According to figures from Omniture SiteCatalyst, the MSNBC web site had its largest ever monthly video streams in June, thanks mostly to the massive popularity of Michael Jackson and his passing and a feature on President Barack Obama.
The site had over 153 million online-video streams for the month, a 14 percent increase from the site’s previous record, set in October 2008, before the Presidential election. MSNBC says over 14 percent of the streams are accountable to Michael Jackson related videos, following his death on June 25th. According to the press release, “NBC’s “Inside the Obama White House” provided an exclusive look at what happens throughout the White House and the West Wing during a day in the life of the Obama administration,” and saw strong viewership as well.
The results look promising for NBC and parent company General Electric which saw a 49 percent profit decline year-on-year for the Q2.
The site expects a strong July as well, as the MJ memorial brought in over 15 million video streams alone.
Result for: presidential election
Earlier this month we reported that director Michael Moore’s latest film was to be released legally, and for free via the Internet and as of today, he has followed through with that promise.
The film, which is intended to bring out new voters for the upcoming presidential election, was made available via the movie’s official site, but more interestingly through BitTorrent as well, using the Pirate Bay tracker with PeerExchange and DHT allowed as well.
Therein lies the problem however. The film’s site says the downloads are only available to US and Canadian residents and makes it very clear that when downloading from the site you will go through an IP lookup system which will then either accept or deny your request. By putting the movie on torrents, especially extremely popular public ones such as The Pirate Bay, there is no way to enforce geographical restrictions.
Was it intentional? Was it an accident or a complete misunderstanding of how the BitTorrent protocol works? We don’t know, but more importantly, the film is available and for free, from wherever you want to get it.
