Video killed the text blahs

One cool way to change up a blog is to use embedded video. Text and photos usually get the job done, but sometimes moving images and audio are a perfect complement to your posts. Or they are the posts.

I just added a pair of YouTube embed videos to my dvd blog posts on the death of Ingmar Bergman -- a couple of short-film parodies of his early heavy-duty works. In this case, only the shorts could tell that story. Also on my site is a category called DVD Blog Theater -- an archive of videos I've used in various contexts. Many videos on YouTube include embed coding for viral distribution; some do not at the request of content providers.

I own none of the copyrights on these videos. So why do I feel entitled to display them? My assumption is that the people who host these videos have cleared copyrights. I have not acquired or uploaded these files. If my readers did a search, they could find the files just as easily as I did. These files do not exist on my site, just the window and/or link. The right to link freely has been upheld repeatedly in the courts.

Won you over yet? Didn't think so. ...

If I found out there was any dispute over the materials, the links would come down immediately. To continue would be ethically and legally problematic.

So far in the brave new world of supermarket-style video streaming, the responsibility of preventing copyright violations has informally fallen to the content owner (who must police the copyright) and to the uploader or host of the video (who needs to clear the content and/or remove it when asked). Google/YouTube, as you probably know, are busy producing a copyright filtering system to eliminate material that's been declared off-limits. The courts are waiting.

In the real world, it's often the case that creators of short-form content are delighted to get exposure via, say, YouTube. Often, they submit the content. This includes most TV networks, music labels, and the makers of trailers and short films. None of this applies to pure piracy, of course, as in downloading a feature-length movie off any of the bit torrent sites.

I wouldn't want to take this mangy pack of arguments into court, but that sort of logic is why YouTube is still with us. This uneasy truce with the content providers and courts allows YouTube to continue its video revolution.