Viral Video Producers Want To Charge You To Embed Their Videos

from the that's-not-viral dept

You may have seen some of the rather popular videos by Common Craft, which has built a rather large following based on these videos about technology and social media using paper diagrams on whiteboards. What the videos are really good at is simplifying things in a way that's easy for people to understand. For example, the video, Twitter in Plain English has received nearly 1.7 million views and is often sent around to people who are trying to understand Twitter.

Like most viral video efforts, the videos are hosted on YouTube, which makes them easy to embed and share. Except, apparently, that's not working within Common Craft's business model. An anonymous reader sent over a story about how the company has set up a new licensing scheme for embedding its videos on websites, and the fees get pretty high pretty quickly. Digital Inspiration notes that embedding one of those videos on a popular website or blog could cost thousands, since the prices are based on views. Lee LeFever, of Common Craft, responded in the comments that this was targeted at companies, rather than "bloggers." However, it's not clear if this means the videos will remain on YouTube -- in which case, companies can just embed them automatically -- or if they'll keep them off of YouTube.

Either way, it's difficult to see this working out. I'm sure some companies will pay, but on the whole, it seems to break the value chain here. Common Craft could, instead, offer up the ability to make custom videos for companies, but on its website, it says that they'd rather just focus on their own videos -- and points anyone who wants custom videos to a series of other video producers. The thing is, if you want your video to be viral, you can't also charge for it. There are three options that I can see, and none of them seem that good:

1. They leave the videos on YouTube as embeddable, and just hope that companies will pay them anyway.
   
   In this case, many companies would likely embed the videos anyway, not even realizing that CC wanted them to pay up. That leads to confusion and no legal basis for CC's request. After all, it put the video on a video sharing site and allowed embedding. That seems like a pretty clear authorization to embed the video.
   
   
2. They leave the videos on YouTube, but not as embeddable, and make companies pay to embed
   
   As we saw with the band Ok Go, when EMI disabled embedding for the band's videos, traffic plummeted 90%. You don't go viral if you don't allow embeds.
   
   
3. They stop using YouTube altogether, and don't release the videos publicly themselves
   
   It's hard to be viral when the videos aren't anywhere online.

So with all of that, I'm still confused as to how this offering works. It seems like an attempt at the honor system to pretend that an abundant resource isn't abundant. Instead of doing that, why not focus on the scarcities -- such as creating custom videos (as mentioned), consulting (scarce knowledge) or advertising/sponsorship (selling the scarcity of attention). It just seems like other models would make a lot more business sense.

Filed Under: embedding, fees, videos
Companies: common craft

EMI Gets State Farm To Sponsor Embedding Ok Go Video -- But Should You Need A Sponsor To Embed?

from the ok-stop dept

We were just writing -- yet again -- about EMI's short-sighted decision to block all embedding of Ok Go's videos (even ones that the band produced entirely on their own). This is despite the fact that it was the widespread embedding of the famed treadmill video that helped Ok Go become as well known as it has -- earning EMI a lot of money. Now comes the news of a "resolution" to the issue, as EMI will allow an Ok Go video to be embedded thanks to an as-yet-unexplained "sponsorship" by State Farm. While this shows, in some way, how different business models can step in and help pay for content, it worries me that EMI now seems to think a video needs to be directly sponsored to allow for embedding. Does EMI truly not understand that embedding is what helped Ok Go become so well known? There's no reason why they couldn't have allowed the regular embedding to remain and still have done a sponsor deal on top of it.

