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Adverts Mysteriously Appended to YouTube Clips
hey0you0guy writes "For the past few months copyrighted clips of shows have been edited to include advertisements for Gawker Media. These clips have been uploaded to the video sharing site YouTube by a user going by the handle Belowtheradar. These clips are then being linked to by Gawker itself: 'Gawker.com, for example, on Thursday featured a YouTube clip from ABC's talk show The View. At the beginning of the video, there is an ad for Gawker. On Wednesday, Valleywag posted a link to a video of television satirist Stephen Colbert talking about Wikipedia. At the beginning of that video there is an ad for Valleywag, a blog dedicated to Silicon Valley gossip.' CNet contacted the copyright holders for the videos (which range from NBC to Apple), and mostly received responses of 'we're looking into it.' At least two groups did confirm they did not give permission for this kind of advertisement."
n/m
A "Ilikebees" kind of stealth advertising.
I always knew that advertisers wanted eyeballs, but wouldnt think they'd gunk up a free vid site. Guess thats just high bandwidth spammers.
Corporations stoop to cheap, possible illegal advertizing gimics.
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
We all know they have to come up with an interesting way to pay for all of the copyright lawsuits that are forthcoming.
When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail
i wonder how they got there. i wonder if anyone will ever know. maybe leonard nimoy will do a show about it.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
The problem will only get worse as (a) YouTube starts paying users to upload content (b) users keep uploading unauthorized copies of shows and (c) YouTube starts needing to generate profits and adds more advertisements such as pre- and post-stream ads.
Why is this a problem? Now, instead of simply a DMCA takedown notice, YouTube is far more liable for damages because they made a direct profit off of the usage of unauthorized content. The users are more liable, too, since they will make a profit from YouTube.
They didn't cause a bomb scare.
I wonder if I use bold in my signature, people will notice my posts.
I know people (if that's what you can call them) have been spamming for years, even before the internet - with telemarketers, junk mail and people handing out leaflets. But isn't this the first instance of someone advertising on ANOTHER person's content? With TV ads, the money advertisers give the station is given (in part) to the content providers.. junk mailers pay for their own paper, and even spam doesn't piggyback on legitimate emails (for the most part). IMHO, this is one of the lowest things they've done to date - they are completely destroying the already shaky advertising process by not themselves contributing towards their advertising costs (ie not paying content), ignoring the very minimal video editing and uploading costs). This isn't just another spam scam..
Commodore64_love: I don't comprehend people who're so frightened of death that they'll bankrupt themselves to stay alive
I really hope this is not going to be come common practice on Youtube. One of the reasons why Youtube is so great (and also probably why it is so successful) is because there are no pre-video ads. I hope that pre-video ads are only played if the user who is submitting the video chooses them to be played as part of some revenue sharing program that has been thrown around lately.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
I'm in ur tube... advertizing ur vid3oz
Playing Devil's advocate I'd say this is a smaller scale version of what YouTube itself did. YouTube advertised itself with "borrowed" content to become famous and increase net value.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
I bet there's no way for an uploader to declare their content advert-free.
No one saw this coming? Free is not a business model.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
I assume a lot of people just click through the terms and conditions, but as a perpetual cynic (and coming from a family of legal folk), I generally have a quick read through. Here's an interesting excerpt from youtube terms
For clarity, you retain all of your ownership rights in your User Submissions. However, by submitting the User Submissions to YouTube, you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the User Submissions in connection with the YouTube Website and YouTube's (and its successor's) business,
So, big surprise ! They've got a derievative work with an ad all over it. And I asked a lawyer. She said that that's pretty standard boilerplate, except hardly anyone modifies your content to include ads. The delivery of ads has been traditionally out of band of the content stream, but this makes sense.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
1) Where's the "mysterious" part? Someone's putting ads into the clip before uploading them. Nothing "mysterious."
2) Appending means they're being tacked onto the end. If they're being added at the beginning, they're being prepended. Next time save the embarrassment and just say "added."
rooooar
RUN!
Best Slashdot Co
The knee-jerk reaction is obviously to sue and see what happens.
So we all just wait until a network sues, then see what happens.
The government can't save you.
The clock is ticking down to the collapse of YouTube and similar sites, or the transformation of these sites into something quite different. The main problem here again is the fact that stuff gets posted without any real humans looking at it ahead of time. They can build all of the filters they want, we've already seen this with the old Napster. Unless postings are moderated before appearing, copyright abuses will continue to happen. Appended ads are just the latest twist. Eventually the courts are going to force YouTube to put the brakes on and humanly review all posted content, which, of course, will take a lot of time and change the way people use YouTube.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
How youtube is going to pay contributors...
I think on the one hand, Gawker Media has gotten a *lot* of publicity from this - particularly after being discovered. Every news story on the incident has a link to their web page. But on the other hand, they now face a barrage of legal battles after admitting publicly that the uploader (belowtheradar) is '[their] video guy...'.
