I can communicate as well as I ever could. We are born into a box of time and space. We use words and communication to break out of it and to reach out to others.

For me, the Internet began as a useful tool and now has become something I rely on for my actual daily existence. I cannot speak; I can only type so fast. Computer voices are sometimes not very sophisticated, but with my computer, I can communicate more widelythan ever before. I feel as if my blog, my email, Twitter and Facebook have given me a substitute for everyday conversation. They aren’t an improvement, but they’re the best I can do. They give me a way to speak. Not everybody has the patience of my wife, Chaz.

But online, everybody speaks at the same speed.

Ebert received an immediate outpouring of support from every imaginable outlet and personality, with links to past gems

Ever a class act, @EbertChicago made me love movies even more. bit.ly/Y0z147 #RIP

—
Seth Green (@SethGreen) April 04, 2013

Maltin: “[Ebert] legitimized the idea of talking about movies, of discussing and debating the merits of movies” wapo.st/10CmlRg

—
The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) April 04, 2013

RT @pjdoland: Nothing was funnier than Siskel and Ebert when the camera stopped: buff.ly/XTawdu

—

Steve Jobs was a rare CEO in that he inspired myths and legends not just among employees, but also among the general public. An executive whose name is recognizable to people not involved in his industry is a rarity, and believe it or not, Funny or Die’s upcoming iSteve biopic may be the movie that best captures his exaggerated, cartoonish public reputation.

Funny or Die has released a first teaser trailer for the film, which spans between 60 and 75 minutes and yet was shot in just five days, and the first look is basically a montage of every cliché, buzzword and melodramatic (and possibly fictional) turning point in the life of Steve Jobs and the history of Apple. It almost looks like the famous Reality Distortion Field made into a movie, which in many ways might be more appropriate than a belabored, intense, wordy drama like the one we’ll get from Sorkin, or the equally mythical by less fun take from the team behind the Kutcher iJobs flick.

The iSteve movie debuts April 15, and already enters the record books as the longest film project ever produced by Funny or Die. Based on this trailer, it looks like the script, which took three days to write, has a lot going for it, but it’s hard to lampoon something consistently for over an hour, so I’ll reserve judgement until I can finally see how well they’ve actually pulled it off.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

After the initial success of the Kickstarter campaign for a movie based on the TV show Veronica Mars (with a goal of $2 million, it has currently raised $3.9 million, and there are still 17 days to go), I had a chance to interview the show’s creator Rob Thomas and his agent Julien Thuan about what’s next for the movie, as well as what the campaign’s success means for other TV shows and films.

There’s been some speculation about whether this could change the funding model in Hollywood. Thomas said the campaign should make things easier for people who want to do something similar, but they’re “guinea pigs” for just “a specialized subset of projects” — namely, cult TV shows with a fan base that wants to bring them back.

“Is Veronica Mars destroying the Hollywood business model?” Thomas said. “I don’t think so.”

I’m a fan of Thomas’ work, particularly Veronica Mars and Party Down, both of which were prematurely canceled. When I asked whether Thomas could see himself running a similar campaign for a Party Down movie, he replied that he’s still pursuing a “traditional path” on that front.

“I will say this about the path that we took [on Veronica Mars] – it is labor intensive,” he said. “It took me a year and a half to get to this point. … To pitch a movie to a studio that buys it is clearly the simpler way.”

Thuan told a similar story, saying that Thomas called him up a 18 months ago, reported that he’d heard about crowdfunding, and asked, “Do you think that’s crazy?” Thuan didn’t think it was crazy, and in fact he said the United Talent Agency (where he’s a partner) had been looking for ways to experiment with marrying crowdfunding and “a branded, preexisting property.”

Of course, once they actually decided to put pursue the campaign, they had to put a plan together, get people on-board, figure out the prizes and how to fulfill them, and get approvals from the various departments in Warner Bros. (which owns Veronica Mars).

As for whether Thomas was nervous about the campaign’s success, he said he was “ridiculously confident” until the night before it launched, when he and star Kristen Bell tweeted at each other with hints about their plans. That didn’t seem to start much discussion, prompting Thomas to wonder, “What if it has just been the same 20 fans talking about it all these years, and I’ve allowed them to talk me into this?” (Thuan compared the experience to taking a “a trust fall” into the arms of the show’s fans.)

