YouTube AntiPiracy Policy Likened to 'Mafia Shakedown'

A C|Net article discusses reactions to YouTube's newly proposed antipiracy software policy. The company is now offering assistance for IP holders, allowing them to keep track of their content on the YouTube service ... if they sign up with the company for licensing agreements. A spokesman for Viacom (already in a fight with YouTube to take down numerous video clips) called this policy 'unacceptable', and another industry analyst likened it to a 'mafia shakedown.' YouTubes cites the challenges of determining ownership of a given video clip as the reason for this policy, and hopes that IP owners will cooperate in resolving these issues. Some onlookers also feel that these protestations are simply saber-rattling before an eventual deal: "'The debates are about negotiations more than anything else--who's going to pay whom and how much,' said Saul Berman, IBM's global media and entertainment strategy leader."

Comments

So they bemoan having to pay for their enforcement

[plasmacutter]

Funny, everyone else has to pay for their own enforcement.

The public has to pay for police work in taxes, the government has to pay employees for studies, every major corporation has to pay their security guards and in most cases security system contractors to keep their buildings secure.

The media industries should be no different. If they want others to be looking out for their interests, they should be paying those people for their troubles.

Screw YouTube...

[MsGeek]

...there are other places to post video. I hope they don't wind up the iTunes of online video.

A friend of mine's Daria fan animations (no they aren't hentai) got taken off of YouTube. Viacom has been approving of fan films in the past, the most elaborate of which being the Star Trek: The Original Series continuation "The New Voyages," hosted at http://www.newvoyages.com/ . The fan films got swept up in the Viacom/YouTube dragnet. This pissed me off because quite a few people from the Daria fandom were involved, and they really were nicely done.

Hopefully an appeal to have the fan films reinstated will be successful.

The screwed thing is that unless you take a lot of trouble with 3rd party apps you cannot download a YouTube .FLV. And the resulting file is pretty crappy looking no matter what you do, because .FLVs are so intensely compressed and lose so much in the lossy compression process. I mean WTF? Big Media is getting FREE PUBLICITY even with the copyrighted stuff. They are using YouTube as a promotional tool on the one hand, then on the other they are screwing the fans.

There are alternatives. Metacafe, Ning, Revver...all excellent choices for showing your stuff. And there is always BIT TORRENT for something a bit higher quality and a bit more permanent.

Big media needs to grow a brain. YouTube needs to grow a spine. Everyone wins when content is up on YouTube. Everyone loses when these silly fights start up.