A judge granted Google's YouTube motion for summary judgment in Viacom's copyright lawsuit against the online video giant. Viacom filed a $1 billion suit against YouTube back in March 2007. The original complaint claimed 160,000 unauthorized clips were available on YouTube and those clips had been viewed 1.5 billion times. This is hardly the end of this battle — Viacom says it's going to appeal this ruling. In the three years since the suit was filed YouTube has gone to great lengths to identify all the clips on its site and to monetize those clips for the content ...

With the television rerun season kicking into full gear, kids breaking out of school for summer and Hollywood's dream factory potentially weeks away from a labour shutdown, it's a perfect storm for launching our FanTrust video contest, "I Know What TV Did This Summer." We're encouraging television fans from around the world to riff on their favorite TV shows, by submitting videos that creatively interpret shows past and present -- and answer that age-old fan question: "What the %&*! did these characters do all summer?" Here fans ...

After a whirlwind month of speaking on the future of digital entertainment and online video at the Vancouver International Game Summit, VIDFEST, Cossette Convergence Day, and nextMEDIA - I've decided to take a break and let someone else do the pontificating. Ninja, of viral video "Ask a Ninja" fame, shares his thoughts on online video audiences, content and monetization below. Enjoy! [youtube bSZg927QP_0]

I’m fascinated by the way some people become fiercely loyal to certain entertainment properties. Their dedication is cult-like. The marketing guru Douglas Atkin, in his book The Culting of Brands, has a similar fascination with brand loyalists. He thought, why not study real cults?

It turns out that people become addicted to cult brands for more or less the same reasons that people become committed to cults like the Moonies. And that companies cultivate unshakable allegiance through the same basic ...

YouTube recently announced that it would continue testing to determine the best embedded advertising model for its site.

According to the Wall Street Journal, “You Tube has spent months testing different ad formats to figure out which models don’t alienate viewers. It found that viewers abandon videos that include pre-roll ads at a rate of more than 70%, so it ditched pre-roll commercials.”

YouTube’s next phase of testing: overlaid advertisements – semi-transparent ads that run on the bottom 20% of the video window. ...