The European Commission has its own channel on YouTube to spread messages about topics such as climate change and human rights. But the most viewed video clip features nudity, dim lighting and some heavy breathing.
EU officials said the 44-second clip of sex scenes showcases the strong emotions featured in European films, but some European Union lawmakers have questioned the sexual content.
The clip – titled “Film Lovers Will Love This!” – has been viewed more than 280,000 times, while the next most popular video on the EUTube channel launched last week – one on humanitarian aid – has fewer than 30,000 views.
Eighteen couples, both homosexual and heterosexual, are shown having sex in bedrooms, kitchens and restaurant bathrooms.
“Cheap, tawdry and tacky,” was the reaction of Godfrey Bloom of Britain’s euro-skeptic U.K. Independence Party, who described the clip as “soft porn” and a potential waste of taxpayers’ money.
Broadband adoption slows down: The rate of broadband adoption is slowing in the United States, partly because service providers already have grabbed the easiest converts, a study has found.
Price reductions and other factors led to 40 percent growth in adoption from March 2005 to March 2006. Over the following year, growth was a more modest 12 percent, the Pew Internet and American Life Project said in a report Tuesday.
“The low-hanging fruit was picked … so you saw a slowdown understandably going to 2007,” said John Horrigan, Pew’s associate director for research. “You’re left with people who are less-intense Internet users. They are likely to be users who aren’t processing a lot of bits per month. They don’t have the demand for high speed.”
Warner Bros. Delays launch of dual-format disc: With Hollywood studios still split over competing formats for high-definition DVDs, Warner Bros. will delay the launch of a dual-format disc until next year.
The studio, a unit of Time Warner Inc., introduced its Total HD disc earlier this year as a compromise between the incompatible Blu-ray and HD DVD formats. Total HD discs contain a Blu-ray copy of a movie on one side and an HD DVD version on the other.
But the concept has yet to gain traction because only two studios produce DVDs in both formats – Warner Bros. and Paramount Pictures, a division of Viacom Inc.
Warner believes other studios must also embrace both formats along with the Total HD technology and release at least 10 popular titles before stores would be willing to devote shelf space to the discs. That is unlikely to happen by the fourth quarter, leading the company to push back the introduction until early next year.
From Herald news services
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