Netribution 1 was great in that it was all HTML and a bit of CSS – 15 years on not a single page has ever been hacked and most of them are still there. Netribution 2.0 launched in 2006 on a CMS and unless CMSs get regularly upgraded they eventually get hacked or break. This just happened here, so as tempting as it has been to leave this space as an archive and change nothing, reality refused: I…

Netribution passed 9.5 million page views last year, according to our web stats engine Webalizer, a 69% increase on 2006. For the first time we passed 1 million page views a month, for two months - August and July. Figures for unique visiting addresses (ie computers/users) reached a peak of 73,686 in December. It should be noted that these figures include robots and spiders - so the real…

Paramount has become the first studio to experiment with free downloads of features, releasing Jackass 2.5 ahead of the DVD release for free. Sister company Comedy Central recently announced that they would offer every South Park episode on their site for free in an advert supported model. Paramount parent Viacom is currently suing Goo-Tube for 'copyright infringement' and has resisted…

Well in honour of being turned down for Film Council Publications Fund money - we've decided to revamp the site. You may notice the new design. There's also a few changes: - profile URLs. Your profile can have it's own netribution.co.uk/myname address to share. - profiles also now feature messaging, an image gallery, a video page (just YouTube and Google at the moment, but we w…

  Every inch of floor space was taken up by young, would-be writers, when acclaimed TV drama writer, Paul Abbott, addressed students attending the Northwest's huge Media Careers Information Day, held at Manchester's G-Mex.   And the maestro's message to those hoping to follow in his footsteps was simple - put two jobs worth of effort into one job, and believe…

I'm in the final throws of pulling together a new book so haven't time to post properly, but here's a round up of some of the latest stories.. The big story in the UK is the sudden closure of the GAAP tax schemes, which Martin Churchill of Tax Efficient Review claims could cost the industry some £2bn. While the Treasury argues the scheme was being exploited, the sudden c…

  Shocking Exploitations Revealed in Media Companies The NUJ will today (27/02/07) deliver a letter to Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) naming and shaming employers who exploit journalists on work experience. The union, which is launching its Work Experience Guidelines simultaneously, is demanding that the government investigate breaches of the National Minimum Wa…

   155 Murders Unexplained Killings A Year of Unprecedented Brutality   The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) said today that 2006 was a year of tragedy for the world's media as killings of reporters and media staff reached historic levels with at least 155 murders, assassinations and unexplained deaths.   "Media have…

As the first UN sponsored World Internet Governance Forum gets under way, Amnesty International is calling for greater awareness of countries with censorship and freedom of speech violations. The forum aims to provide global discussion between the multitude of potentially conflicting interests on the web. Topping the box office charts in the UK and US, Saw 3 has provided distributor Lions…

  Eight Cities, Eight Film Crews -  Eight Features in 80 Hours Inspired by their win in this year's Cannes 24 Hour Film Challenge with Towel Talk - a four minute mystery made in four hours from concept to completion,  Wysiwyg will now run an international competition with production teams from eight major cities, each one competing to produce an 80-minute feature…

  Britain's Biggest Sound Stage Completely Destroyed The large James Bond stage at Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire has been destroyed by fire. At least eight fire engines tackled the blaze at the set, where filming for the new movie Casino Royale has finished. Eyewitness Jen McVean, who owns a firm at the studios in Iver Heath, said the stage was "completely on fire&quo…