News of the Pirate Bay’s impending sale has worried file sharers around the world. Rights holders on the other hand seem to be somewhat optimistic, hoping that the deal will put an end to the world’s largest file-swapping platform. But history has shown again and again that the demise of popular P2P sites and systems doesn’t lead to less file swapping. On the contrary, the gap is oftentimes filled with more sophisticated systems.

It’s been 10 years since Napster, and some record company executives seem to have slowly realized that they should have struck a deal with the original music-swapping service instead of pushing users to Gnutella, Kazaa, eMule and eventually BitTorrent. Letting the Pirate Bay with its up to 25 million concurrent users die could be another mistake just as big as the failure to embrace Napster. Granted, saving and monetizing the Pirate Bay may be close to impossible, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth trying.

Global Gaming Factory X, the prospective new owner of the Pirate Bay, has announced that it intends to transform the site into a legal business, pay rights holders, rent out users’ hard drives, cooperate with ISPs, make gazillions with online ads, and otherwise leave everything just at it’s been to not alienate any users. The company’s confusing and contradictory claims have been met with almost universal skepticism, with BusinessWeek calling it a “weird new business plan,” TorentFreak lambasting it as “completely delusional” and our own Liz Gannes saying her expectations for a Pirate Bay 2.0 “are pretty low.”

The critics are right. There’s no way a small Swedish Internet cafe business can pull this off, especially if it wants to license content from major rights holders. Others have tried, and failed miserably. BitTorrent Inc. for example had to agree to pay 20th Century Fox a million bucks per year just to be able to sell DRM -protected episodes of Fox TV shows through its content store, according to a company insider. No wonder the store has since been shuttered. Can you imagine how much the upfront payments for even a fraction of the Pirate Bay’s 100 most popular titles would be?

Any attempt to legitimize the Pirate Bay through traditional licensing would be crazy. Then again, the Pirate Bay has never really been known to stick to conventional wisdom, and crazy often seemed to be their modus operandi. So why not be a little nutty for a second, and imagine how the site could be monetized in an alternative universe where rights holders are willing to take risks, embrace new business models and recognize that 25 million users can’t be wrong if they contribute to your bottom line. Here’s how it could be done:

Take off that silly costume. All that tough guys pirate talk was fun for a while, but now it’s time to grow up: No more making fun of rights holders. Instead, implement a DMCA-like take-down policy and remove content at the request of rights holders.

What would Google do? Of course, the DMCA doesn’t quite cut it anymore for many rights holders. They’ll still sue you. Take a lesson from YouTube and implement filters to identify uploaded content – and then offer rights holders a deal: Either remove content, or participate in the ad revenue a particular torrent generates.

Become the Hulu of the P2P world. Granted, torrent site CPMs won’t cut it for an ambitious plan like this. The only chance the Pirate Bay has to make substantial ad revenue is to embrace video ads. License a client like Vuze or Miro and start showing pre-rolls before each download. Add a web- or plugin-based torrent video player like Bitlet and start showing the same ads directly on the site.

Embrace flat-rate licensing. The music industry is moving towards legal file-sharing platforms, with the first tests starting this year for some U.S. college students and on the Isle of Man. Most of these models are based on one single authorized swapping platform — so why not utilize the one that everyone is using already? The Pirate Bay could even offer to selectively grant access to its music catalog via geo-IP block lists. It won’t be long before models like these will be available on a wider scale, once a few thousand college students can boast that they can legally use the Pirate Bay to get their favorite tunes.

Give it a shot. This is where rights holders have to come through: Let’s give this a try. Grant access to and monetize your catalog for six or nine months and then take a close look at the numbers. And always keep in mind: Having your TV show removed from the Pirate Bay doesn’t mean that users won’t get it for free elsewhere. It just means you’re missing out on revenue.

Granted, some of these ideas may be similar to what Global Gaming Factory wants to do with the site. But at least I spelled it all out, instead of simply putting up a smoke screen of crackpot ideas and contradictory statements about how to deal with unlicensed content. The one thing that the Pirate Bay really needs now is a clear vision. Anything short of that will lead to the site’s inevitable demise.

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It’s one thing to say goodbye to the king of pop. It’s another to say goodbye to the king of infomercials. Billy Mays, the legendary infomercial host who could get excited about any product, passed away last weekend. And for those who live for mocking infomercials, the news apparently came as a real blow.