Naturally, Thomas is relieved that the movie campaign didn’t just reach its goal, but is already exceeding it by a healthy margin. Apparently he outlined the script based on a budget in the $3 to $5 million range, so if he had only raised $2 million, he would have had to cut back.

And yes, there’s been some criticism of the campaign, much of it boiling down to the fact that fans are being asked to bankroll a studio movie – the Kickstarter funding is supposed to cover the production budget, while Warner Bros. handles the marketing and distribution. For example, Alyssa Rosenberg at ThinkProgress wrote that she would have been more excited if Thomas was was looking for funding to buy the Veronica Mars rights from Warner Bros.

“It’s not on the table,” Thomas said when I asked if he’d considered that. However, he said that before he reached the current deal, he had initially proposed a more independent production, where the studio would grant him a one-picture license to make the movie on his own. He also noted that without the Kickstarter campaign, the film would not happen, because Warner Bros. doesn’t normally make movies for this small a budget. (My two cents: A certain amount of skepticism is healthy when it comes to the movie studios, but I’m also part of fan communities that have been asking for years to get opportunities like this to support work that they care about, so it’s hard for me not to get excited. And yes, I did back the campaign.)

Finally, I asked Thomas if the movie could lead to sequels. He said he’s trying to have it both ways, writing the script so that it’s a satisfying conclusion to the story, but also leaving the door open for more movies or another TV show: “Spoiler alert: Veronica survives the movie.”

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Paul (not his real name) has never seen the movie The Divide. He’s a horror buff and sometimes tries to find odd and decidedly bad flicks to watch with his wife. The Divide would have fit the bill. It made $16,700 at the box office – that amounts to about 2,100 tickets sold – and closed with $130,839 in the bank. It cost $3 million to make.

The reviews, not surprisingly, were uniformly bad. “Well, yes. I’m another person who got suckered into watching this piece of garbage. The most important thing you need to know about this movie is that it’s just not worth spending two hours of your life to watch it. It’s just bad,” wrote one IMDb user.

“The characters are so cliché and the dialogue is so poorly written that any self-respecting horror lover would quickly roll their eyes, eject the DVD and watch The Mist on cable before falling asleep in his or her clothes,” wrote another. It’s one of those movies for a very specific audience. For guys like Paul.

Paul also admits to occasionally torrenting hard-to-find films. But he’s never seen The Divide. He never downloaded it. I believe him.

However, a month ago, Paul got a letter from his ISP accusing him of torrenting a copy of the file at midnight one lazy evening. His ISP informed him that his IP address, an identifier that, in truth, constantly changes for most Internet users, was identified as being part of the download. Because of this, he’s being sued.

Paul is now in the strange world of copyright trolls, companies that produce or license content for the sole purpose of suing users who pirate it – even inadvertently.

How did Paul get caught? And what is his recourse now that he’s been fingered as a pirate? The answers to those questions are mired in some of the most contentious legal wrangling ever and is the basis of an entire industry, one dedicated to producing Internet-based “bait cars” that allow copyright holders to see a trickle of money for even the arguably worst content imaginable.
First, a brief primer on BitTorrent. When a file, a document, say, is put on BitTorrent, a user makes it available as a seed. This seed is downloaded a few times by other users – peers – and then, once enough copies are available, the peers begin serving up parts of that file. Think of it as a group of people sharing a candle. The first person lights another person’s candle and so on. Eventually, the holder of the original flame is forgotten and the flame is self-perpetuating. While this metaphor isn’t completely accurate, it works well enough.

According to Paul’s ISP, then, Paul’s computer held the flame for a brief period, serving up all or some of The Divide to other users. Whether this is true or not is the biggest problem in this sort of copyright law. If Paul served up a packet inadvertently, is it his fault? If he only served up one packet versus the entire file, is he at fault? And how can ISPs prove beyond a doubt that Paul is the culprit here? They can’t.

The DMCA complaint Paul received came from R&D Film 1, LCC, represented by attorneys Michael Heirl and Todd Pankhurst of Hughes Socol Piers Resnick & Dym, Ltd. in Chicago. The complaint cited him by IP address and cited this file, a 720p Blu-Ray rip release by BHRG. In the case of The Pirate Bay, the file was seeded by a user called maximersk, who has seeded a number of videos and television programs from various “groups.”

It is important to note that The Divide is still available for download.