I doubt anybody will follow in their footsteps once the courts make an example of them, and that is very likely to happen.
In related news, The halfwit blowhard Amanda Congdon managed to get her little 'quote' of disdain in to the news article above ; so it's official, every worthless media-wh0&e not worth watching has gotten their 15 minutes of fame. Way to push the story.
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speaking of 15 minutes of fame.
Ace
Do a search for 'Terry Tate' on youtube and you will see actual full length commercials posted.
What's mysterious about "user adds ads to video before uploading" ?
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
"These clips are then being linked to by Gawker itself: 'Gawker.com, for example, on Thursday featured a YouTube clip from ABC's talk show The View. At the beginning of the video, there is an ad for Gawker."
If they are linking to the videos from the site that the ads are for, wouldn't people obviously already know about the site?!?
Marketing for marketing sake?
99 out of 100 people can be well behaved, but it takes only one asshat to stink up the whole place and make the experience miserable for everyone and ruin a forum's value or attract unwanted attention
newsgroups, email, many news aggregator sites (not slashdot, thankfully): all it takes is 1 or 2 committed asshats to ruin the fun for everyone else. usually advertising and spam. they see their own aggrandizement at the sake of everyone else's misery, and they choose to make everyone else miserable for the sake of something selfish and smammler in importance
it's predictable and inevitable that any utopian scheme that relies on everyone to behave nicely will fail. there's always one a**hole who will act like an a**hole. it's pretty much guaranteed. human nature is what it is. there's no vhanging or getting around it's good, it's bad, and it's ugly
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
It must have something to do with that "opinion center" on Slashdot. Can somebody Tivo the Internet for me? Thanks.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
"' CNet contacted the copyright holders for the videos (which range from NBC to Apple), and mostly received responses of 'we're looking into it.' At least two groups did confirm they did not give permission for this kind of advertisement."
The two groups went on to say "And we are kicking ourselves for not thinking of it first!"
"But this one goes to 11!"
Ahhhmmm, excuse me. Gosh, I just hate to bodder you. But, ahm, you know what really confuses me? The ads are there! YouTube put them there. How about that? Ahhhh well, it's probably nothing. Sorry to have boddered you.
If Nalgene water bottles are outlawed, only outlaws will have Nalgene water bottles.
I hate that nowadays, if something exists, it MUST be advertised on. Hell, they even have trucks that drive around just to display ads. Not to mention the oh so smart people who get ads tatoo'd on themselves. I can understand that advertising can generate revenue, but there is a point where it becomes so obtrusive and annoying that it makes me not want to buy the product.
Then again, people do say 'there is no such thing as bad publicity', and I just hope they are wrong. Let me live my life without advertisements everywhere I look, please.
There's actually a very good reason for this. Gawker put the ads in front of the clips to prevent other blogs from using the video without giving Gawker props. Gawker essentially attempted to declare a limited form of ownership. They tried to have their cake and eat it, too: Offloading the video hosting costs to YouTube while trying to say "No one else can use our videos without paying the toll."
This is the reverse of the eBaum's World business strategy. eBaum's just strips copyrights and watermarks from the videos that they steal. I wonder how long it'll take until an enterprising young author gets ripped off and takes them for a few million.
you can never get rid of asocial idiocy, but if you design the system well enough, a la slashdot's comment system and wikipedia in general, you can reduce it to the level of a fart in the wind, rather than a whole love canal sized boondoggle
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
If you are hosting the file, and distributing it freely, how is it illegal to display an ad just before it? Lots of video sites display banner ads, and many others will display a short advertisement clip before the video itself loads. Are these also illegal?
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
What's mysterious about this? Did anyone actually expect people uploading other people's material to YouTube to be ethical?
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
You left out this one:
I'm in ur base, killing ur d00dz
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
The identification added (they're not the only ones to do this by far) is usually done to discourage others from linking to the video and stealing bandwidth. In this case it appears that adding tags has become a habit.
I don't see how one could complain about using YouTube this way - they DO offer free video hosting. What's more questionable is taking someone else's copyrighted work and altering it by adding a trailer, or embedding a logo in the JPEG, or a watermark, or whatever. That's not even close to ethical or legal...
Gawker media (who owns sites like lifehacker, gizmodo, valleywag, kotaku and others) is putting the ads in front of it. Go to Gizmodo and look at their videos - the Gizmodo produced ones will have Gizmodo ads on it.
I believe it's Gawker media policy to do that for all Gawker-media originated (i.e., wasn't off some other (non-Gawker) blog) videos to put the ads in the front.
I'm surprised it's come up now - Gizmodo has been doing this for a few months now...
Would be interesting if Youtube offered a low-cost premium service to have an ad-free service on the page, and also no clutter in the pre-/post- rolls for the clips. I'm finding all the ad-litter on pages tiresome. Ad-blocker on firefox is great for this, but the video rolls are insidious.