Take Jabo0odyDubs, a YouTube mocker who made a vocation out of talking over Mays’ commercials. On his YouTube profile, he writes “Billy Mays, The Infomercial King passed away June 28, 2009. No more Billy Dubs will be released, the old ones are more than enough to cherish as classics. I will find other stuff to dub. I feel as though I’ve lost a best friend/hero. God bless Billy, his family, and his fantastic products. We will miss you billy, RIP.” He also rocked the Sarah McLachlan for a tribute video.

Meanwhile, Billy Mays: A Rap Tribute is possibly one of the worst raps I’ve ever heard, but MC Seaniemc does get points for his comprehensive compilation of the products Mays promoted.

But a video obituary that does the man proud.

There’s honestly something vaguely touching about seeing people who normally make a habit of mockery embrace sincerity, especially to salute someone they’d previously mocked. It’s almost, dare I say it, human.

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I’m in the midst of moving, so I’m stuck in between mountains of cardboard boxes and molehills of bubble wrap this holiday weekend. That means I have little access to the Internet and television and, by extension, the Wimbledon semi-finals. Evidently, NBC forgot the “live” part of its online live-streaming and is delaying the televised and online coverage, a tactic NBC CEO Jeff Zucker is fond of (tape-delayed Olympics, anyone?).

East coast bloggers are particularly perturbed:

Staci D. Kramer (the “D” is for “Damn you, Jeff Zucker!”) at paidContent writes:

I’m sitting outside on a lovely Friday morning, sipping a cup of tea and catching up on the news. What’s wrong with this picture? It’s the final Friday of Wimbledon and I’m reduced to either watching a pirated feed from a place where the broadcasters value live sports or following the Andy Roddick-Andy Murray match vicariously through Twitters and live blogs. That’s because NBC Universal (NYSE: GE) values the Today Show more than live sports and, or at least, more than this live sport and its fans, and NBC Sports has the right to “save” a match for its exclusive window.

And Henry Blodget, who seems ready to bludgeon Zucker, writes over at Silicon Alley Insider:

Following on its disastrous “coverage” of the Wimbledon quarterfinals, NBC is now wrecking the Wimbledon semifinals.

Andy Murray and Andy Roddick are a tight first set (Roddick’s up 4-3). ESPN, which owns the rights for this hour, can’t show the match on TV because NBC won’t let them.

NBC, meanwhile, refuses to show the match online, because that might dilute its TV audience when it finally bothers to put Wimbledon on the air.

If NBC’s coverage was a tennis match, this would be a double fault.

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I love you, NewTeeVee Station readers, but sometimes I suspect that you aren’t listening to me when I tell you that a show is AWESOME. So, in honor of our humble Station’s 1-year anniversary (betcha didn’t realize it’d been a whole year, did you?) I went through our 4-star and 5-star reviews to put together a collection of some of my favorite shows that remain slightly obscure.

Sean and Jilly Move In
This fauxumentary about a dysfunctional couple forced to move in together is full of sly, Office-esque awkward comedy. Here’s the happy couple looking for a new place to live.

What I said then: They’re that couple who don’t really enjoy being together, but are never truly unhappy enough to break up, a caricature pushed to the extreme but easily recognizable nonetheless.

The District
Newsweek took a teenybopper approach to covering Barack Obama’s first 100 days in office; the series wrapped with nine episodes of pure Hills-esque pleasure. The season finale is below.

What I said then: Once you get past the fact that Newsweek decided to mock MTV (which is kind of like George F. Will starting a blog to mock Britney Spears), The District is pretty much pure pleasure.

Project: Rant
This crowd-sourced web series gives a voice to the petty frustrations of modern life, using quality production values and gifted actors to perform rants on problems like straight girls who go to gay clubs.

What I said then: When the audience identifies with the speaker, there’s a sort of second-hand catharsis that occurs. Just because it’s not our frustration or embarrassment, it doesn’t dull the vicarious thrill of finally getting to let it out.

Grass Roots
This indie series debuted in May with a fresh take on the tough world of political campaigns, and was picked up by Koldcast for distribution shortly thereafter.

