Three Monday Links: Flash Wants to Be Omnipresent ... Lumina's Business Model ... Inside the Pirate's Mind

- The NY Times reports this morning on Adobe's efforts to get TVs and mobile phones to support its Flash format for online video. From the piece:

For consumers, what sounds like a bit of inconsequential Internet plumbing actually means that a long overhyped notion is a step closer to reality: viewing a video clip or Internet application on a TV or mobile phone.

For Hollywood studios and other content creators, a single format for Web video is even more enticing. It means they can create their entertainment once in Flash — as the animated documentary “Waltz With Bashir,” from Sony Pictures Classics, was made — and distribute it cheaply throughout the expanding ecosystem of digital devices.

“Coming generations of consumers clearly expect to get their content wherever they want on it, on any device, when they want it,” said Bud Albers, the chief technology officer of the Disney Interactive Media Group, who will join Adobe executives at the convention to voice Disney’s support for the Flash format. “This gets us where we want to go.”

- Dan Carew of the blog Indie 2.0 offers a great example of someone taking the "Fans, Friends & Followers" approach to building an audience for her work: Jen Thym, director of the online series "Lumina." Thym explains her business model in a Q&A with Carew:

On LUMINA, we’re going with the fan supported business model, which basically goes like this: Viewing is free. If you like us and want to support us, please spread the word about us and, if you’re feeling really generous, buy our mechandise. Webcomics have succeeded on this model with varying degrees of success - Penny Arcade probably being the most famous of these - and they even have a themed convention called PAX now, next year I’m sure they’re going to host a panel on the moon or something! On the music side, Nine Inch Nails did something similar by giving away Ghosts for free, and then selling limited editions of the CD, concert tickets, and so forth.

- Slate's Farhad Manjoo explains why there isn't yet an expansive, totally comprehensive movie service. And he offers some insights into the thinking of people who get their movies illegally:

... I've been getting my programming from the friendly BitTorrent peer-to-peer network. Pirates aren't popular these days, but let's give them this—they know how to put together a killer on-demand entertainment system.

I sometimes feel bad about my plundering ways. Like many scofflaws, though, I blame the system. I wouldn't have to steal if Hollywood would only give me a decent online movie-streaming service. In my dreams, here's what it would look like: a site that offers a huge selection—50,000 or more titles to choose from, with lots of Hollywood new releases, indies, and a smorgasbord of old films and TV shows. (By comparison, Netflix says it offers more than 100,000 titles.) Don't gum it up with restrictions, like a requirement that I watch a certain movie within a specified time after choosing it. The only reasonable limit might be to force me to stream the movies so that I won't be able to save the flicks to my computer. Beyond that, charge me a monthly fee and let me watch whatever I want, whenever I want, as often as I want.

No Flash for iPhone Users ... Peter Jackson Bids Farewell to the Original Alamo Drafthouse ... Ken Burns Wants You ... And More

- For some reason, that fancy new iPhone won't play video in Adobe's popular Flash format. (All of the YouTube videos that you can watch on the phone have been re-encoded into h.264, the video format Apple prefers.)

- Courtesy of Anne Thompson's blog, here's a video farewell from Peter Jackson and Edgar Wright to the original Alamo Drafthouse, in Austin, TX. An "improved" Drafthouse will open in September, in a different location.

- Ken Burns is asking citizen documentarians to go out and interview World War II vets for the Veterans History Project at the Library of Congress. Here's how you can participate.

- The Wall Street Journal makes note of 'Four Eyed Monsters' on YouTube; the full film remains there until August 15th.

An Emerging Issue: Capturing and Storing Flash Video

Think back to the 1970s (if you're old enough): there was no way to capture and replay anything that aired on TV. When Sony's Betamax videocassette recorder was introduced, media companies got a little upset. Two of them, Universal and Disney, sued Sony all the way to the US Supreme court to keep people from recording shows and movies off the air. (They lost.)

A new version of RealNetworks' RealPlayer software is beginning to spark a similar conflict: it allows you to store and later play back any of the Flash video you encounter on the Web. (Flash is the format used on YouTube, Brightcove, and many other sites, intended to stream content to your computer temporarily -- but not allow you to store it. Flash is most likely the dominant format in which video is delivered online today.) RealPlayer allows you to create a personal playlist made up of any of the video you encounter on the Web, whether it's in the Flash, Windows Media, QuickTime, or Real formats. The tagline is: "Find the Web video you want -- and Real it in." (Of course, there is already software like Tubesock that allows you to store Flash...it's just not marketed by a company as big as RealNetworks.)

Some of the debate over capturing Flash (and the other formats) has been playing out on Andy Plesser's Beet.TV site. Here's a post headlined, 'It's War: Brightcove's Jeremy Allaire Says New ReadlNetworks Video Player is Illegal Piracy.'

Adobe, which developed the Flash video format, and is working on a software program of its own to allow Flash video to be stored and managed, isn't wild about the new RealNetworks player, either.

And here's an Information Week article on some of the legal implications.

Two of the big issues media companies worry about: if users can store and replay Flash and other formats, how can we keep tabs on how many times our content is being played? And, secondarily, if that's content that we're hoping to support by integrating advertising, how can we insert new advertising every time it is played if the content is being stored and played back with software we don't control?

This is going to be a hotly-debated area for the next couple years, but something tells me that media companies might have to concede that with digital video, not every play is going to be trackable, and not every play is going to present a fresh opportunity to insert ads ..... just as was the case with the VCR when you recorded that episode of "Diff'rent Strokes" and watched it over and over again.

When I hear Jeremy Allaire of Brightcove using the words "illegal piracy" to describe what the new RealPlayer is doing, I hear echoes of the way that Universal execs Lew Wasserman and Sid Sheinberg (and later, MPAA chief Jack Valenti) responded to the VCR.

Your thoughts?