Youtube has been self destructing or at least destroying channels that produce content for their website for the last year or so. They froze a ton of videos and sometimes for almost a week. If you had not even noticed that top rated is their least promoted part of youtube now. It used to be positioned very prominently on the site now it is way at the bottom of the pull down mouse over menu. Also they dont even have the ratings on the videos on the most viewed, most discussed etc... It is not about quality now it is all about who can somehow get the most views. Once the top rated gets dropped from the menu, it is all over for the new starter channels.
I know that my videos used to get 10,000 to 50,000 views with no problem at all. Now they are sitting at about 6,000 to 10,000. I don't know if it is how people get their subscriptions now or what, but when I had only 2,000 subscribers my videos could go viral and maybe even hit 200,000 to 500,000 views if people really supported them. Now with 5 to 6 times the subscribers and support, they are at a fraction of the views they had before.
I know that Youtube said it would be demoting video views and I have seen it happen on 2 videos and I saved the info on those to show everyone later in a video. This is getting out of control and unless some of the larger Youtube channels speak up nothing will ever change. All the larger youtube channels think that they would never be suspended, but they have another thing coming if they think that. Youtube has pissed off everyone from Viacom to Warner Music Group and even the Entire UK. Here is the link:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7933565.stm
They dont seem to care who they piss off and it shows. So if someone who thinks that they are a youtube star and they wont get suspended, demoted or deleted, they have another thing coming.
Below is their revised statement regarding their handling of this situation:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
An Update On Our View Counts
Video view counts reflect the YouTube community's interests and the grassroots popularity of videos. We periodically make changes that allow us to display consistent view counts and accurately reflect a "real" view based on video consumption, video streaming and spam filtering. Unfortunately, a few people still try to artificially manipulate their video's view counts. Some people game third-party view counts as well. That can make things unfair for everyone.
Recently, we found spamming issues associated with the view counts on a small number of videos. The inflated view count number on these videos will be frozen until actual views catch up to the published, artificial, view count. Also, a few people have commented that their view counts are updating more slowly. Occasionally the speed with which views update changes -- sometimes it’s faster and sometimes it’s slower. But we are always working to make sure that the final view count numbers are an accurate reflection of the community's interest.
Michelle Schlachta
Community Manager
The YouTube Team
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Monday, February 23, 2009
COPYRIGHT FAIL - FAIL BLOG
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)