What I said then: It’s not exactly a love song to politics, but serves instead as a reminder that political campaigns aren’t just scandals and grand speeches, but hard work and shoe leather, too.

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Dailymotion announced today that Cedric Tournay has been named its new CEO. Tournay replaces Ian Brotherston, who had only held the post since April. Brotherston will stay on with the company but will move over to become executive vice president of international strategy.

MediaPost reports that Dailymotion always considered Brotherston’s appointment as CEO as an interim one, though that temporary status was not mentioned at the time. We dug up the April 21, 2009, press release announcing Brotherston as CEO, which didn’t say anything about his being interim:

Dailymotion names Ian Brotherston Chief Executive Officer

Paris – April 21st 2009 – Dailymotion’s Board of Directors has announced today that Ian Brotherston has been appointed to the role of Chief Executive Officer of Dailymotion…

“We are delighted to welcome Ian as new CEO. His strong management experience will help shape Dailymotion as we continue our growth and global expansion. Ian’s primary focus will be to lead Dailymotion in its next phase of development,” says Benoist Grossmann, partner at AGF Private Equity.

Brotherston joined Dailymotion from Red Bee Media, the privatized Broadcast Technology Division of the BBC, where he was commercial cirector. A Dailymotion rep told us that the company was originally not going to announce Brotherston’s appointment since it was interim, and much of the initial press was based on leaked and incomplete information. The rep said at the time he was unable to comment on the CEO search.

Brotherston was brought on to replace then-CEO Mark Zaleski, and at the time it was rumored that Dailymotion was looking to raise additional funding this year. Zaleski had been brought on from QXL in August 2007 as executive chairman.

Tournay was most recently the CEO of Doctissimo, one of the largest health and medical web sites in Europe, and managed its sale to Lagardere group.

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Facebook expects to “very soon” release a new version of its iPhone app, and via TechCrunch we hear it will enable video uploads from the new iPhone 3GS.

Now, this is just one social network on one (very new) phone, and yes, it’s going to be a holiday weekend in a couple hours. But the news is worth paying attention to because of the volume and nature of video-sharing that Facebook enables, and the active mobile content habits of iPhone users. In the few days after the iPhone 3GS release, YouTube, the biggest user video site out there, said its mobile video uploads were up 400 percent, with iPhone 3GS video already accounting for more than half the mobile video sent to the site.

Meanwhile, Facebook told us it sees a very significant — nearly 40 percent — chunk of its video uploads come from webcams. And at last check, Facebook received six times as many video uploads per day as MySpace, showing its personal video-sharing offering is resonating with users. The simple, accessible video sharing enabled by webcams has a lot in common with mobile phone video uploads — except with the added value of on-the-go, on-the-scene connectivity. Let’s just hope AT&T doesn’t get pissy about the upstream bandwidth.

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Sometimes you watch the pilot of a series and know exactly where it’s going to go. Other times, you watch the pilot and have no clue how the series will shape up over the course of its run. And that is when the wise reviewer of online video decides to refrain from reviewing said show until she’s seen more than just the pilot, because while a cleverly constructed character will go a long way towards anchoring a series, it’s hard to know how well the premise will hold up, if at all.

Atom.com’s The Shaman is a quasi-Odd Couple featuring a Los Angeles schlub named Matt (played by Matt Price) and his new roommate, the Shaman (played by Jason Nash). The Shaman is more Jim-Morrison-as-portrayed-by-Val-Kilmer-in-The Doors than he is Jim Morrison, living in a magical dreamworld that to the rest of us resembles contemporary L.A. and completely incapable of putting on a shirt. (The camera lingers lovingly and often over Nash’s “Will Ferrell-esque physique.”) When the show premiered a couple of weeks ago, I watched and liked the first episode, but decided to wait on reviewing it until a few more episodes were available. It’s a decision that paid off, as the series, now on Episode 3, has managed to keep the concept fresh and entertaining.

The set-up is a clear riff on a genre of storytelling perfected by sitcoms like Perfect Strangers, though Matt — the not-Balky of the pairing — is the weak link of the series, as not enough’s been done with his character to make him feel fully realized. Why he wants a job in a clothing store in the second episode, for example, is a complete mystery to me. But while on his own Matt doesn’t add much, he’s a strong foil for the Shaman — the extended sequence in Episode 3, in which Matt must carefully explain that full release massage counts as prostitution, is a highlight of the series so far.

