That headline is a bit reductive as it should end “Why SOPA, PIPA, Bill C-11, OPEN, et al.?” but that’s what the actual article is for, right? One of the main driving points in the entertainment industry’s support of SOPA …

Fan favorite Wil Wheaton has been very vocal about his stance on the Internet and his utter hatred of SOPA and the like. Now Wheaton is calling MPAA boss and former Senator Chris Dodd a liar. He says that jobs …

With celebrities quickly taking to Facebook, Twitter, and Google+, it’s clear that the entertainment industry is embracing technology and the digital space. What’s interesting is that some people in Hollywood are finding that they prefer the freedom technology and the Internet provide, as actor Kevin Pollak explained to us in this interview:

Compromise is important when it comes to bills like SOPA. Film studios and media moguls don’t seem very interested though. The Walt Disney Co. was reported to have refused calls made by Sen. Dianne Feinstein to join in a discussion …

Facebook just scored a major win in the Internet’s relationship with Hollywood. The Financial Times is reporting that Abduction, the newest film from Lionsgate, will be available day-and-date on Facebook with the DVD release today. This is the first time …

This is not an April Fool’s joke.  I repeat, this is not an April Fool’s joke.  Much to the chagrin of theater owners, four major Hollywood studios have decided to unveil their own premium on-demand service, charging $30 a pop. …

Netflix is no stranger to making big deals that shake up the television and home movie landscape, and in a report we told you about yesterday, most of their moves seem to be working.  After grabbing 61% of the digital …

On the tail of the Oscars this weekend comes a story from the NY Times. I have read it several times because I can’t get over the possibilities. The possibilities of what you ask?

At the end of 2008, it was announced that Consumers Union, publishers of Consumer Reports was acquiring Consumerist.com from Nick Denton’s Gawker Media. Gawker has now dropped its Defamer.com site as its own entity and rolled it into Gawker.com as the site’s "column from Hollywood."

Negotiations between the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and the major studios stalled last week after the two parties could not reach an agreement on how actors should be compensated for online clips.

Studios want to distribute clips of old TV shows and movies without actors’ permission and pay them a flat fee instead of paying each actor individually. The actors union is against the measure.

The remaining vestiges of ex-CEO Terry Semel’s Hollywoodization of Yahoo continue to be swept out of the portal, as senior VP Vince Broady leaves Yahoo’s entertainment division.

The ongoing fight between the Writers Guild of America and Hollywood studios will lead to some of them exploring the possibilities of the Internet for their work.

Imagine a return to moviemaking where storytelling as a craft mattered most, and a writer with a dream and some financial backing could do what once required a studio to accomplish.

Even though Hollywood executives claim this Internet thing is too new for them to figure out how much they can cut out of it for writers, the scribes pointed out Viacom seems to have an idea.

Film and TV writers are striking for the first time in almost twenty years after the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers were unable to reach an agreement.

Google isn’t the only company that has to determine the best way to protect copyrighted video; the movie and TV studios have to come to grips with a way to let people share content, or forever kill the ability to monetize it online.

With its own site for its copyrighted video content due out this month, NBC is already getting a little touchy. Peter Chernin, president and COO of News Corp, chides that Google “could do a better job” of policing for copyrighted content on YouTube, saying:

Google will become a distributor of original content through its AdSense network, with contributions from ‘Family Guy’ creator Seth MacFarlane and Disney Channel star Raven-Symon

My best friend is an extremely gifted film talent. But he hated Hollywood, hated the hoops young aspirants had to go through, hated having to play ball, so he left Hollywood and came home to be an English professor. It’s really too bad online video hadn’t taken off just yet.

In an almost comical turn about, the company that provided Sony with one of the two horrific DRM systems in October of 2005 is now facing a lawsuit. MediaMax worked on controlling the number of copies that a person could make with a CD, and has cost Sony some 5.75 million dollars to settle the lawsuits that arose from the use of MediaMax.

Just as Rupert Murdoch and the News Corp apparatus pore over a potential deal for Dow Jones, MySpace founders Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson have submitted their pay requests for consideration.

Just one day after CNET reported on Hollywood’s frustration at YouTube’s copyright feet dragging, Google announces that they are ready to begin testing their video fingerprinting tool.

TimeWarner and Disney have signed on for the test, which they hope will help to identify copyrighted content and prevent illegal uploads of the content.