User-generated content (UGC) may be the best example of freedom of speech there is. This may be the reason why social network Plurk was recently banned in China. Plurk is a micro-blogging website that works a lot like Twitter. Users sign in and post short updates with a maximum of 140 characters. The website never really caught on in North America as it did in other parts of the world.  Asian countries Indonesia, Taiwan and the Philippines make up the top three countries for user concentration.

In North America and most other places in the world websites like Veoh, Bebo, Twitter, and Flickr are very common and no one outside the advertising community cares when a user logs on to the websites. However, sites like these are considered a threat by the Chinese government because they allow for the free flow of information and ideas. (more…)

Veoh and Universal Music Group’s (UMG) ongoing legal battle over copyright infringement took another step towards siding with Veoh this week. The U.S. Central District Court of California dismissed the charge that the people funding the Veoh, an online video sharing website, are responsible for the copyright infringement happening on the website. This is the second time in as many months that the ruling went in favour of the defendants. (more…)

Hulu has gotten YouTube to take note after LiveRail released the “State of the Industry Report” report announcing that Hulu sold out its advertising inventory in the third quarter of last year. The report showed that Hulu, an online video site that can be viewed only in the U.S., is running a far more profitable operation in comparison to their larger, Google-owned rival YouTube. Estimates have Hulu earning US$90 million in its first year. (more…)

Video hosting site Veoh won another legal victory during the holidays in a lawsuit over hosting uploaded copyrighted content.

According to Fred von Lohmann of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the victory over Universal Music Group should “put to rest the argument that transcoding and other activities necessary for making content accessible on the web are not covered by” DMCA safe harbour provisions for storing material on behalf of users. (more…)