chrispederick.com

All of my videos on chrispederick.com are uploa­ded to You­Tube and then dis­pla­yed on my site using the You­Tube API. This works well since it allows me to deli­ver the videos through Flash so that they can play on the majo­rity of com­pu­ters and redu­ces the band­width usage on my site, while the loss in qua­lity is not a big issue since the videos are not exactly stun­ning works of art!

Howe­ver, in the last year I have had three videos remo­ved by You­Tube for copy­right infrin­ge­ment under the DMCA.

Videos

The three videos are all of out­door spor­ting events fil­med as a spec­ta­tor: two of motor racing at Brands Hatch in England and one of the Red Bull Air Race over San Fran­cisco. I have uploa­ded the three videos to Vimeo for refe­rence, although I do not know how long they will last before being asked to be removed:

• For­mula Renault
• Tou­ring Cars
• Red Bull Air Race

Email Noti­fi­ca­tion Of Infringement

The videos were up on You­Tube for a few months before I recei­ved an email saying the two motor racing videos were being remo­ved at the request of ITV and another email a few months later saying the Red Bull Air Race video was being remo­ved at the request of IMG Media.

The emails were all the same with just the third-party and video chan­ged. Here is what the Red Bull Air Race email said:

This is to notify you that we have remo­ved or disa­bled access to the follo­wing mate­rial as a result of a third-party noti­fi­ca­tion by IMG Media clai­ming that this mate­rial is infringing:

Red Bull Air Race

Please Note: Repeat inci­dents of copy­right infrin­ge­ment will result in the dele­tion of your account and all videos uploa­ded to that account. In order to avoid future stri­kes against your account, please delete any videos to which you do not own the rights, and refrain from uploa­ding addi­tio­nal videos that infringe on the copy­rights of others. For more infor­ma­tion about YouTube’s copy­right policy, please read the Copy­right Tips guide.

If you elect to send us a coun­ter notice, please go to our Help Cen­ter to access the instructions.

Please note that under Sec­tion 512(f) of the Copy­right Act, any per­son who kno­wingly mate­rially mis­re­pre­sents that mate­rial or acti­vity was remo­ved or disa­bled by mis­take or misi­den­ti­fi­ca­tion may be sub­ject to liability.

The copy­right tips con­tain some exam­ples of copy­righ­ted con­tent and this is most likely the one that applies to my videos:

Videos of live con­certs, even if you cap­tu­red the video yourself

Even if you took the video your­self, the per­for­mer con­trols the right to use his/her image in a video, the songw­ri­ter owns the rights to the song being per­for­med, and some­ti­mes the venue prohi­bits fil­ming without per­mis­sion, so this video is likely to infringe some­body else’s rights.

What Is The Point?

So it appears as though legally the third-parties are in the right in asking You­Tube to remove these videos, but my ques­tion is what is the point? None of the videos is lon­ger than 90 seconds and the qua­lity is not great so I do not think any­body is really going to be watching these ins­tead of the tele­vi­sion footage.

Surely the more likely sce­na­rio is that someone might see these clips and think that tou­ring car racing or the Red Bull Air Race looks cool and maybe they will check it out the next time it is on tele­vi­sion or live in their area. By remo­ving these videos it seems to me that they are just remo­ving free adver­ti­sing for their product.

Hope­fully media com­pa­nies will wake up to the pos­si­bi­li­ties of online video, but in the mean­time I guess I’ll just have to stick to videos of cats like this one from Abby: