Tubefilter News

Lazy Sunday has to be credited as one of the breakout viral videos that launched YouTube into a household name. (Ironically, it’s not actually on YouTube any more – just Hulu) The SNL Digital Short was one of the first from Lonely Island crew after Andy Samberg joined the cast back in 2006. Last night in a reprise of the hit video, Samberg and Chris Parnell performed a live version of Lazy Sunday (above) with The Roots on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. [LateNightWithJimmyFallon.com]

The Legend of Neil has been greenlit for a third season from Atom.com, according to tweets from creator Sandeep Parikh. Atom won’t officially confirm this, but we’re pretty sure this is a go. The Streamy-nominated series has been Atom’s most successful original web series for the past two years. [Twitter]

Auditude announced an advertising agreement with Dailymotion today, saying that they will now power the Paris-based video site’s catalog of more than 12 million videos. The technology from Auditude will support advanced video ad formats, enhance content targeting, enable multi-party demand and manage business rules and sales rights Dailymotion’s hundreds of licensed content partners. [Press Release]

I’m Dating a Porn Star, a new adult comedy web series pilot debuted this week from Crossroads Films, the creators of critically acclaimed Old Friends. It stars Old Friends‘ Tim Curcio and is shot by OF’s Matt Cady. For now, producer David Title is looking for some fan support in terms of views, as “it was deemed a bit too dirty for traditional distributors.” [blip.tv]

Anyone But Me continues to rack up award nominations, this time in Canada with 3 nominations in TVGuide.ca’s Soap Opera Spirit Awards and another 4 noms in Time After Time/Soap World Awards. This adds to the series three Streamy Award nominations including Best Female Actor nod for Rachel Hip-Flores. Episode 5 of the indie drama was just released today (see below). [Anyone But Me]

More “For Your Consideration” screenings are popping up as Academy voters are starting to parse through the thousands of web series submissions for the 2nd Annual Streamy Awards. After a well attended Blue Movies and Fall of Kaden screening earlier this month, four independent web series have teamed up for a screening of their own in Hollywood on February 19th at 7:30 PM. Hosted by Safety Geeks SVI creators Dave Beeler and Tom Konkle the night will feature episodes of their VFX-laden romp series along with fellow comedies GOLD, Space Hospital and Life with Kat & McKay.

From the invite page (where anyone can RSVP):

Life is tough for International Academy of Web Television members right now: buried under piles of screening materials, staring out the windows, yearning to be free. We understand, and think you should get out. Stretch your legs. Perhaps wander into Hollywood, to a place where web shows are screening in a lovely environment where you can kick-back and just watch. With drinks. That’s our wish for you.

To that end, you are invited to this special For Your Consideration web series screening event at Cinespace Hollywood, where each featured show will offer a sampling of episodes for your consideration for the 2nd Annual Streamy Awards.

Canadians have been hip to making web series for years now, with some of the best indies coming out of the country up North—Tiki Bar TV, Riese, After Judgment, A Comicbook Orange all hail from Canadian creators. Appropriately, there’s a site dedicated to showcasing the country’s episodic work. Lifeforce TV launched a year ago as an online network of Canadian web series. Today they’ve rolled out what they are calling “Version 2″ of the network and have three new series on the lineup. Two scripted comedies Saving Rent (above) and The Jim are on the list, with music and film interview series Independent Scene rounding out the new slate.

Behind the site is Toronto-based Lifeforce Entertainment, which produces original web series itself like last year’s Men’s Room, Angels Local 437 and the controversial chat show Table Topics. All three of the new series have been licensed from independent creators, in a revenue sharing deals. The site uses an embedded blip.tv player rather than spin up their own custom player. While that may save costs in the short term, it ends up splitting ad revenues not only with the show creators but also blip.tv itself, cutting into already thin margins.

“LifeforceTV was created to showcase Canadian web series that might otherwise get lost in the millions of titles on YouTube and other nonspecific video sharing sites” say J. Michael Dawson, President of Lifeforce Entertainment. “It was important for us to create at outlet where Canadian series could thrive and get the exposure they deserved. The online entertainment business is a competitive one and much like in film and television, we also need to support Canadian shows made for the Internet.”

It’s the New Year and a good time to reassess your digital entertainment viewing options—especially if you’ve recently disconnected your cable box or satellite dish. If you can wait a few months, check out the new Boxee Box by D-Link. At CES this month, we spoke with Avner Ronen, Boxee’s CEO, and Andrew Kippen, VP of Marketing, about the new product, tips for choosing an Internet video streaming box that’s right for you, and other random topics, like the fact that an Australian company refuses to give up the boxee.com domain name!

