In light of how many bloggers embed YouTube videos in their blogs, I decided to focus this week on YouTube’s current legal troubles.
Once again YouTube is under fire – this time from the National Music Publishers' Association (NMPA). The NMPA claims that songwriters (signed up with them) haven’t been receiving proper compensation for music which has appeared in YouTube videos. The biggest plaintiff, Viacom Inc, owns Paramount and MTV. Viacom will be suing YouTube for over 1 billion dollars, for allegedly posting over 160,000 of their videos without permission.
However, YouTube claims that it is complying by the law by “immediately taking down any clips found to be violating copyrights after receiving notification”. Their use of antipiracy software (such as audio-signature technology, that can detect a copy of licensed video) has helped a fair amount, but thousands of illegal videos are still available on the site.
Where all this is relevant to bloggers (and in fact to anyone who likes to incorporate YouTube videos into their site), is that content owners are not only targeting YouTube for copyright infringements, but are also after third party websites that link to infringing YouTube content. So you could be held responsible for even linking to a video which infringes on copyright. Although the chance is quite minimal that the content owners would really bother about suing someone for embedding a video on their blog, one has to remember that its not just about getting caught – linking to a video that is clearly infringing on copyright just looks bad as well.
These are things you should look out for when embedding a YouTube video on your site:
- don’t use anything that has a soundtrack which has clearly been used without permission (for example, a mash-up with a Madonna song in the background)
- same goes for movies – don’t link to videos where more than 10 seconds of a copyrighted movie appears – anymore than 10 seconds and its not fair use. See my post last week for more information on fair use.
- check out if there is a copyright notice or disclaimer at the end of the video – this can indicate whether or not the creators got permission for the owners of the work
All in all, one should be very careful about what you link to, especially if it’s from YouTube.
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2 comments:
Ive always worried about youtube videos - i know a lot of people upload photostories with soundtracks in the background - which are clearly used without permission. Do you think its fair that people who link through to youtube should be held accountable?
I am glad you blogged on this Golden Mean, because you know how I like linking to YouTube videos. Sometimes I do worry about this copyright thing.
I aint a fan of pirated work, so what do I do if I come across a video or soundtrack that has been pirated? Is it my responsibility to notify YouTube about this? If so, how do I go about it?
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