(indieWIRE/ 9.15.00) -- If the meaningless appearance of Shaquille O'Neal yesterday was the nadir of this year's Digital Coast 2000 conference, then today's final session may have been its highlight. It began with a morning appearance by geeky, brilliant West Coast Web business guru Bill Gross of Idealab. And it was capped by an afternoon chat with the Recording Industry Association of America head Hilary Rosen, who was preceded by an actual bomb sweep of the auditorium by security forces apparently concerned about violence from Napster fans.
In a session featuring representatives from the WGA, DGA and SAG discussing their roles in the Internet, each union sounded calm, reasonable and flexible regarding contracts for Internet work, and pooh-poohed the news swirling about joint WGA-SAG strikes next year. But once the crowd got into the mix, and former employees from DEN and POP.com got up to blame SAG, the WGA and the DGA for helping cause their downfall with expensive, inflexible contracts, the Guild reps were knocked back on their heels. Still, while it is easy to imagine that these Guild publicity flacks were painting a rosy picture of their own efforts, it is hard to believe that the problems at DEN and POP were anyone else's fault but the company's own. You had to take the POP and DEN critics' intimations with a grain of salt when one of them also let slip the dubious statement that they thought, "Judge Reinhold is a big star."
Next, a group of animation sites including Honkworm, Thrave, Stickyflicks, Dot Comix, and CampChaos presented some of their work. Dot Comix was a standout with their Doonesbury-inspired 3-D animated "Duke 2000" series. Honkworm's new series "Dog in a Box with Two Wheels" was a clever piece, and Honkworm CEO Johan Liedgren told IndieWIRE that several traditional media outlets were vying to buy up Internet and TV rights to the series. Claude Brooks, creator of the series "Forty and Shorty" on AtomFilms, was also on hand, but his work was the least well-received of the bunch. Close to his own TV deal for the raunchy series, Brooks noted, "I'm not quite sure how we're going to make this work for TV, but if they're paying, I'm taking."
Later in the day, representatives from Romp.com, Heavy.com, Icebox.com, Glasgow Phillips of CrapTV, and Tim Nye of the yet-to-launch AllTrue.com gathered to justify their recent crop of sometimes shocking comedy experiments. Most of the time was spent in arguments between Icebox's Gary Levin and Media Action Network for Asian Americans founder Guy Aoki over the Icebox show "Mr. Wong." Opinions split over whether the show is genuinely offensive, is so over-the-top it is really mocking racism, or both. Levin seemed to stun the crowd when he told of a new show Icebox has in development with comedian Al Franken, a Holocaust comedy called "Jokes from the Shoah Project."
The day closed with Rosen of the RIAA, who faced a polite but hostile questioner in conference organizer Jason McCabe Calacanis and a skeptical crowd. Rosen held her own, insisting there is no conspiracy in the music industry to stamp out competition online. She also said focus group testing shows that "most Napster users know they're getting a free ride, and most know it's not going to last forever." She faced off with a Scour employee in the audience, noting sardonically that she "was happy he still had a job," but refusing to give any ground on the idea that the copyright law makes no allowance for the ways in which Scour and Napster currently operate. [Kevin Dreyfuss]