All Things Digital

When he debuted his company’s new DVD copier at DEMOfall recently, called RealDVD, RealNetworks’ Rob Glaser did a video interview with BoomTown about it.

And now that RealNetworks (RNWK) and Hollywood are cross-suing each other over RealDVD–in the latest clash over the still-contentious copyright issue that separates the tech and entertainment industries–it’s time for a replay!

The RealDVD software allows a user to rip all the parts of a DVD, including cover art, onto a computer. It costs about $30.

Hollywood studios, which filed a lawsuit in federal court Tuesday, maintain that RealDVD is illegal, and one of their reps called it “StealDVD.”

Haw, haw. This is what apparently passes for clever in Hollywood these days.

But before the entertainment giants’ lawsuit, RealNetworks filed its own suit, claiming it was protecting the fair-use rights of consumers to make copies of content they had purchased.

To avoid violating digital rights management schemes, RealDVD has added its own DRM layer, preventing ripped DVDs from being copied and shared and imposing further barriers to piracy.

But there are still possibilities for illegal ripping, of course, because RealDVD users must promise not to copy videos they don’t own.

No surprise–an honor-system product that makes it even easier to copy DVDs was not exactly welcome by Hollywood, which has been trying to protect its movie revenues from suffering the same fate as the music industry via rampant CD-ripping.

Thus, the typical mainstream media reaction to the inevitability of consumers wanting to digitize content: More lawsuits!

In any case, here’s the video of Glaser talking about RealDVD:

We’re posting all the interviews from the sixth D: All Things Digital conference that took place in late May.

But–as many readers have requested–they will all be available in their entirety in this column.

Here’s an interview I did with TiVo President and CEO Tom Rogers about the iconic but often-struggling pioneer and leader in the digital video recorder market.

The video of the interview is in four parts, which will all be posted this week.

In this second part, Rogers talks about how TiVo (TIVO) can help the television industry instead of disrupting it, what’s popular on the service and what commercials work best, the company’s successful intellectual property lawsuit against EchoStar to protect its groundbreaking technologies, cable partnerships, and the shifting of its business model, including TiVo’s potential as the future user interface for television.

A few months ago BoomTown was in Berlin and visited a number of Internet companies there, including studiVZ, which I called “the Facebook of Germany” in the video posted below of my visit there.

Ooops!

As it turns out, that is apparently the illegal way to describe it, at least according to Facebook itself, which sued the German company in a California court last Friday, accusing it of making a “knock-off” of the popular social networking site.

That includes having a German version of Facebook’s popular Wall and other similar features. At least studiVZ is red, while Facebook is blue!

The name studiVZ is an abbreviation of the German word for students’ directory. Its tagline is “Bist Du schon drin?,” which translates to “Are you already there?”

Facebook has been trying to break into the German market for months now, as part of an aggressive international expansion.

But its efforts have been dwarfed by studiVZ, which was founded in 2005 and has been expanding throughout Europe. studiVZ now has 10 million users, mostly in German-speaking countries.

It also has a site for high-school students called schülerVZ and another for nonstudents called meinVZ.

Thus, a lawsuit from Facebook, which just settled a lawsuit with another startup called ConnectU (Winklevoss!) that accused Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg of stealing its original idea for a social networking site!

This just drips with irony, doesn’t it?

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Ah, the Winklevosses!

They lost.

In court, I mean, not in rowing!

But I am sad to say BoomTown is deeply uninterested in the long-running legal struggle between Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and the hot social-networking site and the group affiliated with ConnectU–heretofore referred to by BoomTown as NotFacebook.

Namely the Winklevoss brothers, Cameron and Tyler (and also another guy, not a Winklevoss), who are world-class rowers.

Without going into the gory details, they settled a lawsuit in February that centered on how Facebook was founded and whether or not Zuckerberg stole code to create it while an undergrad at Harvard University.

And then the Winklevosses claimed that that settlement in the endless legal battle should be voided because of fraud and reopened.

The ConnectU side claimed that it had found some “smoking” gun instant messages that proved their case.

Whatever.

The federal judge in San Jose decided to let Facebook enforce the settlement anyway (but, because there are lawyers involved, there will probably be yet another bite at the apple).

In any case, BoomTown fully enjoyed the take-no-prisoners PR stylings of Facebook, now under uber-PR guru Elliot Schrage and, thus, we render the statement about the win here in its entirety:

We are happy that Judge Ware enforced the agreement settling our dispute with the ConnectU founders. ConnectU’s founders were represented by six lawyers and a professor at Wharton Business School when they signed the Settlement Agreement. The ConnectU founders understood the deal they made, and we are gratified that the Court rejected their false allegations of fraud. Their challenge was simply a case of ‘buyers remorse,’ as described by the Boston Court earlier this month.

We were disappointed that we had to litigate the settlement, as we believed we were caught in the middle of a fee dispute between ConnectU’s founders and its former counsel. Nevertheless, we can now consider this chapter closed and wish the Winklevoss brothers the best of luck in their future endeavors.”

As in, don’t let the door hit your Winklevii on your way out!

You would have to have been under a rock not to have heard about the controversial piece in Vanity Fair magazine this month about the escapades of former President Bill Clinton since he left office.

