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The gloves have come off since The Deal and Tech Confidential's Convergence 2.0 Conference last year and the sequel, scheduled for Sept. 17. Most prominently, Viacom Inc. filed a $1 billion complaint against Google Inc.’s YouTube. And Google, which claims it’s protected under the Safe Harbor provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, countered over the summer that Viacom was “built on lawsuits.” At the conference, Viacom general counsel Michael Fricklas will provide a view of this precedent-establishing case in his keynote on “Intellectual Property” — a construct worth $650 billion a year to the U.S. economy. No stranger to piracy controversies himself, Edgar Bronfman Jr. seems likely to use his keynote interview, “Capitalizing on Emerging Opportunities,” to address the transformation of his Warner Music Group from a traditional music company to a music-based content company. The WMG chairman and CEO may also comment on legal action that Universal Music Group, which he used to run, has taken against News Corp.’s MySpace. That complaint, like Viacom’s against YouTube, charges that much of the social networking site’s content “is the ‘user-stolen’ intellectual property of others.” Convergence 2.0 isn’t just about conflicts between old and new media, however. While the realm of TMT, or technology, media and telecom, has been a hotbed of private equity activity, recent credit market turmoil could change all that. One issue to be directed at Convergence 2.0 dealmakers is whether this turmoil has leveled the playing field, at long last, for strategic players. Not that financial sponsors are running away. Providence Equity Partners, for its part, just invested $100 million in a joint venture between NBC Universal and News Corp. (The JV was set up six months ago to transmit their movies and television shows over the Internet.) Providence’s 10% share confers a $1 billion valuation on the venture, which has yet to obtain a name, much less put up a Web site. So it’s no surprise experts on The Deal’s “State of Convergence” panel will be asked if the investment represents an act of prescient investing or a return to bubble blowing. Other panel subjects for timely, insightful dissection include broadband’s “third pipe,” online video, mobile content and the new advertising models. We know it’s going to be an enlightening day. And we’ll do our best to keep it civil. —Richard Morgan More information on the Convergence 2.0 conference See March 13 story on TheDeal.com
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