Files produced by various groups – in this case BHRG – differ in quality and availability. There are many versions of The Divide, including higher- and lower-resolution copies.

But only this copy is seeing lawsuits thrown at it. If the lawsuit defendants had picked another copy, any other copy, they would have been in the clear. Clearly this particular 720p, high-resolution copy of The Divide is being watched. Every time someone shared a little bit of it, chances are one of the seeders “caught” the IP address of the requester. The seeder made a list, forwarded that list to the appropriate ISPs, and then prepared their case. The IP addresses are sent with a timestamp (which could be wrong) and, as we all know, IP addresses are ephemeral things. Again, Paul was no angel, but he got caught in a dragnet that had little to do with him.

“If entrapment wasn’t done by government entities this would be entrapment,” said Robert Z. Cashman, a patent attorney who runs a website dedicated to researching copyright trolls.
Ross Dinerstein, the R and the D in R&D, is an indie film producer and a nice guy. You can see him chatting about a movie called The Pact here. He lives in Los Angeles and has the round, boyish face of a Hollywood business man focused more on doing deals than going gluten-free. He was executive producer for Jiro Dreams of Sushi, a beautiful piece of indie documentary filmmaking that could be considered a masterpiece. I spoke to him and he laid out his case.

“I’m a producer. I don’t have the bandwidth to chase pirates, so I hired a specialist to handle it,” he said. “As far as I know, [the people being sued] get trapped by stealing copyrighted material which is not a good idea.”

It’s hard to dump the blame on Dinerstein or anyone like him. While he does see a small amount of money from these lawsuits, he has essentially outsourced their enforcement to a company called GuardaLey, a firm that rose to infamy for offering software products and anti-piracy services whose “evidence gathering techniques are far from optimal.” Attorney Jason Sweet told TorrentFreak:

GuardaLey did not respond to requests for an interview, and R&D Film 1 LLC’s counsel at Hughes Socol Piers Resnick & Dym, Ltd. said “No comment.”

Disconnecting Dinerstein from GuardaLey is obviously problematic, but let’s assume, for the sake of sanity, that the movie was made in good faith and that his goal was to show people a good time. Who, then, is at fault? Dinerstein for wanting what is, by all rights, his? Or GuardaLay for essentially expressing a level of incompetence that would get most software services houses fired?

Lawsuits like this one started cropping up in 2010 and have risen in intensity since. Pop over here and search for copyright cases with the party name “Doe 1-” in any court. You’ll see quite a few cases, many of them dealing with exactly this type of situation.

Remember that it doesn’t have to be this way. The easiest way to have something removed from the Internet is through a simple DMCA filing. Takedown notices like this one to Google are addressed almost immediately, which is often a boon for copyright holders, but is also a club for those wishing to hide information, as was evidenced in a case against a WordPress user whose plagiarist requested a takedown notice for blog posts they had copied.

There is obviously little monetary value in these notices, but they do remove offending content, for the most part, in a few keystrokes. It’s a method of first resort and makes the most sense for copyright holders.

GuardaLey has a stable of law firms that send out these letters in hopes that customers will settle. If they don’t – if the cases go to court or they are ignored – they stand to lose money. The sweet spot, then, is in those too cowed not to react and too confused to find legal representation.

“My folks just got served a subpoena,” wrote the relative of one of the victims. “They are elderly and I know did nothing wrong; possibly someone else using their IP address. I’m thinking either hiring an attorney as a shield, or doing nothing and praying it goes away. I will not have them appear in court or settle. What do you suggest?”

Others, like a 16-year-old defendant, are worried the lawsuit will ruin their family. Still others see it as a scam.

One user received a subpoena after watching a Mr. Rogers episode online. “There is no reason for them to come after me, my kids, or any of the other thousand viewers, unless stopping ‘piracy’ for copyright trolls is not their real intent.”

Copyright trolling efforts like these are not new. Cashman has been following them for years.

“Copyright trolls are generally production studios and/or they’re enterprising attorneys who have decided that it is more profitable for them to sue defendants and elicit multi-thousand-dollar settlements from accused defendants rather than sell tickets or copies of their copyrighted films at retail or discount prices,” he said. “A porn production company could make millions suing defendants rather than promoting $20 per-month memberships at their websites. For these reasons, these lawsuits in their post-Napster, post-Grokster form took shape.”

