The Copyright Directive might have noble aims, but it is plagued by a lack of clarity April 3, 2019 Last week, the European Union inched closer to finalising new rules governing the use of copyright material on the internet. Set out in the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market, the rules set out to curb the power of big tech firms by levelling the playing field between content creators and those who [...]
Digital advertising firm Teads posts revenue rise as it looks to fend off tech giants April 2, 2019 Digital advertising firm Teads has posted a 30 per cent jump in revenues for the full-year as it looks to win back market share from Facebook and Google. The media platform pulled in revenues of €365m (£314m) last year after extending its reach to 1.4bn global monthly users and more than 90 per cent of [...]
DCMS Committee launches new body to fight fake news as pressure on tech giants builds April 2, 2019 The Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) Committee today said it has launched a dedicated division to tackle the ongoing threat of disinformation to democracy. The new sub-committee follows the DCMS Committee’s report into disinformation and fake news, which called for a new regulator to monitor tech giants such as Facebook and Google. Read more: [...]
The Matrix was released 20 years ago – how close are we to the film’s vision of a tech dystopia? April 1, 2019 The Matrix first premiered in US cinemas yesterday 20 years ago. It revolutionised the way that we viewed the potential power of machines, and simultaneously marked the dawning of an age of suspicion and fear surrounding our relationship with technology. Yet far from the apocalyptic fears of artificial intelligence (AI), the applications of this emerging [...]
BBC takes control of UKTV channels as Discovery lines up new streaming service April 1, 2019 The BBC will take control of UKTV channels as part of a deal with Discovery that will also see the launch of a new on-demand video service for BBC nature programmes. BBC Studios – the broadcaster’s commercial arm – jointly owns UKTV with US media giant Discovery. Read more: BBC removes podcasts from rival Google [...]
Watch out high street banks – Apple has a credit card and is out to steal your supper March 29, 2019 Every day, new competitors are coming out of the woodwork and vying for a piece of the high street banks’ pie. This has forced the big banks – some kicking and screaming – to evolve, and at a pace that they’ve never before experienced. Change is not a new concept for consumers when it comes [...]
Time Out looks to markets as audience reach hit by Facebook algorithm change March 28, 2019 Media company Time Out saw its audience numbers slashed by a third last year after a change to Facebook’s algorithm pushed its content further down users’ newsfeeds. The company reported an average global monthly audience reach of 144m, down 33 per cent on the year before, which it said was “primarily the result of a [...]
BBC pulls podcast content from Google’s rival service March 26, 2019 The BBC has blocked its podcasts from appearing on Google's own rival services, including Google Assistant. New episodes for BBC podcasts stopped appearing on the Google Podcast app sometime on 19 March, according to Pod News, with podcasts now being removed entirely from the platform. BBC distribution and business development director Kieran Clifton confirmed that the [...]
Tech firms slam ‘simplistic’ copyright reforms passed by European Parliament March 26, 2019 Tech firms have launched an attack on new copyright rules voted through by the European Parliament today, saying they could damage both competition and freedom of expression. Tech UK, which represents more than 900 tech companies across the country, slammed the new regulations, describing them as “simplistic solutions to complex problems”. Read more: European Parliament [...]
iSmash on rivalling Apple for tech repairs and launching more stores in a dying high street March 25, 2019 Many will be familiar with the trauma: you drop your smartphone and the screen shatters into a modern-day mosaic. You either learn to live with shards of glass jabbing your fingers, wait a week for a phone company to fix it, or pay for a bodge job at a corner shop. Except those are no longer [...]