I know I’m a little late to the news here, but any thought I had in the back of my mind to upload anything to YouTube, especially any of my video podcasts, is gone now.
The video site YouTube constitutes an equal or larger threat to small content producers. Before you upload that video of your 19-person indie rocker reggae band, for instance, you may want to read the fine print. YouTube’s “new” Terms & Conditions allow them to sell whatever you uploaded however they want:
“…by submitting the User Submissions to YouTube, you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the User Submissions in connection with the YouTube Website and YouTube’s (and its successor’s) business… in any media formats and through any media channels.”
Among other things, this means they could strip the audio portion of any track and sell it on a CD. Or, they could sell your video to an ad firm looking to get “edgy”; suddenly your indie reggae tune could be the soundtrack to a new ad for SUVs. The sky’s still the limit, when it comes to the rights you surrender to YouTube when you upload your video. [wired]
It’s a shame that this had to happen as I am sure people will have the same thought as me. I also caught this blog post saying that person will remove all the content they have on YouTube, citing the change in their policy as the reason. Will that be another trend?
I’ll go as far to say that I hope it won’t infringe on the popularity of the site. I could spend all day watching stuff that’s posted there.
Interesting post… some thoughts:
– wouldn’t the “sublicenseable and transferable license” clause be put in the TOS in order allow for other users to embed video clips into their blogs etc with out repercussion from the original poster?
– while You Tube could strip the audio portion of any uploaded file and sell it on a CD, the resulting audio quality would not be that of a mastered CD quality. So even if they were going to sell it, who would buy it?
My 2 pennies. Cheers.
These are some really good thoughts, and it doesn’t make it much different than putting out my video podcasts for some one to reuse for whatever purpose they see fit. It’s all done to protect everyone from end to end, but it makes me completely rethink doing much with posting onto YouTube. Well, at least for now.
However, I think anytime you ask yourself “who would buy it?”, you’re second guessing yourself. There were a lot of people who said the same thing about the iPod when it came out. The comparison is a stretch, but I have a hunch that there are more people out there that would pay for it, especially if the price is right. I mean, you can buy TV shows on iTunes for $2 a pop. For some people, that’s a killer deal.