But what right do these trolls have to ask for outrageous sums? In copyright law there is a duality. On one hand, you can say that the studio is out one paying customer – $20 at most for the ticket and a few bucks more for popcorn. On the other, you can say that the downloader has, inadvertently, become a pirate distributor. That’s partially why it’s easy for these guys to go after BitTorrent users (that and the ubiquity of the service.)

“Their filings for copyright infringement are probably correct — if a downloader made an unauthorized copy of a copyrighted file, they could probably be held liable for copyright infringement. I am hedging on this statement because I would like to see the laws limited to those who enjoy a financial gain from this infringement, and I do not consider the ‘loss of a movie ticket or sale’ to be substantial enough to sue a defendant for $150,000,” said Cashman.

So somehow Paul’s IP address got on R&D/GuardaLey’s list. They sent a letter to the ISP asking for the specific data pertaining to the accused user, and the ISP, thanks to the DMCA, is forced to comply. In fact, companies will cry “The DMCA made me do it” at the drop of a hat these days, another issue that frustrates content producers to no end.

So what now?
“Don’t be fooled — these trolls can be fought using the same arguments as any of the others. An IP address still does not conclusively link to the subscriber as the downloader,” said Cashman.

“Each of these cases suffered from the same issues which would prevent them from going to trial — lack of personal jurisdiction, improper joinder of accused defendants, and that there were clear patterns in the rulings of the judges across the U.S. where they were clearly misunderstanding what was the real intention of these copyright trolls, and they were denying motions to quash and attempts of the internet users to prevent the copyright trolls from obtaining their contact information,” he said.

Jeffrey Antonelli, an anti-troll lawyer, told us that before those attacked do anything they should confirm that their computers are compromised or that a relative hasn’t been visiting The Pirate Bay without their knowledge.

Then you have to gamble. Do you hire a lawyer and forge ahead or ignore the notice?

“I have represented a number of people who were sued because they ignored the letters. It’s about trying to determine that chance, it’s difficult, and it would be helpful to have legal advice. You can be well-informed by reading the relevant sources. Copyright Trolls and Die, Troll, Die are both good sources and both are being sued by some copyright trolls,” he said.

Again, is this Dinerstein’s fault? No, said Antonelli. “Starting from the presumption that copyright owners – bona fide business owners that are providing content. With those assumptions, I don’t think it’s necessarily bad. I do have issues with the manner in which those people are doing their investigations/litigation and with the selection of people they actually decide to sue.”

Antonelli said Paul is looking at a claim of about $500-$750.

“Other law firms charge more, my firm is able to charge less. Litigation is quite a bit more expensive. Litigation can easily be up to $5,000-$6,000 and can quickly escalate to $50,000 if you’re the main defendant. It’s very burdensome. There should be strict rules on the ability to enforce copyrights through ISP subpoenas.”

In the end, copyright trolling is a sneak attack on folks who may or may not be doing anything wrong. While certainly The Divide is a piece of intellectual property that deserves protection, things break down when it is used as bait to gather lucrative lawsuits. Entire film studios produce second-rate movies to, presumably, show on Netflix and other services and, sadly, use to power these lawsuits. While perhaps the The Divide isn’t such a movie, the chances look good.

It appears to me as if these movie studios have been making second-rate movies for some time, more as a hobby as far as I’m concerned. Setting up a holding company and transferring the copyright to the holding company so that they could sue for copyright infringement appears to be a ‘business model’ of what is known as ‘IP monetization’ that lawyers are so excited about.

“In other words, they say: ‘It’s a bad economy, so let’s threaten to, but not sue the pants off of anyone who downloads our content,’” he said.

Sadly, for folks like Paul, sometimes that strategy works.

With reporting by Michael Seo

[Illustration: Bryce Durbin]

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Rovio has just released its latest game, based on the Dreamworks animated film “The Croods”.

The Finnish based mobile gaming company partnered with Dreamworks to make the game a reality, using the same characters and premise in the game as you might see in the movie. It’s quite simple: The Croods are a family of cavemen trying to progress past the stone age with new ideas.

Traveling from landscape to landscape, the Croods work to hunt and gather food to stay alive, discovering and taming new creatures along the way.

And by “creatures”, I literally mean “creatures.” Rovio describes these creatures as unlike “anything you’ve ever seen” with names like Girelephant or Molarbear. There’s even a hint of Pokemon in the press release on Rovio’s blog: “Think you can catch them all?”