Filed Under: embedding, ok go, sponsorship, videos
Companies: emi, state farm

Dutch Judges Plagiarize, Potentially Infringe, Blog Post In Decision About Copyright

from the pot,-kettle dept

A little while ago, we had a rather long and heated discussion over the question of whether or not embedding/hotlinking is infringement when the original content is hosted/served from elsewhere (in an authorized manner). I cannot see a truly defensible legal explanation for how that is infringing (the content exists solely in two places -- the original server and the browser of the user, both of which are authorized). However, some lawyers clearly disagree. Over in the Netherlands, in fact, a court has disagreed and claimed that embedding is, in fact, infringement. While I think this is a poor ruling that makes little sense, there's something more interesting in this particular ruling (sent in by an anonymous reader). It turns out that, in explaining why embedding should be considered infringing, the judges plagiarized the exact wording of a blog post by a Dutch lawyer.

Now, plagiarism and copyright infringement are two different (though sometimes overlapping) things, but it does seem a bit ironic -- and even under Dutch copyright law, this bit of copying could be seen as infringement as well. Apparently, the judges directly cut and pasted the following two sentences:

"in case law and legal literature it is generally held that an embedded link constitutes a publication. After all, the material can be viewed or heard within the context of the website of those who placed the link, and placement causes the material to reach a new audience."

The exact quote above came from a blog post by lawyer Douwe Linders, who had no idea the judges were going to copy it. While it seems like a simple quote like this should be perfectly legal in any context, let alone a legal decision, the discussion of this notes that while Dutch copyright law does let you quote short bits of content from others for a variety of reasons, it requires attribution. In this particular case, no attribution was provided.

What makes it even worse, of course, is that the quoted/plagiarized/infringing bit might not even be accurate. As we discussed in our own post on the subject, there appears to be significant disagreement over whether or not embedding authorized content could be seen as infringing -- and apparently, there is a widespread debate about it in Dutch legal circles as well, saying that it is far from readily agreed upon in the legal literature.

Filed Under: copyright, embedding, hotlinking, netherlands, plagiarism

Ok Go Explains Video Embedding Issue, Blames YouTube (Partly) And EMI (Only A Bit); Sells Uniforms

from the but-that-doesn't-make-much-sense dept

So last week we discussed how EMI was seriously harming the ability of the latest Ok Go video to go viral, by putting on geoblocks and forbidding embedding. The band had said it was upset about this and pointed people to a Vimeo version -- despite the fact that EMI is suing Vimeo for posting music videos (um, oops) and Vimeo supposedly hates commercial content.

The band has now come out with a more detailed explanation that puts more of the blame on YouTube, while also explaining how the band gets to "snort drugs off the Queen of England" (so it's got more important things to deal with). Well, specifically, the band points out that way back when, Google agreed to give record labels a bit of money every time someone watched one of their videos on YouTube. That much is well-known, of course. However, the band claims that this little bit of money is only paid on videos that are seen directly via YouTube, rather than on embedded videos. Why? Well, because advertisers on YouTube only let ads be shown on YouTube itself, so they're not suddenly showing up on some random website (though, of course, those same advertisers probably have no problem using Google AdSense, which does the same thing, but....). So the band suggests the issue is more with YouTube and its refusal to count embedded videos in the views... though it claims it's been arguing with EMI to allow the video anyway.

This still seems backwards and shortsighted by EMI. Even if it's not getting paid for the embedded videos, it seems quite likely that the embeds actually lead to more views on YouTube itself, as people click through. Instead, now, all of the views are going to go to Vimeo. The company EMI is suing. Sensible.

In the meantime, though, Ian from Topspin alerts us to the news that Ok Go is using the Topspin platform to offer up, as a part of its "reason to buy," the uniforms and props from the video shoot. Of course, I would imagine those things would be in higher demand if EMI let people embed the video in the first place...

Filed Under: embedding, ok go, regional blocks, viral videos
Companies: capitol records, emi, google, vimeo, youtube

EMI/Capitol Records Works Hard To Make Ok Go's Viral Video Less Viral

from the marketing-geniuses dept

You probably know of the band Ok Go's famous treadmill video: It helped attract a ton of attention to the band. The band's lead singer, Damian Kulash, has been quite outspoken about why bands need to be fan friendly, and even took to the pages of the NY Times to discuss the evils of DRM, and has spoken before Congress on music industry issues as well. The band has always done quite a lot to try to connect with fans and not hinder them in any way -- which is part of why it has such a huge following.