Rarely does a product that isn’t available win so many awards at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). But this year Boxee managed to pull this off for its highly anticipated Boxee Box, which lets users watch Internet videos (and more) on their TV, is set to debut this Spring for $199 (US). With a sleek design created by Astro Studios, it picked up the Last Gadget Standing Award, as well as recognition from CNET, G4 and LAPTOP magazine, among others. For the past year-and-a-half, the Boxee team has been optimizing their technology for the popular Boxee platform that’s viewed on a computer desktop, as well as for the upcoming Boxee Box to view on a TV, with Blu-ray and other devices on the horizon.

For those of you not familiar with Boxee, it’s a visually attractive (and free) desktop application that you download to your computer. It helps you find and stay up-to-date with many of your favorite Internet-based videos, from Web TV shows to broadcast and cable shows available on the Web, as well as movies and music. (In techie lingo, it searches the Web and aggregates Web video content in one place to make it easier for you to find entertainment content.) Plus, it can add your personal collection of videos and music on your computer to the Boxee menu so you can find all of your digital entertainment – in one location.

With over 300 applications available to access videos, social media, music—and content partners such as TV.com, blip.tv, Revision3, Wired, IGN (for you gamers out there), and others—you’re bound to find something you like. Not all content is not free of charge (for example, you need a Netflix account in order to use the Netflix app), but the convenience of having one place from which to access and manage your ever-expanding universe of online entertainment favorites makes Boxee appealing.
Rarely does a product that isn’t available win so many awards at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). But this year Boxee managed to pull this off for its highly anticipated Boxee Box, which lets users watch Internet videos (and more) on their TV, is set to debut this Spring for $199 (US). With a sleek design created by Astro Studios, it picked up the Last Gadget Standing Award, as well as recognition from CNET, G4 and LAPTOP magazine, among others. For the past year-and-a-half, the Boxee team has been optimizing their technology for the popular Boxee platform that’s viewed on a computer desktop, as well as for the upcoming Boxee Box to view on a TV, with Blu-ray and other devices on the horizon.

For those of you not familiar with Boxee, it’s a visually attractive (and free) desktop application that you download to your computer. It helps you find and stay up-to-date with many of your favorite Internet-based videos, from Web TV shows to broadcast and cable shows available on the Web, as well as movies and music. (In techie lingo, it searches the Web and aggregates Web video content in one place to make it easier for you to find entertainment content.) Plus, it can add your personal collection of videos and music on your computer to the Boxee menu so you can find all of your digital entertainment – in one location.

With over 300 applications available to access videos, social media, music—and content partners such as TV.com, blip.tv, Revision3, Wired, IGN (for you gamers out there), and others—you’re bound to find something you like. Not all content is not free of charge (for example, you need a Netflix account in order to use the Netflix app), but the convenience of having one place from which to access and manage your ever-expanding universe of online entertainment favorites makes Boxee appealing.

Stun Creative released the third episode (above), “Crotch Bomb,” of their animated spoof web series Obamourage today on Atom, commemorating President Obama’s first year in office. The series, created by Brad Roth and Mark Feldstein follows the day-to-day life of President Obama and his cabinet—Rahm, Joe, Hillary, and Bo, the dog—as they all roll, “Obama-style.” [Atom.com]

Crackle’s Woke Up Dead from Electric Farm Entertainment has scored showcase.ca as Canadian online distributor of the comedy web series starring Jon Heder, Krysten Ritter, Josh Gad and Wayne Knight. Woke Up Dead’s 22 episodes will roll out on showcase.ca three times a week starting February 1, 2010 through the end of March. [Channel Canada]

Blue Movies rolled out a slick-looking Streamy Awards “For Your Consideration” site along with a video (below) showcasing the talent behind the indie comedy series like writer-director Scott Brown, and lead actors Jareb Dauplaise, Beck Bennett and Sascha Alexander. [Blue Movies]

Playing Dead a new dark comedy web series directed by Ted Raimi debuted this week, with musical help from horror rocker Curtis RX of Creature Feature on the soundtrack. Two ‘deathisodes’ are now up on the show’s site. See episode 1 below. [FEARnet]

This week I learned a lot about what makes web shows click. I believe that this is destiny, fate, or what have you. I have been sent here to teach you and school you in the ways of web series watching. This week we run the full gammut, from awful racist comedy to stoner sketch comedy to a (surprisingly good) comedy about a group of terrorists.