You can also get help from the family patriarch, Grug, to create inventions, a little like Bad Piggies creating vehicles. And, if that wasn’t enough, users can also customize their characters and homes with accessories.

Rovio has plenty of experience working with film studios on projects. The company released Angry Birds Rio alongside 20th Century Fox’s Rio movie, and Angry Birds Star Wars has been a hit since inception.

The collaboration also makes sense considering that Rovio has cartoon plans of its own, short animated films which will be distributed weekly through their game apps themselves.

The app is available now on iOS and Android.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

If you were a fan of the teen detective TV show Veronica Mars, this was an exciting morning — creator Rob Thomas launched a Kickstarter campaign to finance a Veronica Mars movie. (I’m a fan, and I’ve backed the project.)

But even if you didn’t watch the show, the campaign should be cause for some excitement. That’s because (as a Kickstarter spokesperson confirmed) this is the first project to have the blessing of a major movie studio. Thomas writes that if he succeeds in crowdfunding the production, Warner Bros. (which owns the rights) has agreed to distribute the film.

It’s a sign that major media companies are taking Kickstarter more seriously. And if this works out, it might become a model for studios to resurrected other properties with small-but-passionate audiences — the obvious choice among Internet geeks is probably Firefly, and I’m also rooting for Thomas’ other beloved-but-canceled show Party Down. (A couple of years ago Arrested Development would have been another popular choice, but it’s already being resurrected by Netflix.)

Here’s how Thomas described his discussions with the studio:

Of course, Warner Bros. still owns Veronica Mars and we would need their blessing and cooperation to pull this off. Kristen [Bell, star of Veronica Mars] and I met with the Warner Bros. brass, and they agreed to allow us to take this shot. They were extremely cool about it, as a matter of fact. Their reaction was, if you can show there’s enough fan interest to warrant a movie, we’re on board.

Veronica Mars ran from 2004 to 2007 on UPN and the CW. In the years since, Thomas has talked about bringing it back as a movie,  but he writes, “Warner Bros. wasn’t convinced there was enough interest to warrant a major studio-sized movie about Veronica and the project never got off the ground.”

Now, if the campaign gets funded, the plan is to shoot the movie this summer and release early next year, with a limited theatrical run followed by digital distribution. Prizes range from a PDF of the script to a speaking role as a waiter or waitress in the movie. (My personal favorite — you can pay $400 to have Thomas and Bell follow you on Twitter for a year.)

There’s an ambitious $2 million goal — other Kickstarter projects have raised more money, but when they did the goals were lower — and the team is actually hoping to raise more than that so that there’s a bigger budget. But things are definitely off to a good start. the campaign set a new Kickstarter record, raising $1 million in 4 hours and 24 minutes.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Grassroots digital activists are looking for a new another sweet, sweet hit of political success. After successfully lobbying the White House with 100,000 petitions to overturn a law related to cell phone carrier choice, fiery young activist Sina Khanifar is demanding broader copyright reform. And, this time, he’s bringing friends: FixTheDMCA.org brings together a host of influential digital activist organizations, such as consumer watchdog group, The Electronic Frontier Foundation, and popular content aggregator, Reddit.com, to make aggressive changes to section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Originally “passed by Congress to protect music labels and the movie industry from piracy, Section 1201 is now being used to prevent Americans from making fair use of the things we buy,” writes the new grassroots hub of the movement, with tools to get friends involved and contact legislators.

The DMCA has long served as an evil totem for open-information hawks, who support greater permission for tinkering and data access, at the expense of tools that could prevent piracy. Most disturbing, says the group, it oddly gives the Library of Congress authority to determine exemptions for consumer copyright issues.

Recently, section 1201 of the DMCA was interpreted by the Library of Congress to ban users from “unlocking” their cell phones to switch between carriers. In the past, it’s been used to go after academic researchers, such as Princeton Computer Science Professor, Edward Felton, who cracked an audio security technology for preventing piracy. Felton, who was responding to a public challenge to explore its vulnerabilities, was threatened by industry groups to cease his presentations.

The winds of change seem to be at the backs of the audition activists. Changing the DMCA means going to political war with well-funded industry groups that care more about preventing piracy than broad information-sharing. But, if the success of the White House petition is any indication, nerds have come to power in very high places, and may not be swayed by lobbyists.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch