Viacom's vision doesn't include Facebook

Brier Dudley has been reporting this week from The Wall Street Journal's D: All Things Digital conference with some of the biggest names in technology. Here are edited excerpts from his blog.

CARLSBAD, Calif. — So Viacom won't be buying Facebook, apparently.

Philippe Dauman, the media giant's new chief executive who made waves by suing YouTube over copyright violations, said during a D session Thursday that he may buy some smaller companies.

But he isn't interested in the kind of blockbuster acquisition a purchase of the popular college and school social-networking site would be.

"We're focusing on creating things within Viacom ... rather than paying an inflated price for an outside company," he said.

"I'd rather spend the extra $700 million developing new experiences," such as the virtual worlds built around Viacom franchises such as SpongeBob.

Regarding the ongoing lawsuit, Dauman said Google CEO Eric Schmidt called shortly after he took over Viacom nine months ago, and they tried to negotiate a deal.

Sticking points included how much control Google would have over Viacom content on Google-owned YouTube, how Google would sell ads around the content and whether Google could contact Viacom's advertisers, Dauman said.

He spoke after YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen. They had stressed they're educating consumers about copyright laws on their site, drawing guffaws from moderator Walt Mossberg, the renowned The Wall Street Journal technology columnist.

Dauman said he was glad to hear them talking that way.

"Well, I think maybe they're starting to get the idea," he said. "I may have helped provide a graduate education in copyright."

The big disclosure by Hurley and Chen was around YouTube's plans to start inserting ads in videos within a few months. Chen said their testing found consumers were turned off by 30-second ads that play at the start of videos.

"I don't think we'll ever do 30-second pre-rolls," Chen said. "I think it's going to be somewhere between five and 10 seconds, as well as making it as relevant as we can."

Searching for a copyright accord

In a later session with Google's Schmidt, Walt Mossberg recalled that Steve Ballmer had said Wednesday the search interface has stagnated.

Schmidt disagreed, noting Google recently added a "universal search" capability so that results include a blend of video, news and other previously specialized searches.

But Mossberg was talking about the interface, not the results. Schmidt defended Google's minimalist look and said it's not likely to change, although the company is experimenting in places like South Korea with pop-ups and other changes.

"I don't think we're going to go very far from the single search box," Schmidt said.

Mossberg and Schmidt dove into particulars of the Viacom lawsuit over YouTube. Schmidt said Viacom should have waited for Google to develop tools to filter copyrighted material.

Why should they wait? Mossberg pressed.

"Because we follow the law. The law does not require us to build tools," Schmidt replied.

No wonder they ended up in court.

But the situation may change before they get a ruling. Schmidt said he's expecting the online video phenomenon to lead to changes in copyright protection.

The result will be a "complex mix" of user authentication, content creator authentication and user choice, which I think means everything will be tracked and tagged more closely online.

Can it be Real is up to No. 11?

The second big Seattle product launch at the D conference was Thursday's unveiling of the new RealPlayer software jukebox, the 11th version so far. (The first was Microsoft's Surface tabletop computer).

Real highlighted a new feature that lets users download video clips from the Web with a click and save them in a playlist for viewing later.

Users can create folders with collections of videos on a particular topic, such as "political speeches" or "best YouTube flatulence ignitions."

When the player is running and you come across an online video — even ads — a small button appears above the frame and gives you the option of clicking to start the download.

Downloads aren't particularly fast, but they take place in the background and continue after you've moved on to another site.

The software works with all sorts of video formats, but not if the content has rights-management attached that prevents copying.

I received a demonstration Wednesday from Harold Zeitz, Real's senior vice president of games and media software and services.

"The real innovation here is the universality of it and the fact that is enabled in such a simple way," he said. "We call it the one-click download."

A beta version will be available for Windows users to download for free by the end of June. A Mac version is due by the end of the year.

This material has been edited for print publication.

Brier Dudley's blog appears Thursdays. Reach him at 206-515-5687 or bdudley@seattletimes.com.