I have to say that I'm a bit perplexed at what appears like worldwide amnesia over the fact that when Google launched its Google Video platform, its main focus was on charging people to "rent" videos on its platform. There was a ton of press and excitement over it, with lots of people claiming that Google was going to remake the video market online, and lots of money would be made. And then... nope. People didn't pay. Instead, they all jumped over to an up-and-coming site called YouTube that didn't charge and Google eventually bought them out while quietly shutting down its pay-for-video efforts, which no one missed. And I guess because no one missed it, everyone seems to forget it exists, even though we try to remind people that Google tried this and failed.
But, instead, we get those professional journalists at the NY Times pointing out that this latest very poorly received pay-for-video trials are the company's "first forays" into charging for video content. Apparently the new test brought in a whopping $10,709.16 over the course of 10 days (and five movies). Google is trying to spin this as "exceeding expectations," but it's hard to see how that's the case. There may be models that get people to pay (Netflix's subscription model seems to get people to pay simply for the convenience factor), but I think direct charging like this is unlikely to get very far, and Google, of all companies, should know that, even if everyone else has forgotten.
One of the more famous examples of abuses of the YouTube video takedown process was the case of Lenz vs. Universal Music, which involved Universal Music issuing a YouTube DMCA takedown to a woman who posted a very short clip of her baby dancing to a Prince song that was playing in the background. It was a clear case of fair use, and while after the woman filed a counternotice Universal chose not to sue, the EFF filed a lawsuit against Universal Music, saying that the DMCA notice was fraudulent, since it was such an obvious case of fair use. While Universal Music argued that since fair use is just a "defense" and not a "right" it need not consider fair use in sending a takedown, the court disagreed.
You would think, then, that any takedown notices on similar short videos of kids dancing to music would avoid a similar scenario. Copycense points us to the news that a guy has received a notice from Google of potential infringement for his short clip of his kid dancing along to what appears to be a version (not the original) of the Kool & The Gang song "Celebration." As in the Lenz case, this video is a kid dancing to somewhere around 30 seconds of a song:
The notice claims that the video contains content for which the copyright is held by record label Razor & Tie. The guy who got the takedown seems a bit confused, in that he appears to be blaming McDonald's for the mess, when it appears McDonald's had nothing at all to do with the takedown. In fact, the record label Razor & Tie may not have anything to do with it either... as I'll explain below. The song used in the video was from a CD that came with a McDonald's Happy Meal. Looking around, it appears that in April, McDonald's announced a promotion with record label Kidz Bop to issue music CDs. Razor & Tie is the parent company of Kidz Bop. The problem here is clearly not McDonald's. All it did was include the CD in Happy Meals. It's got nothing to do with the takedown, and the guy's anger at McDonald's is misplaced (though, you could make the argument -- and it's a stretch -- that McDonald's should tell its partners to avoid these sorts of ridiculous copyright claims that scare people away from buying Happy Meals).
The next assumption, then, would be that Razor & Tie is guilty of sending the takedown, but I don't think that's true. If Razor & Tie had sent a DMCA takedown, the video would be down. When Google receives a DMCA takedown, it almost always (or perhaps always) pulls down the content immediately in order to retain its DMCA safe harbors. The user would then need to file a counternotice to start the process of potentially getting the video back up. The fact that the video is up and the notice the guy received simply tells him to review the videos suggests that no DMCA takedown was sent.
Instead, the blame almost certainly lies with Google's content recognition engine/filters that the record labels pushed them to use to try to catch copyright infringement ahead of time. Now, Razor & Tie is somewhat complicit here, in that it appears to have uploaded its catalog to train Google's filters (if I remember correctly -- and correct me if I'm wrong -- Google needs the copyright holder to submit copies for its filter to work). So, Google had this particular song on file, and noticed the similarity. Google's filter algorithms don't appear to consider fair use (or, perhaps more likely, they do a bad job of it in many cases) and the guy then is sent the automated notification, even though it makes everyone -- McDonald's, Razor & Tie and Google -- look bad, though the blame from the recipient appears to be in almost reverse order of culpability.
Unfortunately, the guy who received the notice also appears to be confused concerning his own rights. He says he is going to take down the video, though he clearly has a strong fair use case in asking for the video to be left alone. It seems likely that Google would allow the video to stay up, and I highly doubt that Razor & Tie would do anything else (it would be ridiculous to try to claim that this was not fair use).
Either way, this highlights a variety of interesting things. First, despite all the publicity of the Lenz case, these types of "takedowns" (even if it's not a DMCA takedown) still happen. Second, people on the receiving end of these notices assume that there is no recourse that would allow the video to stay up. People get official sounding notices and they assume they need to jump. Third, Google's content match filter isn't particularly good on fair use issues. Fourth, when these sorts of bogus notices are sent, it reflects very poorly on a variety of companies. In this case, McDonald's is getting most of the blame, despite being almost entirely blameless (well, it did decide to put out these silly music CDs, but that's a separate issue). Even Razor & Tie may be getting misplaced blame (though it may depend on the "rules" it set for Google's filter). Amusingly, it may be Google that deserves the most blame, and it appears to be getting the least.
Still, no matter what the situation, it's simply ridiculous that a guy filming 30 seconds of his kid dancing should have to worry about any of this.
It seems that the Italian legal system really has problems with YouTube. We've already detailed the absolutely ridiculous criminal lawsuit against Google execs over a video of some kids taunting another kid (why Google execs are criminally responsible for this still remains unexplained). Then there's the Italian politician who has tried to sue a bunch of YouTube commenters. And now comes the news (via Michael Scott) that a court has ordered YouTube to remove all content from Mediaset, an Italian broadcaster owned (of course) by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. It's unclear how the court thinks YouTube can somehow figure out what content is from Mediaset, but it doesn't appear that Italian law cares about such practicalities.
cram writes in to let us know of a filmmaker/post production guy in Uruguay who spent a grand total of $500 to make a 5 minute "robots attack the world" movie that he put on YouTube, and, in response, has now been given tens of millions of dollars by a Hollywood production company to do something more significant:
There are a few things that are a bit unclear from the story, which alternates at points between dollars and pounds, so you may question the validity of the details. However, watching the video is quite compelling, yet again. We've seen other top amateur films with amazing special effects made on the cheap, and this is another one to add to the pile. Hollywood keeps insisting that it needs to produce $200 million movies, and studio insiders, who like to hang out in our comments and dismiss amateur special effects as being worthless, will -- of course -- mock this as being nothing special. And, sure, you can definitely see that the quality of the $500 effort is not the same as a big budget Hollywood film. But it's not that far off. And what can be done today for $500 couldn't even have been matched by Hollywood's bigshots a decade ago. Just think what an amateur and $500 will do a decade from now? And then explain, again, why we're going to "need" to produce $200 million special effect bonanza movies again?
In the meantime, congrats to this guy, who turned $500 into a chance to play around with a lot more (though, not $200 million). It's difficult to turn that sort of opportunity down, though it would have been even cooler to see what he could have done on a smaller budget as well.
I recently wrote about Simon Cowell's conflicting statements expressing anger that YouTube didn't pay him for showing the Susan Boyle video millions of times, while then being happy that the same video will result in 10 million album sales. In my latest column for The Telegraph, I explore how the legacy music industry made a huge mistake in attacking YouTube and having videos pulled down off the site for not getting "paid" enough, when just a few years ago if they had wanted to put up music videos of their bands, they would have paid an arm and a leg for software, hosting and bandwidth -- and the consumer experience would have been a hell of a lot worse (RealNetworks media player, anyone?).
In thinking more about this, I was realizing how hypocritical the recording industry is on this particular topic. After all, they go on and on about how bad "free" is, and how they must get paid for any use of their content or they can't survive. And, yet, when someone gives them something for free (and YouTube provides free software, free bandwidth, free community and a bunch of other benefits), they complain that they're not getting paid. It's an incredible double standard. If the recording industry were actually being intellectually honest (I know, I know...), wouldn't they be demanding to pay Google for providing such a service, since (as they claim) you "can't make money from free"?
Separately, I had wanted to mention this in the Telegraph column, but ran out of room. It is worth noting that at least some of the industry has, in some ways, "embraced" YouTube with the launch of Vevo a couple weeks ago (though, that launch was completely bungled by apparently not expecting anyone to actually visit the site). I still haven't quite figured out what Vevo is, however. It's a joint venture of Google and Universal Music, with EMI and Sony Music as partners (Warner remains the major label holdout). As far as I can tell, though, it just seeks to be a separate platform to give the labels some more "control" over videos on YouTube. I still can't figure out why this needs to be a separate company, other than to play financial games. Isn't this just a feature of YouTube?
We were amazed a few months back when a variety of press reports started surfacing after Susan Boyle became famous via a YouTube clip, claiming what a shame it was that no one was monetizing that video. That whole thing seemed preposterous. YouTube provided free software, free hosting and free distribution and turned Susan Boyle into a world famous star, overnight. As we noted at the time, if you can't monetize that in some other manner, you don't belong in business. And, indeed, as tons of folks have reported, Susan Boyle's first album has been a massive top seller -- the best opening week selling album of the year, and the best opening for a "debut" album in sixteen years. And, yes, much of the reason that anyone knows of her existence is because of the clip on YouTube.
