It seems like theft is kind of a theme this week. In today’s installment, a blogger uploaded a copy of a short film to which he did not own the rights to a video-hosting service. The service responded by shutting down his account.
The blogger, oddly, turns around and warns his readers to “beware” of that video-hosting service.
I really can’t wrap my head around this at all. That blogger was engaged in an act of theft, period, end of paragraph. And unless he just got off the spaceship from Arcturus, he knew it. So why the affectation of surprise? “It bothers me to think they can remove an account so fast with no explanation,” he wrote. Well, if said blogger had bothered to glance at the site’s copyright policy, he would have seen that the video-hosting service in question promises to “block access to or remove material that it believes in good faith to be copyrighted material” and “remove and discontinue service to repeat offenders.”
If you want to spend your day stealing other people’s work and taking your chances, that’s fine. You’re an adult; it’s your choice. But at least have the basic human dignity not to act all surprised when you have to live with the consequences of your actions.
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I take it then, you’ve never pirated anything on the web.
Doug
Wednesday, October 24th, 2007, 8:28 pm
Doug, what does that comment have to do with anything Jeff said?
Jeff’s not judging the blogger. He’s saying that the blogger shouldn’t act shocked and upset when the site took exactly the action against him as they outlined in their copyright policy.
Once again, we have someone who thinks the internet is an all-you-can-eat buffet. He pays a set of fees to get to the internet, and suddenly everything is his for the taking, without any consequences. So thinks the glutton who eats too much orange chicken and Mongolian beef at the China Inn.
Derek G.
Wednesday, October 24th, 2007, 9:14 pm
This is the line that cracks me up, “I think we’ll be looking for another video service…… as we can’t take the risk.”
Can’t take the risk? Risk of what, getting CAUGHT STEALING again? As far as I can see, the only risk he took was downloading that video, not uploading it onto blip.tv.
If you haven’t noticed, he updated the blog with a response to yours. He’s not being a TOTAL baby, but I am myself pretty dumbfounded by the way people treat this issue, as though getting their accounts deleted is the harshest punishment imaginable for committing a freaking crime. If anything, after reading his blog, I would be MORE inclined to use that video hosting site for the simple fact that they clearly don’t tolerate copyright infringement. I kinda respect that.
Elissa
Thursday, October 25th, 2007, 9:50 am
and the blogger shoots back at Jeff, whining that it was “too harsh” for the hosting service to remove his whole account, and griping that its “it is free on the web”. He does say that you should always read the TOS for anything you sign up for, so at least in a backhanded, grudging way he gets it. Even if it is free on the web, if you A) didn’t make or b) don’t have explicit permission from the person who did make it to post it somewhere, then you can’t use it for your own purposes… how hard is that to get?
The real deal here is that Hotel Chevalier is NOT available for free on the internet (the link he posted said that it’s showing exclusively in theaters before the Darjeeling Limited), so its obvious that the ownder of the film (Wes Anderson and Fox Searchlight) would like you to actually pay money in a theater and/or pay Criterion and Fox for it on DVD next spring/summer rather than watch it for free on the interwebs (or pay to download it from iTunes if its still there). I just get irritated with the sense of entitlement that so many people have about the web and the content we find on here. Derek, as usual, I find your buffet analogy to be perfect.
all this over a nekkid Padme…..
Sean Mac
Thursday, October 25th, 2007, 10:03 am
Okay, I relent. Said blogger was a fool.
Doug
Thursday, October 25th, 2007, 11:34 am
I do not condone stealing (movies, music, tv, soda pop, etc.). My point with the post was that blip.tv didn’t know that we did not have the right to post that video (which is still free via iTunes for the person who said it’s not) and removed it without questioning.
We have a lot of rights to material (falling under a large television station). Considering our account was all film trailers, etc. blip.tv could have investigated first (like Revver or YouTube would) to see if we had the right to post it.
Forget about the short film for a minute and put this into a more real situation. I work on a television show that airs in Canada and then goes on blip.tv for online distribution. It is all legit. If one day blip.tv feels we don’t have the right to post the show are they just going to close our account without notice?
It is their right to do what they want with their service - I’m just warning people that this could happen (copyright material or not).
-Brian
Brian
Thursday, October 25th, 2007, 2:05 pm
Bullshit. The part at the end where it prominently says “Copyright 2005 American Empirical Pictures” is an excellent indication that if you’re not American Empirical Pictures then you do not have the rights to that film. You’d have to be a fucking idiot not to get that.
Which causes the “repeat offenders” part of the terms of service Jeff cited to come into play. Because you also don’t have the right to redistribute movie trailers.
No. You stole a movie and tried to use blip.tv to traffick it. That’s the whole issue here. We’re not going to just forget it.
Good thing they shut your account down; if they hadn’t, you’d be fired. The terms of service say “By posting, uploading, inputting, providing or submitting your content to Blip.tv, you are granting Blip.tv, its affiliated companies and partners, a worldwide, revocable, royalty-free, non-exclusive, sub-licensable license to use, reproduce, create derivative works of, distribute, publicly perform, publicly display, transfer, transmit, distribute and publish that content for the purposes of displaying that content on Blip.tv and on other Web sites, devices and/or platforms.” I’m quite certain your bosses — you know, the people who actually own that content you’ve been uploading — would be furious if they realized you were giving away perpetual licenses to their programs without even so much as a please-and-thank-you.
In other words, you’re “warning” people that if they break the law, they might suffer some mild inconvenience for it. Stop the fucking presses.
Brian, you are an idiot and a jerk. An idiot for being so stupid about your rights and obligations under the law, and a jerk for acting so put-upon by a company that’s doing nothing more than carrying out their stated policies.
Leo
Thursday, October 25th, 2007, 2:15 pm
Well said Leo.
Doesn’t matter if it was freely posted on iTunes… if anything that is just an indicator of the obvious fact that Apple has lots and lots of liscensing and promotional deals with film studios/record lables/television networks. Unless you are involved in that deal, you it doesn’t mean you can take and redistribute. Same with the official site which was offering the download/streaming video/whatever at the time. You don’t work for Wes Anderson, any of the half dozen production firms that produced the movie, or Fox Searchlight, so you don’t get to get in that deal.
As far as the blip.tv site, hey, their T&C says clearly that they can take what action they need to do to remove copyrighted material and what is more, they don’t HAVE to do any investigation or notify you of anything other than that they’re taking it down or blocking access.
It is blip.tv’s policy:
yeah, maybe they jumped to #3, but you haven’t provided any evidence one way or another that they’ve skipped steps 1 and 2, and more, there’s nothing in the T&C that says they aren’t in their rights to make that jump.
Sean Mac
Thursday, October 25th, 2007, 3:13 pm
I just wanted to point out that blip.tv is policed largely by hand. We take copyright violations very seriously. This is both for legal reasons and because we strongly support the rights of content producers/owners, both independent and corporate. I generally contact people personally, via email, if I suspect that their account contains one or two copyright violations. But accounts full of known copyright violations that offer no meta data documenting ownership or permissions tend to be removed immediately.
And if we make a mistake, we try to remedy it. If the person in question (or anyone else) would like to email me to discuss this, I am available at eric /at/ blip /dot/ tv.
Thanks,
Eric Mortensen
Director of Content Development
blip.tv
Eric Mortensen
Thursday, November 15th, 2007, 11:56 am