The show makes solid use of the Los Angeles comedy scene — not only setting part of Episode 2 at the Upright Citizens Brigade comedy theater, but enlisting the acting talents of Nick Kroll, Moon Zappa and Laura Silverman (the Sklar Brothers are also due to make an appearance).

What really works about the Shaman as a character is the way Nash regularly pulls the character back from flat-out absurdism; he’s almost quasi-functional in the real world, and that self-awareness is what makes the character likable. The Shaman probably wouldn’t work as a feature — heck, it probably wouldn’t even play as a recurring SNL sketch — but as the anchor for a narrative, Nash’s comic creation is immensely appealing. Part of me almost wishes I’d waited longer than three weeks to catch up on the show. That way, I’d have more to watch.

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Michael Jackson’s funeral will likely be scheduled for next Tuesday, July 7 at 10 a.m. at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, according to various reports. AEG Live, which was planning Jackson’s comeback, owns the Staples Center and says it’s putting on the event. The arena seats 20,000, and AEG is said to have plans to place large screens outside to show the proceedings to an overflow audience. But will the funeral be live-streamed to the King of Pop’s fans around the rest of the world?

Given the ongoing magnitude of global grieving for Jackson, wall-to-wall coverage of the funeral on TV networks goes without saying, and one or more online live streams is a solid bet. Other midday events, such as Obama’s inauguration and college basketball’s March Madness, have had huge numbers of watchers online, many of them office workers who want to see them live.

Hulu has already set up a placeholder page for the live web broadcast, under the account it uses to post special events. That site is mostly geo-blocked outside of the U.S.; surely others will get in on the action as plans unfold.

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The biggest horror hit of the summer may not come from any box-office blockbuster, but rather from video footage taken from a Raleigh, N.C., sewer system. The clip uploaded earlier this week shows a moist, throbbing blob affixed to the inside of a pipe.

The video has been a hit, watched more than 3 million times since June 30 as people tune in to see the curiosity from below just sit there. Pulsating. Waiting for the right moment to stri–aaaaahhhhflghhglhghgglggh!!!

Sci-fi blog io9 has been following the story and attests the creature is real, and not some viral video prank — though there appears to be some confusion as to what this real creature actually is. At first it was thought to be a slime mold, but then the News & Observer wrote:

Actually, the sewer monster is made up of thousands of tiny organisms called bryozoans, or moss animacules, said N.C. State University biologist Thomas Kwak. Invertebrates, they bunch together in colonies and feed with tiny tentacles.

This theory was disputed by DeepSeaNews which said that no, it is not bryozans; instead it is “clumps of annelid worms, almost certainly tubificids (Naididae, probably genus Tubifex).”

Whatever it is, it’s gross, it’s captured the Internet’s imagination, and the hacks in Microsoft’s marketing department are probably looking to use it for an ad campaign now that their vomit video has been pulled.

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Watercolor, ice climbing, underwater basketweaving — you can pay someone to teach you (or your kids) anything these days — and now, how to YouTube.

A couple years ago, we wrote about Pitzer College offering a media studies class on YouTube. There’s also Kansas State cultural anthropologist Michael Wesch, who’s become something of a social media celebrity for his video reports on the web, which often focus on YouTube. But if you’re looking for a little summer extra credit or personal growth, check out these online video workshops, both of which hit our inbox in the last day.

In both these instances, you’ll have to go to New York (but c’mon, NYC is lovely in the summer). First, “From You to YouTube” is a summer camp for young adults ages 12 to 18. Forget campfires and archery, bring your working knowledge of Mac computers. Held at the Manhattan Edit Workshop in August, the camp costs a hefty $2,000.

“Designed to create a fun and exciting learning atmosphere, class is divided into small crews of writer/directors. In week one you tackle writing, camera instruction, and pre-production. Then it’s two solid days of shooting films. The week ends with screening dailies and an introduction to editing. “In week two you will learn how to use Final Cut Pro and how to streamline your post-production workflow. With an emphasis on the creative aspects of storytelling, we will look at films to understand the ‘why’ of editing in addition to just the “how.” Each student has their own fully equipped, state-of the-art editing system and access to cameras and equipment for their shoots.”

