Josh Kinberg has a great post about YouTube and how they rode obvious copyright infringement to success. I’m not a fan of YouTube, in my opinion, they’re doing video on the web wrong, wrong, wrong…
My take on this: There is a part of the population that seems to live solely to republish that which they have no right to republish (it’s probably the same folks who steal your bandwidth by displaying images on your server in every forum they sign up for.) These are people who usually don’t think about it, they just figure “if it’s out there, it’s up for grabs.” Maybe they’ve never created something that they felt they had the rights to control. I don’t know…
There is also a part of the population that is creative, and actually makes their own media, using only that which they have the right to use. This is the future of the internet, creation of art and media by the people, not just theft and redistribution of content. Every time I see a videoblog post that uses music that I’m 95% sure the creator did not get the rights to use, I plan on leaving a comment asking about it. I think it’s sad that many in the videoblogging community still do this, and think that it may fall under fair use (when it clearly doesn’t) or brush it off saying they are not making any money from it, or that they are helping promote someone else…
If we are truly going to “be the media” we need to act responsibly in what we do.
1 reply on “YouTube, NBC, Copyright, Etc…”
Totally agree, Pete. I never use any music soundtracks when I create video. I do this for a few reasons… first, I don’t appreciate the infringing use of copyrighted materials and thus do not want to set a bad example, secondly I prefer a sort of Dogme95 aesthetic where music should only be involved if it happens to be captured on the scene, and third I prefer to spend as little time editing as possible and don’t want to waste time searching for appropriate soundtrack music. Often, I feel like videobloggers, even experienced ones, rely too much on music soundtracks to make their work interesting. Or maybe I’m just a snob about these sorts of things.
I also agree with you about creating a culture where people are literaly adding creative works to the web. This is what I want to promote. While the rest of the stuff may be entertaining at times, its really little more than “obtanium” (what i can obtain), and does little to add to or enhance the participatory media sphere.