So, with the band coming out with a new quirky video, you would think that it would be readily available all over the place. However, Martin points us to the news that the video was put up on YouTube by the band's label, Capitol Records, a subsidiary of EMI, but it did so with geoblocking and with embedding disabled. In fact, if you go to the original treadmill video, you'll see that Capitol Records has disabled embedding on that video as well. Notice that I have it embedded above? That's because I used the embed code from an earlier post back when embedding was allowed. Yet now, go and click on the video... and it gives you an error message saying embedding has been disabled. All those people who helped spread that video? Capitol Records broke them all. Nice of them. It's impossible to fathom what the folks at EMI/Capitol are thinking here. They are making it more difficult to make a viral video viral. Both blocking it from being viewed in various regions and blocking embeds makes no sense at all.

Of course, the band recognizes this and are pissed off about it:

As for the issue of geoblocking, we're incredibly upset that the youtube versions of our videos can't be embedded. Just one more example of major labels accelerating their own demise. We (and every individual band out there) have exactly zero leverage in this particular battle, however. So we post to other sites as well.

In fact, the band itself has now put the video up on Vimeo as well, which does allow embedding: Of course, given that Vimeo has these bizarre and nonsensical rules against commercial use, and this is obviously a commercial video, you have to wonder why this is allowed. Oh yeah, also, it's worth remembering that Capitol Records just sued Vimeo for copyright infringement -- so I can't see the label being all that thrilled about this. Either way, the video is going up in a variety of other places in embeddable format, but not by Capitol Records, meaning that it gets more fragmented, less viral, and hurts Capitol Records. And people wonder why EMI and the other major labels are collapsing.

Filed Under: embedding, ok go, regional blocks, viral videos
Companies: capitol records, emi, vimeo

Hulu Telling Sites To Stop Embedding So Much

from the this-is-not-how-the-internet-works dept

Once again, we're left wondering how Hulu can survive, given that its ownership has too much interest in restricting what its customers want to do. Following braindead efforts to block specialized browsers, even though they access Hulu content just like regular browsers, combined with blocking anonymous proxies, even those used for perfectly legitimate reasons, Hulu is apparently now cracking down on sites that embed a lot of its videos -- yes, despite having embed functionality specifically allowed.

You may recall that one of the key reasons why YouTube became so popular in the first place was a little javascript hack that made it incredibly easy to embed the video directly into any other website (while still hosting the content on YouTube). Suddenly, rather than having to link to the video, it was easy to have video on any other website. Hulu of course recognized the value of that and included embed code functionality as well, but quickly found itself unsure how to deal with the fact that people actually used it. Back when Hulu was still in private beta, requiring invites to access the sites, some other sites quickly decided to just embed all the videos on their own sites, pulling in the traffic that Hulu could have generated for itself. Many sites apparently are still embedding lots of Hulu shows, and Hulu has simply decided to tell those sites to stop. As NewTeeVee notes in the link above, nothing good will come from this policy. It comes across as being rather against how the web works and how people expect the web to work. In the end it just appears like yet another "but we can stop people from doing what they want to do" move that all too often comes from those in legacy industries.

Filed Under: embedding, videos
Companies: hulu

Great Moments In AP Protectionism: Demands Takedown Of Videos It Purposely Shared With Affiliate

from the brilliant-work dept

A bunch of folks are submitting the latest and greatest in the Associated Press's attempt to become the RIAA of news. The AP, smartly, has a YouTube channel, where it puts up a bunch of AP videos, with the embed code enabled. An AP affiliate in Tennessee reasonably embedded some of those videos... and were promptly accused of "stealing" the AP's licensed content and ordered to take it down. There are so many things wrong with this situation it's difficult to know where to start:

• It's the AP's own YouTube channel.
• This radio station is an AP affiliate.
• The AP turned on the embedding function
• When told all of this, the AP exec demanding the takedown had no idea it had a YouTube channel.