Cowell also spoke of the popularity of Susan Boyle's Britain's Got Talent audition, which saw her rendition of I Dreamed A Dream viewed 100 million times in its initial days on YouTube - without any kickback for him.
"That will change," he told GQ. Because, eventually, if YouTube are not paying, they're not getting the clip.
"But at the moment I'm very happy to get promotion around the world. She'll sell 10 million albums this year because of YouTube."
So, wait, is he upset or not? Would he have preferred that YouTube had not shown the video which it didn't pay for, and a very small number of people knew of Susan Boyle? Or is he happy that he got free hosting, free software, free bandwidth and free promotional value that helped him sell 10 million of her albums? Maybe he should be paying Google...
We've been absolutely stunned by the Italian attempt to prosecute Google execs over a YouTube video. If you don't recall the story, apparently some schoolboys taunted a disabled boy by throwing a tissue box at him. They filmed the entire ordeal and posted it to YouTube. Because of the video, the kids in the video were actually held liable for the taunting. It actually helped bring those kids to justice. Meanwhile, Google took down the video as soon as they were alerted to it by the authorities (within a couple hours of finding out about it). But Italian prosecutors insist not only that Google should have blocked the video entirely, but the fact that they left it up means that its execs are guilty of criminal violations and deserve jailtime.
In pressing the case forward, prosecutors are claiming that Google must have known about the nature of the video because there were comments on the YouTube video expressing disgust over the video. It's as if they believe that Google execs read all the comments posted to YouTube and use those to pick and choose which videos should stay up and which should be taken down.
In the meantime, I'm still wondering why Italian prosecutors are not trying to push the tissue manufacturer in jail as well, as I would argue that those who made the package of tissues thrown at the boy are at least as, if not more, responsible for the actions of those kids as Google.
I'm wondering if there's more to this, because it seems rather "un-Google-like." The makers of a set top box that can display internet content are complaining that Google is blocking them from displaying YouTube content, unless they agree to "partner" and commit to buying lots of ads (the amount is in dispute). If this sounds quite a bit like the ongoing battle between Hulu and Boxee, you might be right. However, in that case, at least you could sort of understand the (misguided) thinking behind it, since Hulu is owned by the colossally short-sighted content companies. But what's Google's excuse? If all these set top boxes are really doing is accessing free internet content and formatting it better for a TV, why stop it? They're really no different than accessing content via a computer and a browser -- it's just that the "computer" is a set top box and the "browser" is formatted for a television. That shouldn't require a special agreement, or any sort of ad buy commitment. Update: Received a confused and angry email from YouTube PR linking us to the very Wired article we linked to and demanding we add their PR statement (which is already in the Wired article). However, it does not actually answer the questions raised or change the point of this post. The fact that YouTube restricts set tops from accessing the content still does not make sense.
One of the great things about the internet these days is that it gives a platform for people who had no voice before to speak out. Of course, there are certain risks associated with that. Apparently a police officer in the Russian port of Novorossiisk put up a YouTube video accusing his superiors of corruption. The video got lots of attention (over 200,000 views) leading Russia's Interior Ministor (who is responsible for the police) to start a probe. That probe apparently lasted all of two hours before it ended and the police officer who made the video was fired. Of course, many will assume that this was punishing a whistleblower, which certainly sounds plausible -- though, an argument could also be made that if the guy really was making stuff up, that's pretty bad as well. Either way, it is a reminder that just because you have a platform to speak out (whether legitimately or not), it doesn't mean there aren't consequences for doing so (as unfair as those consequences might be in some cases).
Boing Boing points us to a story coming out of Italy, concerning what appears to be a former politician with a... colorful past, Salvatore Cuffaro (he was apparently found guilty of helping the Mafia), who is upset about the comments on a YouTube video that involves himself, but which is from the early 90s. So, he's "laid charges" against all 4,609 commenters (since then, many more have commented). I'm not familiar enough with the legal system of Italy to quite understand what these charges mean, but the link above comes from an Italian political party, Italia dei Valori, which apparently is considered "anti-corruption." Apparently, that party is offering to cover the legal defense of any of the commenters who need the help. The translated text from Italia dei Valori isn't entirely clear -- and I'm not even sure what's wrong with the video or the commenters, or what people are being charged with exactly -- so please help fill in the blanks in the comments. However, any time you have a politician even threatening to sue thousands of YouTube commenters, you know something has gone wrong.
