PersistenceOfVision:
Hate to be pedantic, but you might want to double-check that math.
320x240 is a lot less than half of 640x480.
botton line is simple, if yoiu did not make it from start to finish, it is not yours. If it is not yours, don’t link or upload it.
What does this have to do with coding?
Every practicing programmer should understand copyright, patent, and fair use. It’s all related:
The Coming Software Patent Apocalypse
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000902.html
Pick a License, Any License
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000833.html
The Pernicious Issue of Software Patents
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000837.html
Patents, Trademarks, and Copyright, Urgh!
http://www.ayende.com/Blog/archive/2007/10/05/Patents-Trademarks-and-Copyright-Urgh.aspx
According to the DMCA rules, Youtube is following the rules accodingly. Their website content comes from its members. If you have a beef, it should be with the users or the copyright owners, the latter who can object to the postings.
I believe information should be free and available. There isnt a viable market for the purchase of short videos, so what is your issue?
I disagree on one of your points, Youtube is transformative. Videos on Youtube are commented upon, remixed into playlists, and often appear on blogs, where one usually finds (more) substantial context for the video.
In general, I don’t see anything theoretically different between an excerpt of “kids in the hall”, which is then commented upon by the community, vs an excerpt from a book which is then commented upon by a newspaper columnist.
To take (what I think) is a clear cut example, videos from The Daily Show were usually 2-4 minutes in length (a small fraction of the whole), are typically entertaining and informative, and were usually uploaded so as to enable discussion about whatever point Jon Stewart was making. It can also safely be said that such uses only served to promote the content and keep the show in the eye of pop culture. I simply cannot imagine that that’s not fair use, whatever Viacom might think.
I think your post illustrates just how broken and out of date copyright is, rather than anything wrong with youtube.
We’ve got a huge disconnect between the law and technology, where copyright holders are attempting to substitute legal barriers for now non-existent technical barriers
Technology has definitely helped content owners eliminate the distribution channel barriers. I would argue that technology can also help content owners keep track of where there content goes so any re-use contains a link back or at least some sort of credit.
Waiting for copyright law to catch up is a flawed strategy; instead, there needs to be a marketplace for content where the industry regulates itself
Now think back through all the videos you’ve watched on YouTube. How many of them contained any original content?
I regularly watch Ask a Ninja and CommunityChannel on YouTube - both creators of original content - as well as various instructional videos. I don’t know how typical I am, but it does say something that vloggers Chris Crocker and Lisa Nova both became famous solely through YouTube.
You hit the issue directly square faced!
Most people don’t understand copyright and really don’t want to understand it.
As for GooTube? Well, they have about 500 million sitting in reserve for the law suites. Trust me, the big content companies love what YouTube has done for their copyright material. Now they are just going to try to figure out how to monitize it long term.
YouTube has agreements with BBC, EMI Group PLC, Viacom, CBS, Vivendi’s Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group Corp and Sony BMG Music Entertainment, a joint venture between Sony and the German media giant Bertelsmann AG. Not all the non-original contents uploaded entail copyright infringment, we have already paid in advance.
Jeff, where did you get the “90% of YouTube is copyrighted” estimate? In a a href="http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=search_videossearch_query=*search_sort=video_view_countsearch_category=0search=Searchv=uploaded="random sampling/a of the most recently added/indexed videos on YouTube, this number looks closer to 15-20%. The majority of videos seem to be uploaded by the creator (home videos, vloggers, musicians, etc), with a smattering of shows taped from TV.
I’ve also written several times that Google is on very shaky ground with
this copyrape situation, including today. It wouldn’t surprise me if
they lose the lawsuit and then the stock takes a tumble backwards.
YouSued is Google’s Achilles heel.
Wow, You must think you’re really clever…
Plenty happy with YouTube’s “hypocricy”. The more of us get used to not giving a s**t about the utter opportunistic insanity that is Copyright, the better off we all will be, culturally.
Did you ask permission to use youtube logo?
So long as it undermines Peer 2 Peer exchange . . .
Good article, but you’ve got an important point wrong. The loopho;le that youtube has driven a truck through is NOT Fair Use, it’s the “Safe Harbor” provision of the digital millenium copyright act. Fair Use has absolutely no application to somebody who uploads a 100% copyrighted work to a site like youtube. But under the DMCA’s fair use provision, youtube is a “common carrier,” like an ISP, and as such, it is allowed a grace period for removing it’s user’s copyrighted works when it is notified by a copyright owner. That law could change as a result of the Viacom-Google lawsuit, but it’s still on the books now.
The copyright laws are so hideously outdated and broken. Something needs to be done with them, toss them all out and rewrite them for all I care, but the industry needs to find a way to cope with losing its monopoly on information. Information is no longer a commodity, it’s a basic fact of life.
- The lawyers at the EFF have been able to defend the fair use of YouTube videos and,
- Studies have shown that 90% of videos on YouTube are non-infringing.
See here: http://www.copyrightings.com/2007/10/arriving-late-and-ill-informed.html
The original purpose of copyright (literally the right to make copies) was to protect the British Monarchy from pamphleteers who might pull a Thomas Jefferson and recommend wholesale governmental change.
Have we outlived the original purpose of copyright?
One could make the case that the more widely an author’s work is distributed, the more well-known the author becomes, the greater the benefit to the author.
Hi Andy-- thanks for stopping by. I’m a big fan of waxy.org.
Jeff, where did you get the “90% of YouTube is copyrighted” estimate?
You’re absolutely right, I have no data to back up my 90% claim-- it’s more hyperbole than anything else. So let’s dig into a little data and see how far I am off.
If we look at YouTube’s Most Viewed, All Time:
http://www.youtube.com/browse?s=mpt=ac=0l=
That’s 20 videos. I count…
12 – copyrighted commercial content from authorized sources
3 – copyrighted commercial content from unauthorized users
3 – completely non-commercial user generated content (free hugs, guitar, hahaha)
The other 2 I can’t make heads or tails of, as they’re foreign-- but they don’t look like typical user generated content to me.
Is it unfair to characterize YouTube as 90% copyrighted content submitted by unauthorized users? Probably. I didn’t realize how many companies are leveraging YouTube to promote their commercial content. But I think it’s just as unfair to characterize YouTube as a giant repository of user generated content.
Lots of people here seem to have problems with copyright. I wonder if any of you hold any of your own… and are getting boned out of large amounts of money because people don’t give a crap about your rights.