Amazon continues to beef up its Prime Instant Video offers, today adding more than 2,000 titlrs thanks to a new deal with Viacom. The new deal with Viacom brings in TV shows from Nickelodeon, MTV, Comedy Central, VH1, Spike, CMT, and TV Land, among others. That means that Amazon Prime subscribers will be able to more »

Amazon hasn’t necessarily been a true Netflix competitor. Sure its Prime Instant Video service provides similar unlimited streaming content like Netflix, but it’s only available to Amazon Prime subscribers. Amazon will truly become a competitor once it makes Prime Instant Video an option for everyone that isn’t an Amazon Prime subscriber. According to Reuters, Amazon is getting more »

Time Warner Cable is having some trouble with delivering content to its subscribers with its iPad app. It seems that programmers aren’t exactly happy with having their content on more than just TV screens without getting more money. Because of complaints, Time Warner Cable is removing channels from Viacom, Fox and Discovery from the TWCable more »

YouTube announced that they will be offering full-length TV shows online. Of course, Google, the proud owner of YouTube, will certainly place advertisements in the upcoming TV shows. Google said that the advertisements would be slotted just like ads on television with interruptions appearing during, before and after the actual program That’s not so surprising more »

Despite previous statements declaring that their online service would be offering live video streaming some time this year, a source inside now states that YouTube won’t be going live after all. There goes the business plans of several planning to make a buck off the live streaming idea, like the somewhat cult-popular lifecast justin.tv. Some outsiders have thought this was the next expected step for YouTube, being that they make a killing in the market for pre-recorded Web video. Even Steve Chen, Co-Founder of YouTube, lent plausibility to the leap to live streaming when the idea first hit the public’s ear by telling Pop 17′s Sarah Meyer’s “Live video is something we always wanted to do but haven’t had the resources to do it correctly, but now with Google, we hope to launch something this year.” Well, that was in February, and it isn’t happening, and sources say it won’t be happening next year either.

Your right to privacy is no longer as private as you once thought or hoped. By court order, Google is being forced to hand over all the records of every video watched by YouTube users. This information will include users’ names as well as IP addresses, and the request has Google lawyers arguing invasion of privacy. The judge in his ruling, however, found this argument “speculative” and ordered them to turn over the logs on a set of four terabyte hard drives.

The purpose behind the lawsuit is that Viacom intends to prove that infringing material is more prominent than user-created videos. This would most likely increase Google’s liability if they are found guilty of contributory infringement. The suit was originally filed in March of 2007, with Viacom seeking over $1 billion in damages. Google tried to argue that the law provides a “safe harbor for online services so long as they comply with copyright take-down requests.” Apparently Judge Louis L. Stanton, the senior judge on the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, who issued the opinion and order, wasn’t buying it, since the order also requires Google to supply copies of any video that was taken down for any reason.