This is clearly part the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing... but it's also a sign of how out of touch the AP remains. When it purposely offers up content for sharing, it did something smart. Demanding that anyone take down content that was specifically designed to be shared in this manner is just amazing.

Filed Under: copyright, embedding, protectionism, takedowns, videos
Companies: associated press

Is Embedding Infringement? MPAA Sues Two Sites

from the we-may-find-out dept

While we still need to wait for the end result of the YouTube/Viacom case to learn whether hosting infringing videos is infringement itself, there's another open question about whether or not linking to or embedding infringing videos is also infringing. It seems difficult to understand how it could be infringing, as it's no different than pointing someone to freely available content (and, technically, linking and embedding are no different at all -- it's just some HTML). The person (or computer) doing the linking or embedding has no idea whether the content being linked or embedded is infringing -- and it seems reasonable to believe that if it's available online, there's nothing wrong with linking to it.

Yet, here we have the MPAA suing two sites that both link to and embed various movies. The two sites in question, FOMD (Found Online Movie Database) and MovieRumor, don't host the movies themselves. They merely point people to various movies that are publicly available online. It would seem like a rather drastic stretch of copyright law to claim that is also infringement, but don't be too surprised at how this will be argued. The MPAA will play on emotional, rather than rational, arguments -- and it may actually work, given some similar cases in the past.

Filed Under: copyright, embedding, fair use, legal issues, linking
Companies: fomd, movierumor, mpaa

We Can't Quote The AP... But Can Embed Its Videos?

from the left-hand,-meet-the-right-hand dept

The Associated Press is still insisting that bloggers shouldn't be excerpting its articles online without a license -- but apparently no one told the folks pushing AP videos. Jon Ashley wonders about this difference, noting that the AP has its own YouTube Channel, where it appears that the videos all have embedding enabled. This, of course, takes us right back to the question we asked last week concerning whether or not embedding videos can be seen as infringement. In the meantime, since the AP insists it really wants to be a part of the "conversation," can it explain why embedding videos is great, while quoting is not?

Filed Under: copyright, embedding, fair use, legal issues
Companies: associated press

Blog Receives Takedown Notice For Embedding A Video With Authorized Embed Code

from the keep-the-lawyers-busy dept

A year and a half ago, I wondered outloud if embedding an infringing video would be considered infringement as well. Technically, it's no different than just linking to infringing content. However, imagine an even more ridiculous scenario: what if a website puts up its own videos with an embed code, but then sends out takedown notices to anyone who embeds it? Russ writes in to let us know that's exactly what happened with an Iowa sports blog that was trying to raise awareness of the floods in Iowa (a good thing) and embedded a video from the website of the Des Moines Register using the very embed code offered by the Des Moines Register. So what happens? The Des Moines Register sends a takedown notice claiming copyright infringement. After complaining about this on the blog, and getting some attention over it, someone from the Register apologized and said that it was an overeager staffer who was unfamiliar with the fact that videos on the site included embed codes.

While it's great that the Des Moines Register quickly recognized its mistake, apologized and promised to make sure it wouldn't happen again, it still does raise some questions that are almost certain to show up in the future. It's still not clear if a site is responsible for embedding infringing videos. But what if the video's copyright holder doesn't like how a video is being used? What if, for example (and this is not what happened in this case) a site had used that same video of the Iowa floods to mock the victims? I would imagine that it would be tempting in that case to send out the takedown notice, even though the embed code had been offered up. We're almost certainly going to see this happen in the near future. Someone who puts up a video with an embed code is going to be unhappy with how that content is being used, and will claim infringement, even though the content was freely offered up.

The copyright implications of embedding are not at all clear -- and that means you can be sure that lawsuits are on their way.

Filed Under: copyright, des moines register, embedding, legal issues