Second, the three-class Viral Video Workshop at NYU from Indigo Productions (a steal at $200 with a $50 discount for students) promises to “teach you how to create great short videos, distribute them successfully, build an online brand, and make money in the process.”

The instructor, television producer and development exec James Murray, has made viral videos of his own, such as Cooties (embedded above), which has a respectable 1.7 million views and an airing on MTV.

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Sling Founder Headed to DirecTV? Satellite company reportedly has reached out to Blake Krikorian to succeed Chase Carey as CEO. (paidContent)

The NewsMarket to Acquire MediaLink; NewsMarket will acquire all oustanding shares of MediaLink’s common stock for 20 cents per share in cash; move will combine NewsMarket’s digital video distribution platform with MediaLink’s professional services. (release)

Microsoft Dumps Vomit Ad; viral spot for Internet Explorer featuring a woman vomiting over the web sites her husband visits is pulled. (CNET)

1Cast Signs Fox Business News and Al Jazeera; two networks will provide “up-to-the-minute” clips to the news aggregator. (Multichannel News)

Yesterday Was Supposed to Be a Tru2Way Milestone; July 1 was the day the large cable cos agreed to be ready to support tru2way enabled CE devices; while deadline was missed, cable companies are making good faith efforts. (ZatzNotFunny!)

HD Streams Still a Dream; measly megabit-per-second connections, superior Blu-ray video quality and limited content add up to high-definition video streaming to the TV not taking off for a while. (Variety)

Study: TV More Effective for Ads than Online; research from Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing and NeuroFocus TV gives high marks for recall, intent to purchase and emotional engagement (ed. note: What if the emotion people are engaging in is anger over all the commercials?). (MediaWeek)

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Dish Network subscribers will still be able to use their DVRs (for now) after a federal appeals court yesterday granted a stay of a lower court injunction against the service.

After losing its patent infringement case against TiVo, Dish (formerly known as EchoStar) developed a DVR workaround, but last month a Texas court ruled that this workaround still violated TiVo’s intellectual property. Dish was found in contempt, was ordered to pay TiVo an additional $103 million, and told to disable roughly 4 million DVR receivers on its network within 30 days. Dish was given a temporary stay of that order immediately following the decision.

That temporary stay will last a little longer as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said Dish was able to “demonstrate that it has a substantial case on the merits.”

The case is being expedited, and Dish will now file its opening brief by July 17; TiVo’s brief will come August 25; and Dish’s reply is due September 4.

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Quick: What’s the newest hybrid sensation that combines video games, television programming and social aspects? Is it:

X: 1 vs. 1oo on Xbox Live
A: Twittering With The Stars
B: Donkey Kong’s Digg for Dollars

If you said “X”, then you’d be right. Of course, savvy Xbox players might have been tipped off since the X, A and B controller buttons are used to answer questions in the Live version of 1 vs. 100. Microsoft launched the game in late May, but I just got around to participating in a session last night. Players simply show up at the pre-scheduled “on air” time and play for free. In my 30-minute episode, over 15,000 people were logged on and collectively we were “The Mob.” Each of our Xbox Live avatars were shown in the mob and we could even control our virtual selves to a point; pressing the Y button repeatedly shows excitement, while moving the left stick can be used to taunt.

Unlike the original television show, you can answer questions incorrectly and still stay in the mob. You don’t, however, gain points for wrong answers and there are incentives for speed as well as answering consecutive questions correctly. The more incorrect answers in the mob, the more points you earn with a correct answer. Questions are answered in sets of 10 and during the commercial break, you can see how you stack up by viewing your stats.

I was pitted against three formidable opponents last night, which is a nice touch. Without some small group context, it’s easy to get lost in the mob and the game would lose some competitive feel. It came down to the final and 37th question but I just edged out my live opponents to win bragging rights in our quartet. With an Xbox Live headset, you can voice chat with your three opponents, but I felt it to be in poor taste to brag about my informal win. (OK, I did jump around and scream wildly, but I had the mute button on.)

Microsoft’s Xbox Live version of 1 vs. 100 has essentially created a live and exciting game-show feel. But it’s virtual, so you don’t have to worry about wardrobe or sounding like a goofball in front of millions of people. The controls and concept are simple, yet I could see myself tuning in and playing on a regular basis just to see how well I did against the thousands of other participants. Given the simplicity of it, I wouldn’t be surprised to see mobile versions of this, and possibly other game shows in the near future.

