At 5:20AM EST today (January 19), Google News's tireless searchbots hit upon an item which they innocently saw fit to index in their never-ending quest for relevant, timely, and original content. They found it at something called the "Dr. Dobb's Journal Research Center," where the item concerned was (rightly) classified as a Webinar. The Webinar was (rightly) titled:  Java Code Quality Management Webcast - How to Minimize Unpleasant Surprises in Your Java Code Base by Enerjy Software. The only problem however, and it is a big one, is that this content does not belong to CMP.

Here are CMP's pirated content links.

The "Dr. Dobb's Journal Research Center," in other words, is making available - for free - content that it did not originate. It was originated by a business rival. And CMP is using it to harvest contact details of Java development managers in an attempt to catch up with the customer base of that competitor by offering a  "PDF" (which turns out not to be a PDF at but just a direct link to the SYS-CON website) that can only be viewed via the Dr. Dobbs page after registration.

Here is the authentic, authorized link to that same Webinar -- currently live on 172,882 pages across SYS-CON Media's interactive i-technology portal with more than 100 websites at www.sys-con.com. No registration is necessary, that being the agreement with the company featured in the Webinar, which is part of the pioneering "all-media" approach to serving software development vendors by SYS-CON.TV, the fast-growing Internet TV arm of SYS-CON Media.

Questions abound: Is CMP's top management aware that its "Dr. Dobb's Journal Research Center" engages in such piracy? Now that, thanks to the all-pervasiveness of the Googlebots, it has been discovered, will they withdraw the material immediately and unconditionally without the need for SYS-CON Media to issue a cease and desist order? Will they carry a prominent apology on the pages of Dr. Dobb's Journal?

Can it be any coincidence that CMP, following SYS-CON Media's pioneering lead, has invented something it calls "SD-TV" -- a pale imitation of SYS-CON.TV that was soft-launched hastily in June in response to SYS-CON Media's hard launch of SYS-CON.TV?

SYS-CON has since been deploying seamlessly integrated, daily streaming-video content throughout its entire family of i-technology portals such as java.sys-con.com, linux.sys-con.com, opensource.sys-con.com and 97 others. SYS-CON.TV is rich media at its best, with daily industry interviews, weekly interactive webinars, and monthly product launches all readily accessible to SYS-CON's readers.

On the content side, the company is pushing the envelope, and can on any day be found at one or even two technology conferences, while once or twice a month broadcasting its video stream live from studios in Times Square. On the back end, SYS-CON's multimedia team works with a select group of leading-edge providers like New York-based Stream57 for the webcast engine and VitalStream for the digital broadcasting platform.

SYS-CON's inaugural live broadcast , for example, was its  "Application Server Shoot-Out," involving some of the biggest companies on the Nasdaq, like Microsoft, IBM, Sun Microsystems, Oracle, BEA Systems, and SAP.

Fuat Kircaali, CEO of SYS-CON Media, said, "SYS-CON.TV has been screencasting intensively for more than a year. Thanks to our industry partnerships with Adobe, VitalStream, and Stream57, we were able from the outset to move faster and more dynamically than every single other online publisher, especially the other publishers like Forbes, CMP and Ziff-Davis."

"It is interesting to see the competition now trying to come from behind," Kircaali continued. "We wish them well and look forward to seeing them trying do tomorrow what we already did yesterday."

"We are already extending the breadth and range of our broadband video offerings," explained SYS-CON Senior Vice-President of Sales & Marketing Carmen Gonzalez, "so that our advertising partners, for example, can take advantage of our expertise to make narrated product demonstrations including slide timing, animation and audio with special sound effects. We also offer them a polling and Q&A system included to gather audience opinions and views and can add interactivity with onscreen navigation for product test drives."

In a recent article in Media Business magazine, a report appeared describing how Ziff Davis Internet, CMP Media, IDG Communications and others are all scrambling to close the gap on i-technology publishing pioneer SYS-CON Media. Or, rather, it described how they were not really scrambling at all so much as hobbling along behind.

Two quotes from the article:

"The key is not to get too far ahead of the marketplace"
(IDG's president Bob Carrigan)

"The supply of online video that advertisers can put advertising against is pretty scarce"
(Ziff Davis Internet's president Jason Young)

One is reminded of the now-infamous remark made by Bill Gates in the early days of PCs that "640K ought to be enough for anybody." Or of Thomas J. Watson Sr.'s alleged 1943 pronouncement at IBM: "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."

Anyone who has the slightest hesitation in believing that Internet TV--what SYS-CON refers to in its useful shorthand as iTV--is on its way across the Web and across the world should sign themselves up as soon as possible for the world's first-ever Conference & Expo devoted to the phenomenon.

"Now that broadband is available to more than 100 million households worldwide, every corporate website and every media company must now provide video content to remain competitive, not to mention live and interactive video Webinars and on-demand Webcasts," explained SYS-CON Media group publisher and editorial director, Jeremy Geelan. "Internet TV is wide open, it is global, and in true 'Web 2.0' spirit it is a direct-to-consumer opportunity."
 
"Twenty years ago the advent of desktop publishing tools opened the doors for the creation of some of today's well-known traditional print media companies as well as revolutionized corporate print communications," Geelan continued. "Today, with maturing digital video production, the advent of fully-featured PVRs, and significant advances in streaming video technologies, Internet TV is here to stay and grow and will be a critical part of every website--and every customer-facing business--in the years to come."

It will also very rapidly become a huge challenge to network and cable television stations, he noted. Internet TV is about to change forever the $300BN television industry, too. The Internet killed most of print media (even though many publishers don't realize it yet), Google killed traditional advertising models, and Internet TV will revolutionize television the way we watch it today. "Those who want to be part of this change," added Geelan, "are going to be the ones who gather in New York at the first Internet TV Conference & Expo 2006."

As he writes, in his capacity as Conference chair, on the iTVcon.com website: "Welcome to the future!" Perhaps CMP's group director of Internet business, Mike Azarra, will use part of today to take a pause from trying to imitate SYS-CON and instead make sure that Dr. Dobb's Journal doesn't misrepresent itself to be the purveyor of still more SYS-CON content.

Said Kircaali: "If they're that desperate, they should license it from us. We have plenty of original, industry-relevant content to go around. But high-quality i-technology programming for iTV isn't free to make, and pirating like this it is completely unacceptable. We'd gladly license our pioneering i-technology content; CMP or other competitors don't need to just take it."