Mediagazer: Comcast Plans to Start Selling Movies Digitally Through Cable Service (Ben Fritz/Wall Street Journal)

10:15 PM ET, November 14, 2013

Top News:

Round One to Google: Judge Chin Finds Mass Book Digitization a Fair Use. Guild Plans Appeal. — Judge Denny Chin today ruled that Google's mass book digitization project to be a fair use, granting the company summary judgment in the copyright infringement lawsuit brought by the Authors Guild in 2005.

Discussion: Forbes, Wired, Businessweek, The Week, Talking New Media and Online NewsHour

Jeff John Roberts / Gigaom:

Google wins book-scanning case: judge finds “fair use,” cites many benefits — Google has won a resounding victory in its eight-year copyright battle with the Authors Guild over the search giant's controversial decision to scan more than 20 million books from libraries and make them available on the internet.

Discussion: The Switch, Forbes, Business Insider, Wired, CNET, @xor, Bloomberg, VentureBeat, District Dispatch, Techdirt, The Verge, Search Engine Land, The Next Web, TechCrunch, @jjn1, @umairh, Memex 1.1, Gigaom, AllThingsD, Mashable, @ronwyden, @benedictevans, Engadget, @internetcases, WebProNews and Electronista

Corynne McSherry / Electronic Frontier Foundation:

Court Upholds Legality of Google Books: Tremendous Victory for Fair Use and the Public Interest — It's a good day for fair use and sane copyright law. After years of litigation, Judge Denny Chin has ruled that the Google Books project does not infringe copyright.

Discussion: Motherboard

Jonathan Stempel / Reuters:
Google prevails over authors in digital books case

Discussion: New York Times, Ars Technica, KQED News Fix, Reuters, Softpedia News and Boing Boing

Ben Fritz / Wall Street Journal:

Comcast Plans to Start Selling Movies Digitally Through Cable Service — Comcast Corp. is planning to start selling movies directly through its cable boxes, according to people with knowledge of its plans, a move that could boost the still nascent market considered critical in Hollywood.

Discussion: VentureBeat, Bloomberg and Variety

Lisa Richwine / Reuters:

Exclusive - Comcast to sell movies for download, streaming: sources — (Reuters) - Comcast Corp plans to start selling movies for download and streaming through the cable operator's set-top boxes and its Xfinity TV website, according to people with knowledge of the plan.

Discussion: The Wrap, Gigaom, The Next Web, The Verge and Engadget

Pew Research Journalism Project:

News Use Across Social Media Platforms — How do different social networking websites stack up when it comes to news? How many people engage with news across multiple social sites? And what are their news consumption habits on traditional platforms? As part of an ongoing examination …

Discussion: Nieman Journalism Lab, USA Today, Folio, TheBlaze.com, @pewinternet, @pewjournalism, MediaPost, AllFacebook, @adriennelaf, TechCrunch, @sulliview, @pewresearch and Mashable

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:
About a fifth of Facebook and Twitter users often get news from newspapers, too

Discussion: @pewinternet

Matt Wilstein / Mediaite:

John Oliver Leaving Daily Show to Launch ‘Topical Comedy Series’ on HBO — It was only a matter of time. John Oliver's widely-respected gig as fill-in host for Jon Stewart on The Daily Show this past summer has landed him his own show, to be shown on HBO starting next year.

Discussion: Deadline.com, TVbytheNumbers, The Huffington Post, Speakeasy, Capital New York, Variety, The Verge, HitFix, @dorseyshaw and Broadcasting & Cable

Ina Fried / AllThingsD:

New FCC Boss Tom Wheeler Says He Represents the People, Not the Tech Industry (Interview) — When Tom Wheeler was named in May to lead the Federal Communications Commission, some consumer groups fretted that the former cable- and wireless-industry lobbyist would favor industry over individuals.

Discussion: Ars Technica, TheHill, DSLreports, @inafried and @timkarr

Timothy B. Lee / The Switch:

Blogger threatened with 10-year prison sentence for posting public official's phone number — The city of Boston has a problem with public scrutiny. — Last year, the city agreed to pay $170,000 to settle a lawsuit by a man who was arrested for using his cellphone to record the actions of Boston police officers in a public park.

Discussion: Photography is Not a Crime and Techdirt

Glenn Peoples / Billboard:

Rap Genius and Sony/ATV Reveal Licensing Deal (Exclusive) — Rap Genius, the online lyric site with financial backing from Silicon Valley heavyweights, has signed its first licensing deal. Billboard has learned the Brooklyn-based startup has a licensing agreement with Sony/ATV Music Publishing.

