COPYRIGHT FAIL
Most of you have seen the channel fail blog on youtube. They used to upload very funny videos of well… People failing. I really liked their channel and watched most of their videos. As some of you know they had well over 100,000 subscribers and tens of millions of video views. I am not 100% sure, but I think they were also a youtube partner as well.
So I watched the failblog videos and could not figure out how they lasted so long and how they became a partner. So needless to say that I was not surprised at all when I heard the failblog channel got suspended recently.
Some people have no idea what constitutes copyright infringement and what constitutes fair use. The main reason for the post on this topic is because most people have no clue why failblog was suspended. The reality is I cant believe they lasted as long as they did.
That channel was basically taking videos from around the internet and uploading them to their own youtube channel. I am pretty sure that at least 95% of the videos on their channel were not their original content (if not 100% of them).
I know some of you are not going to like that I am saying this, but it is the truth. They were 100% guilty of copyright infringement, In my personal opinion. It simply was not their original videos and they were adding nothing to the content like commentary or something else to even have a chance at being in the fair use realm of this discussion.
Sure it sucks. They had great videos, but they did not get screwed like thunderf00t did. I will talk more about this later.
People just need to know the difference between copyright infringement and fair use.
So for all you failblog fans out there, I am a fan too. I have enjoyed watching their videos from time to time, but just because I like their idea for a channel and a website doesn’t change the fact that they violated someones copyright with their uploading of other peoples content onto their youtube channel.
Did I like their channel? yes.
Did I want to see them suspended? Of course not!
But the way things are going here on youtube you have to be very careful of what you put on your channel.
I figure that since failblog have made a name for sharing other peoples failure with the world in that spirit I had to discuss theirs here. The irony of it all. I hope that they continue to find a way to post videos and do it in a manner that is ok with all the people that actually own the content. It is a great idea for a youtube channel.
Keep in mind, I am one of the biggest proponent against censorship on the net and elsewhere, but this is one time that I had to point out the obvious. People need to learn how this subject of copyright vs fair use works and until they do channels will keep getting suspended. This confuses the issue between censorship and real copyright infringement.
Right now people think that just because they put a disclaimer in the videos information saying "I do not own this content it is the property of X company" this makes it ok. This is like closing your eyes when someone is shooting a 9mm at you thinking that will protect you from getting shot. This technique is worthless and will not protect you and your videos from being removed from youtube.
I hope this helps shed some light on this topic for you.