Called “The Comeback Id” (oh, how pun-ny!), the article has gotten a lot of attention for pointing out the rampant speculation that Clinton’s well-known penchant for marital infidelity had returned.

And the reason for that disturbing development, besides Clinton himself? The piece actually placed a good bit of the blame on Clinton’s close friend, grocery magnate and billionaire Ron Burkle (pictured here), who also has been one of the key directors at Yahoo (YHOO) in its takeover fight with Microsoft (MSFT).

It’s a wonder Burkle can focus on the turmoil at Yahoo, given how busy he appears to be in the article corrupting Clinton both personally and–worse–professionally, via some questionable investments the pair had made through Burkle’s Yucaipa Companies.

Writer Todd Purdum paints a decidedly unattractive picture of Burkle, noting even the tasteless nickname of Burkle’s plane these days, in a portrayal so rough that Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang’s tough treatment by the press recently looks like a walk in the park.

Well, almost.

In what amounts to a rant by Carl Icahn (pictured here), The Wall Street Journal gives the billionaire investor lots of room to kvetch about what he thinks of Yang, including asserting that he will oust the Yahoo founder if he wins his proxy fight against the company.

“I am amazed at the lengths that Jerry Yang and the board went to entrench themselves in this situation,” said Icahn.

Apparently, Icahn was the only one who didn’t get the memo that Yahoo has been consistently obstreperous about Microsoft’s many overtures, since–well, let’s do the exact calculations–forever. And a day.

Still, Icahn perseveres and hangs this old entrenched management chestnut on a lawsuit that was recently filed by shareholders that points to the massive and costly severance plan Yahoo sneakily put into place as a ploy to fend off Microsoft.

“It’s no longer a mystery to me why Microsoft’s offer isn’t around,” Icahn said. “How can Yahoo keep saying they’re willing to negotiate and sell the company on the one hand, while at the same time they’re completely sabotaging the process without telling anyone.”

How? By Yang opening his mouth, that’s how, and then doing nothing much.

As a student of this lugubrious style of Olympic dithering, I would point Icahn to Yang’s 100-day Sacred Cow VisionQuest, well before this soap opera got started.

You need to catch up pronto, Carl!

And speaking of people irked by Yang of late, investor Gordon Crawford (pictured here) also made some news yesterday with his investment in Veoh Networks, part of a $30 million round that included Intel Capital and Adobe Systems (ADBE).

Existing investors in the not-YouTube video service–Shelter Capital, Spark Capital, Goldman Sachs (GS), Michael Eisner’s Tornante Company, Time Warner Investments (TWX) and Jonathan Dolgen–also ponied up more money.

Crawford, the SVP of Capital Research Global Investors, manages a massive portfolio, and it is one of Yahoo’s biggest shareholders.

And, unlike Veoh, Yahoo is an investment Crawford has not been happy with recently.

“I am extremely angry at Jerry Yang and at the so-called independent board,” he said in an interview a month ago. “I’m hoping that there is such an outpouring of outrage that the board is embarrassed into revisiting this thing, but I’m not optimistic about that.”

And by independent board, by the way, he meant directors like–you guessed it–Ron Burkle!

At least Burkle’s not to blame for the so-so, lots-and-lots-missing–Google? What Google? (GOOG)–piece in the same Vanity Fair issue, an oral history of the Internet.

Called “How the Web Was Won,” it makes the founding of the world’s most important medium seem awfully dull.

I’d recommend instead–as any sentient being would–the cover story on Angelina Jolie, with this sharp quote from her: “In my father’s generation, the product was 80% of what you were putting into the world, and your personal life was 20%. It now seems that 80% of the product I put out is silly, made-up stories and what I’m wearing.”

Or not wearing, in the case of the pictures of Jolie in this article.

Another week, another legal battle for YouTube.

This time, the National Music Publishers Association is adding its name to an existing lawsuit over whether the video-sharing site–big surprise–violated copyright laws. The group owns copyrights to lyrics and melodies for songs, rather than the songs themselves, which are mostly owned by record labels.

And while the four big labels have struck their Faustian bargain with YouTube, betting perhaps that ad dollars are their future and convinced of the need for the marketing power on YouTube, the NMPA is not buying that story quite yet.

Naturally, Google, owner of YouTube, can’t believe anyone would refuse its kind offers of promotional help in exchange for putting up with some intellectual-property infringement.

You can just hear those techies from their nerd version of Willy Wonka’s factory in Mountain View, Calif.: Can you imagine, those ingrates–can’t they understand our big brains will get to their puny concerns when we are good and ready!

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The story about Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg stiffing another group of entrepreneurs at Harvard for whom he did some early programming work for a nascent social network called ConnectU and turning around and creating his own service has long been making the rounds in Silicon Valley.

Sure, it seems a bit, I don’t know, icky for Zuckerberg to have programmed for ConnectU and then to have started his own social network. But I am with the judge who ruled yesterday in a hearing for a ConnectU lawsuit against Zuckerberg that there needed to be more evidence that the young entrepreneur had actually stolen its code and ideas.

“Claims must have a factual basis,” said Massachusetts Federal Judge Douglas Woodlock, in asking for a revised complaint with more meat on it beyond: Zuckerberg stole our marbles!

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