Kevin C. Tofel is co-editor of our sister site jkOnTheRun.

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After reading an informative post about the history of real-time search by guest author Mary Hodder on TechCrunch today, I was reminded to check on her social video search startup, Dabble. Founded in 2005, Dabble had undertaken the challenge of organizing the universe of web video with metadata and community-created playlists.

It appears that the site hasn’t been up in months — at least nine months, in fact, because I remember specifically talking to Hodder about it being down in October. None of the search and share functionality is available, with the whole of the site replaced by a note with the headline “Dabble is having a make-over.” The Internet Archive isn’t much help in pinpointing the date the note was put up; it hasn’t posted a fresh save of the site since February of 2008.

In October, Hodder told me that the site had to be taken offline due to problems with her hosting company and a lack of funding. Today via email Hodder said she’s still working on the technology behind the scenes, but without funding the site won’t be back up anytime soon.

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Hollywood is full of stories about legendary comebacks — Robert Downey Jr. surviving drugs, John Travolta surviving Look Who’s Talking II — so who’s to say that a web series about the industry shouldn’t get a second chance? That’s what Showbizzle has its eye on. The indie web series produced by Charles Rosin (a producer on the original Beverly Hills 90210) relaunched a few weeks ago after falling flat last fall.

How flat did it fall? Steve Bryant, in our initial NewTeeVee Station review on Sept. 26, 2008, gave it two stars, writing that “the site is confusing, the mission statement unclear, and the promise — personal webcam-ish confessions and storytelling that’s ‘different from virtually everything else that you can currently find in the world wide web’ — laughable.” Composed then of individual two-minute monologues relayed to an unseen and unheard aspiring screenwriter named Janey, Showbizzle was more like watching scenes from an acting class than a narrative. And the site was focused on getting people to sign up for a poorly constructed and irrelevant social network, in theory hoping to connect aspiring whatevers in their quest for Hollywood fame and fortune. “Everything was rushed, and we made some tactical errors, we made some technical errors, and by the time we started up we were already in the hole,” Rosin said via phone. “But we were able to evaluate what went wrong, and what we could do better.”

Today, though, the Showbizzle site has a clean look that showcases the series properly, and perhaps thanks to the advice Rosin received from a Silicon Valley consultant — “you either have to be a web series or a social network, not both” — that element of the site has been dramatically toned down, instead focusing on the actual content.

And that content has been dramatically changed. The individual two-minute monologues, originally planned for daily release, have been compiled into weekly 10-minute episodes that are focused on characters with a clear connection to Janey (a connection spelled out in the cards introducing each character). Oh, and Janey actually has a voice now, courtesy of the show’s primary writer and director Lindsey Rosin (Charles’ daughter), which addresses Steve’s complaint from the original review that “there’s no dialogue, which contributes to an overall feeling of falseness. As if the people talking were being interviewed on a late-night promo for a self-help book.” The monologues are now interspersed with comments from Janey — mostly “hmm?” and “really?”, but enough to indicate a human presence on the other side of the camera.

So, how does Showbizzle 2.0 work? As a fan of micro-length episodes, I do miss the old format a little, and while the addition of Janey’s comments is an interesting approach, it’s not well-mixed into the rest of the audio, definitely revealing its roots as additional dialogue recording. But the fact that each character now belongs to a larger narrative, however slight, is a major bonus and ties the series together in a new way. It also emphasizes to audiences that, in Lindsey’s words, “This is a show; this isn’t real; it is scripted,” which hadn’t been clear before.

Also, an interesting bit of recycling: To accommodate the new format, the Rosins had to eliminate several of the filmed monologues from the series. But rather than leave these in the cutting-room bin in Final Cut Pro, they’ve created a new section of the site called Digital Showcase, which serves as a “hey, check out this actor” spotlight, making sure that the performer’s time wasn’t wasted.

It’s a use-all-the-parts-of-the-buffalo approach, one to honestly admire. Because here’s the thing: The Rosins listened to their audiences and their critics, reapproached their concept, and did their best to fix it. So much web video right now is being made by people who don’t really know what they’re doing. It’s rare when someone admits it, and tries to do better.

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