Discussion: The latest episodes …, AllThingsD, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Speakeasy, Slate and Rolling Stone

Lauren Rabaino:

Refocusing the “story” away from individual articles to the overarching narrative — Seattle Times team brainstorming at GEN hackdays at Yahoo! in Sunnyvale, California. — Kill the article. — That was the theme of the Global Editors Network hackathon that I participated …

Discussion: @laurenrabaino, @danielbachhuber, @ryanpitts and @codybrown

D.B. Hebbard / Talking New Media:

Responding to reader requests, more publishers add iPhone support to their Newsstand apps — Is it really wise to add iPhone support for a digital magazine designed for tablets? — It's nice to be wanted if you are a magazine publisher. So, responding to remarks made in reviews inside the App Store …

Sarah Laskow / Columbia Journalism Review:

Wikileaks drums up coverage of a secretive trade agreement — Wikileaks drums up coverage of a secretive trade agreement — Last week, The New York Times got flack for its editorial on the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement—a multinational, free-trade agreement that a group …

Discussion: Forbes, The Daily Caller, Hit & Run, The Huffington Post and Guardian

Ken Doctor / Nieman Journalism Lab:

The newsonomics of the surprisingly persistent appeal of newsprint — Tonnage. The word speaks to a different age of news media when ink, bought by barrel, and newsprint, bought by the ton, ruled. Newspapers — in print — still go out to some 40 million-plus Americans and as many as 1.4 billion worldwide.

Alastair Reid / Journalism.co.uk:

A look inside the Wall Street Journal's video app toolbox — As the Wall Street Journal continues to experiment in online video and mobile journalism, Parminder Bahra, executive producer EMEA, shared some tips and tools at the Association of Online Publisher's ‘Driving Value through Video’ Forum yesterday.

ProPublica:

How to Get Censored on China's Twitter — The word “tank.” Photos and names of Chinese dissidents. Images of rubber ducks. Any mention of Tibetan protests or Bo Xilai, the disgraced senior member of China's Communist Party. Political cartoons. — Every day, more than 100 million items …

Discussion: ProPublica, @nytimesbits and IRE.org

Bruce Cheadle / Canadian Press:

Chrystia Freeland grilled about outsourcing of Toronto media jobs to India — Former employee of Reuters calls her ‘hypocritical’ for championing middle class — Chrystia Freeland and Linda McQuaig on Rogers TV debate on Nov. 13, 2013. — OTTAWA — A high-profile federal Liberal candidate campaigning …

Discussion: Macleans.ca and Talking Biz News

Michael Kozlowski / Good E-Reader:

E Ink Records a Quarterly Profit as e-Reader Sales Increase — e Ink Holdings, the company chiefly responsible for developing the screen technology found on Kindles, Kobos and Nook e-Readers just released their financial earnings from the last quarter. The company has garnered over 15.5 million …

Discussion: focustaiwan.tw

Emma Bazilian / Adweek:

Arianna Huffington Talks International Expansion — The Huffington Post has been on a whirlwind of international expansion. Today, 40 percent of its audience comes from outside the U.S., and according to its namesake president and editor in chief, more than half of the world's GDP has its own HuffPost.

Discussion: The Wrap

Gavin O'Malley / MediaPost:

Roku, AOL To Co-Launch News Channel — Consumers' shifting content viewing habits continues to make strange bedfellows. On Thursday, AOL and set-top-box start-up Roku are expected to co-launch a news channel. — Produced by AOL's editorial team, the video channel will reside …

Discussion: The Next Web, Capital New York, CNET, TechCrunch and Gigaom

Ted Johnson / Variety:

FCC Eases Rule on Foreign Ownership of TV and Radio Stations — The FCC voted to allow foreign entities to invest more than 25% in broadcast stations, although the agency will still determine whether such investments can be made on a case-by-case basis. — Commissioners on Thursday described …

Discussion: Radio & Television …, Broadcasting & Cable and Wall Street Journal

Rem Rieder / USA Today:

Rieder: Why CBS must come clean about Benghazi report — It's a challenge for CBS News — and an opportunity. The network has to thoroughly investigate what went so terribly wrong with the ill-fated 60 Minutes segment on the deadly attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya.

Discussion: The Daily Beast, The Nation and NPR