It appears we’ve come out of the baby-step stages of web shows and now the medium just needs to take the safety wheels off. I’ll be really simple right here. If you’re someone who makes web series, ask yourself these questions:

Who will watch this?
Why will they watch this? Why should I care about your show?
What will bring them back for more?
What is the focus?
Can I send lots of money to Ned so that he will give my show a great review? (answer: yes)
It seems basic, it seems sophomoric, but we’re still in the developing stages of web shows as an artistic medium. Consider me the ‘Rufus’ to your Bill & Ted. I will separate the wheat from the chaff as best I can, but until that point, here’s this weeks contenders.

Mister Chan: Misunderstood Man
This animated show focuses on Mister Chan and his Chinese restaurant and it’s racist and unfunny and two episodes in it’s boring. Sigh. I’m not looking for Citizen Kane here, people, but this just misses the mark entirely. It’s just sort of sad. It’s badly thought out, badly written, and so grossly unfunny it almost conversely becomes funny. Look, its shows like this that make people think webshows are a sub-par medium. People really need to stop making shows like this, because when The Wire of internet shows comes along (and it will) people will put it next to crap like this and as per the law of averages shitty shows like this will bring down the entire medium.

I’m all for bad jokes and vaguely racial humor but this misses the mark so entirely I had to – and I’m not making this up – take a walk around the block just to get back in the mood of watching more web shows.

Ripped video content online is as old as the technology of streaming video itself. Some would argue it’s what really helped push online video into mainstream. But now that business models are emerging where creators—and the sites that host their content —are making money, it’s more important than ever for content owners to monitor the web for stolen versions and take direct action to get them removed.

Tim Street, creator of the popular “how-to” web series French Maid TV, just recently found that some of the videos (see above) from his series—like the “How to Register a Domain Name” episode—had been ripped, with new title cards added, and then uploaded to ad-supported MTV/Viacom-owned Spike.com without his permission. The offender, a site called TrickLife.com, which claims to be the “#1 How-To Video Site,” added animated title cards and stripped away any references to French Maid TV’s sponsor of the video, GoDaddy.

Through a WHOIS lookup, we found that the TrickLife.com domain is registered to a company in the British Virgin Islands called Greencove Services Ltd., though the hosting of the site is done by Chicago-based ISP Reflected Networks, outlines its non-tolerance for copyright infringement on its servers in its privacy policy. TrickLife also has a Facebook group, which is run by Kyle Waring, a self-described “entertainment publisher for a network of 170 websites,” who’s firm, New York-based Internet Assets Inc. owns the site along several others like online games site Bored.com.

We talked to Waring on the phone, who said that it’s challenging managing 170 sites with a limited staff, many of which have user-submitted content. “We’re cracking down on accepting user submissions,” Waring said, noting that they recently laid off a moderator for TrickLife.com that was responsible for monitoring content submissions for copyright compliance. “We do have a legal department that will handle all DMCA requests,” he added. In terms of revenue, Waring noted that the site “doesn’t really generate a lot of money” and says they are planning on closing down TrickLife in the near future.

For Street, he’s seen his video content reposted before, and while he has some tolerance for embedding his videos on other sites, said that this ripping crossed the line. “I understand that we are all trying to figure out how to make money with online videos but to scrape someone’s content, stick it in your own player and then throw advertising on it is pretty bad,” he said. “I’ve had this happen a few times before and I’ve asked that the perps take down my videos and they have.”

“Most video sharing sites have embeds that you can grab and stick on your site,” added Street. “That’s the way you should be sharing video that has a copyright. Maybe you could even throw in a link as well. Google alerts are a great, free way to see who’s posting your content. Then you can go see if they are using video embeds that you have approved or if they have stolen your content and not giving you any link love.”

See the original video below, which runs pre-roll ads through Blip.tv:
Tim Street, creator of the popular “how-to” web series French Maid TV, just recently found that some of the videos (see above) from his series—”How to Register a Domain Name”—had been ripped, with new title cards added, and then uploaded to ad-supported MTV/Viacom-owned Spike.com without his permission. The offender, a site call TrickLife.com, which claims to be the “#1 How-To Video Site,” added animated title cards and stripped away any references to French Maid TV’s sponsor of the video, GoDaddy.

Through a WHOIS lookup, we found that the TrickLife.com domain is registered to a company in the British Virgin Islands called Greencove Services Ltd., though the hosting of the site is done by Chicago-based ISP Reflected Networks, outlines its non-tolerance for copyright infringement on its servers in its privacy policy. TrickLife also has a Facebook group, which is run by Kyle Waring, a self-described “entertainment publisher for a network of 170 websites,” who’s firm, New York-based Internet Assets Inc. owns the site along several others like online games site Bored.com.

