March 17th, 6:46am 0 comments

Why You Should Opt Out Of the $16 Comcast Settlement

On this week's This Week In Media we discussed the $16 class action settlement Comcast will be offering to customers impacted by the company's throttling of bit torrent and other peer to peer applications.  You can hear our discussion of the settlement at the 39 minute mark.  

As the title of this week's show indicates, it's important to read the fine print, specifically the bolded sections below from the settlement's FAQ:

You will be considered part of the Settlement Class unless you exclude yourself. By staying in the Settlement Class, all Court orders apply to you, and you give Comcast and all of its affiliated companies and their predecessors and successors (the “Released Parties”), a “release” for claims arising out of or relating to Comcast’s management of P2P or Lotus Notes on its High-Speed Internet network or Comcast’s disclosures related to those practices up until the date of final approval of the Settlement Agreement, including but not limited to all claims that were brought or could have been brought in this Action or the Related Actions. A release means you cannot sue or be part of any other lawsuit against the Released Parties about the claims or issues in this lawsuit ever again. The full release is available in the Settlement Agreement.

This means that even if you opt not to collect your $16, you're still considered part of the settlement class.  And by being a member of the Settlement Class you will give up any right to sue Comcast or their successors in the future if the company throttles your content ever again.  

Thankfully there is a way out.  Simply send a letter (and I suggest getting delivery confirmation) expressing your wish to be excluded from the settlement class to the claims administrator here, postmarked no later than May 13, 2010:

P2P Congestion Settlement Claims Administrator
c/o Rust Consulting
P.O. Box 9454
Minneapolis, MN 55440-9454

Anyone in the content creation business needs to do this immediately.  Is it really worth the $16 to throw your rights away?

-Lon

Posted by Lon Seidman
March 9th, 6:03am 0 comments

Ad Execs Talk About Video Advertising

Times are changing and audiences are getting more fragmented.  Newspaper readership is shifting from print to digital and cable is so disjointed (with two satellite providers and now AT&T Uverse) that it's no longer an effective local advertising tool in Connecticut.  

Our friend Daisy Whitney talked with a number of ad execs on some of the challenges and opportunities associated with online video advertising.  Even the big firms are discovering that narrowing the focus of their demographic targets through online advertising can bring results (with the right data of course). 

We built our business model around aggregation and tracking performance.  Thanks to our friends at Tubemogul we're able to track any LocalOnlineNews.TV video wherever and whenever it is played.  We can even tell advertisers how many people watched their message and for how long.  

Give us a call at 888-267-2895 or visit our advertising information page to learn more.
Posted by Lon Seidman