YouTube, You Be Careful
In the Future of the Web feature I wrote for the November issue of PC World, I suggested four trends that could cripple the Internet. Several readers disagreed with one of the trends I called out: the crackdown on video-sharing sites putting a damper on public opinion and discourse.
The bigger issues are, I think, what material should be copyrightable, and are the existing rights associated with copyright law appropriate for today's soaking-in-multimedia world?
If Joe in Joliet takes his camcorder with him when he goes to see The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause, tapes the movie, and then and uploads the entire thing to a video-sharing site for hundreds of thousands to, clearly Joe should get busted. If the video-sharing site encouraged him to upload the video or promotes it in any way, the site should get busted as well.
(Note that YouTube limits files to 10 minutes in length, so you couldn't really do this anyway. But for the sake of argument, let's continue.)
What if Joe clips out 10 minutes from his DVD copy of Bull Durham and uploads it? He didn't rip the entire movie; heck, people who watch the clip might be encouraged to go out and buy the movie. Should Joe get jumped by studio lawyers?
And what about clips taken from television? If you upload an entire episode of the NBC show Heroes--commercials and all--and millions of people watch it on YouTube rather than their living-room tubes, you could argue that NBC should get credit for the viewings in its Nielsen ratings, rather than get bent out of shape. NBC should *pay* YouTube in this case, rather than the other way around, and indeed, NBC, CBS, and other media companies have already forged agreements to put some of their content on YouTube and share advertising revenue. And since I expressed concern about Universal Music, that company has signed its own agreement with the site.
However, Joe from the street would probably upload highlights of a show without the interstitial ads that the television network would insist on. I agree that studios ought to be able to make money from commercials, but some bootleggers may perform a valuable editorial public service. For example, if someone clips a few telling segments from Fox's Trading Spouses: Meet Your New Mommy and adds some comments to illustrate his point that the show is an affront to humanity, I'd value his opinion much more highly than one from someone who simply writes that in a blog posting. From a studio's standpoint, this constitutes illegal distribution; from a consumer standpoint, something like this ought to be protected free speech.
Now what about things that aren't original creations, such as news clips? (The video clip I cited isn't quite correct: The reporter is suing over the posting of his video of the beating of Reginald Denny. He shot the video during the riots sparked by the police officers who arrested Rodney King being acquitted of any crimes.) Although the clip is horrifying, I'd argue that it's something that should be in the public domain: It's already been seen by millions and millions of people, it's historical, and it's educational. How do we learn from the past if we have to pay to see such things?
See this Wikipedia entry if you have an afternoon to kill reading up on the subject of public domain. But the idea is that it's for the common good that society has access to some works. The Denny video, I think, falls into this category, but it's only 14 years old--under current law, it's decades short of falling into the public domain.
The issues here are so complicated that no one seems capable of resolving them in an unbiased way. Organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) have done an admirable job of fighting for consumers' rights, but even its efforts haven't put the issue down. That indicates to me that copyright issues will be remain a threat to the Internet. Do you disagree?
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Hopefully, all of these things will work out in favor of consumers. "Fair use" is something that is being severely challenged in today's "big corporation, copyright-lawsuit-happy" digital environment. Honestly, uploading a complete copy of a DVD is blatant copyright infringement and the offender should be punished. My opinion toward how broadcast television shows are treated is in variance, however. I recently received a DMCA notice from my ISP for downloading an episode of NBC's "Heroes" with bit torrent. A DMCA notice is sent at the behest of the actual copyright owners who file a complaint to your ISP. I missed the 3rd episode and don't see what harm I am inflicting upon NBC by downloading it, viewing it and then deleting it afterwards. Had I done the same thing with a DVR, Tivo, or even a VCR it's deemed completely acceptable. No, there weren't any commercials in the version I downloaded, so that must be why they hate fans like me. To Hell with NBC, I say.
You now don't need to go to such lengths to get your episodes of Heroes, or CSI, or Lost. Plus you don't need to pay for it either. Just go the ABC.com, NBC.com, or CBS.com to watch the shows. Last week my wife watched CSI that we had Tivoed, and I watched NCIS from the laptop off CBS.com.
Don't hate the technolgoy, embrace it.
Episodes of these shows may be available on their respective websites. They are generously given in poor quality, interspersed with loud terrible commercials, & they frequently cannot be downloaded in completion (even with commercials) meaning you cannot watch the show with a poor connection.
It is their material, so they have a right to protect it, but if "giving it away" on their site isn't stopping people from taking their chances with the DMCA then I think they need to rethink either their policy or their release format.
On the other hand, prices are so outrageous that many people cannot afford TV (& my bunny ears barely function enough to see), and/or cannot afford DVD rentals. Although to some these things may seems cheap, believe it or not there are some pretty broke people out there who work their asses off for barely any return. That said, I don't think the misers at any of these distribution companies deserve any sympathy and I will continue to steal from them.