We talked to Waring on the phone, who said that it’s challenging managing 170 sites with a limited staff, many of which have user-submitted content. “We’re cracking down on accepting user submissions,” Waring said, noting that they recently laid off a moderator for TrickLife.com that was responsible for monitoring content submissions for copyright compliance. “We do have a legal department that will handle all DMCA requests,” he added. In terms of revenue, Waring noted that the site “doesn’t really generate a lot of money” and says they are closing down TrickLife.

For Street, he’s seen his video content reposted before, and he has some tolerance for it, but noted that this ripping crossed the line. “I understand that we are all trying to figure out how to make money with online videos but to scrape someone’s content, stick it in your own player and then throw advertising on it is pretty bad,” he said. “I’ve had this happen a few times before and I’ve asked that the perps take down my videos and they have.”

“Most video sharing sites have embeds that you can grab and stick on your site,” added Street. “That’s the way you should be sharing video that has a copyright. Maybe you could even throw in a link as well. Google alerts are a great, free way to see who’s posting your content. Then you can go see if they are using video embeds that you have approved or if they have stolen your content and not giving you any link love.”

See the original video below, which runs pre-roll ads through Blip.tv:
Tim Street, creator of the popular “how-to” web series French Maid TV, just recently found that some of the videos (see above) from his series—”How to Register a Domain Name”—had been ripped, with new title cards added, and then uploaded to ad-supported MTV/Viacom-owned Spike.com without his permission. The offender, a site call TrickLife.com, which claims to be the “#1 How-To Video Site,” added animated title cards and stripped away any references to French Maid TV’s sponsor of the video, GoDaddy.

Through a WHOIS lookup, we found that the TrickLife.com domain is registered to a company in the British Virgin Islands called Greencove Services Ltd., though the hosting of the site is done by Chicago-based ISP Reflected Networks, outlines its non-tolerance for copyright infringement on its servers in its privacy policy. TrickLife also has a Facebook group, which is run by Kyle Waring, a self-described “entertainment publisher for a network of 170 websites,” who’s firm, New York-based Internet Assets Inc. owns the site along several others like online games site Bored.com.

We talked to Waring on the phone, who said that it’s challenging managing 170 sites with a limited staff, many of which have user-submitted content. “We’re cracking down on accepting user submissions,” Waring said, noting that they recently laid off a moderator for TrickLife.com that was responsible for monitoring content submissions for copyright compliance. “We do have a legal department that will handle all DMCA requests,” he added. In terms of revenue, Waring noted that the site “doesn’t really generate a lot of money” and says they are closing down TrickLife.
Tim Street, creator of the popular “how-to” web series French Maid TV, just recently found that some of the videos (see above) from his series had been ripped, with new title cards added, and then uploaded to ad-supported MTV/Viacom-owned Spike.com without his permission. The offender, a site call TrickLife.com, which claims to be the “#1 How-To Video Site,” added animated title cards and stripped away any references to French Maid TV’s sponsor of the video, GoDaddy. Through a WHOIS lookup, we found that TrickLife.com domain is registered to a company in the British Virgin Islands called Greencove Services Ltd., though the hosting of the site is done by Chicago-based ISP Reflected Networks, outlines its non-tolerance for copyright infringement on its servers in its privacy policy. TrickLife also has a Facebook group, which is run by Kyle Waring, a self-described “entertainment publisher for a network of 170 websites,” who’s firm, New York-based Internet Assets Inc. owns the site along several others like online games site Bored.com.

We talked to Waring, who said that it’s challenging managing 170 sites with a limited staff, many of which have user-submitted content. “We’re cracking down on accepting user submissions,” Waring said, noting that they recently laid off a moderator for TrickLife.com that was responsible for monitoring content submissions for copyright compliance. “We do have a legal department that will handle all DMCA requests,” he added. In terms of revenue, Waring noted that the site isn’t making that much money and says they are closing down TrickLife.

Ok just in time for the holidays, we have a special gift for you guys. It’s no secret that we’re fans of Roku set-top boxes, which bring many of the web series we love and write about every day to our living rooms and onto the big screens in beautiful HD action. Thousands of web series from networks like Revision3 and blip.tv are available on Roku with more channels coming in the new year.
So, just for you fine friends of Tubefilter, we’re giving away a top-of-the-line Roku HD-XR (retail: $129.99) compliments of Roku. (They didn’t pay us for this, we just convinced them that you guys are awesome and really deserved one!)

Want to win? Here’s what you need to do:

1. Become a fan of Tubefilter on Facebook

2. Leave a comment on this article on our Facebook fan page – before 12 AM ET on Dec. 29, 2009.

That’s it. We’ll then put all valid entries into a random drawing hosted by Random.org on December 29th and announce the winner here and on Twitter. One entry per person.

For more last minute gift ideas check out our Web Series Junkie’s Holiday Gift Guide.