Lawsuit Attempts To Hold TikTok Responsible For Death Of 10-Year-Old Girl Who Engaged In A ‘Blackout Challenge’

from the challenge-that-is-neither-new-nor-limited-to-TikTok dept

When a tragedy happens, lawsuits tend to follow. This is no exception. And while it’s understandable that grieving survivors often seek justice — whether it’s closure or compensation — through the legal system, the legal system is not there to provide solace. It’s there to determine whether anyone was legally culpable for the death.

This lawsuit, brought to us by Adam Klasfeld at Law & Crime, is another misguided attempt to hold a social media service directly responsible for a person’s actions. In this case, it’s the death of a 10-year-old TikTok user who allegedly participated in a “blackout challenge” that began with her asphyxiation in her bedroom and ended five days later when she passed away at a local hospital.

But TikTok isn’t responsible for this death. And the lawsuit [PDF] has very little chance of piercing TikTok’s Section 230 immunity, even if it’s deliberately crafted to avoid discussion of third party liability.

The lawsuit opens by making it seem as though this is a problem unique to TikTok, which would make it unquestionably directly responsible for this child’s death. (Emphasis in the original.)

The viral and deadly TikTok Blackout Challenge was thrust in front of Nylah on her TikTok For You Page (“FYP”) as a result of TikTok’s algorithm which, according to the TikTok Defendants, is “a recommendation system that delivers content to each user that is likely to be of interest to that particular user…each person’s feed is unique and tailored to that specific individual.”

The TikTok Defendants’ algorithm determined that the deadly Blackout Challenge was well-tailored and likely to be of interest to 10-year-old Nylah Anderson, and she died as a result.

The TikTok Defendants’ app and algorithm are intentionally designed to maximize user engagement and dependence and powerfully encourage children to engage in a repetitive and dopamine-driven feedback loop by watching, sharing, and attempting viral challenges and other videos. TikTok is programming children for the sake of corporate profits and promoting addiction.

Social media algorithms are definitely designed to promote engagement. That can’t be argued. But if the algorithm suggested the “blackout challenge” to Nylah Anderson, that suggestion is traceable to Anderson’s interactions with the service, as well as other users’ actions, which supposedly made the challenge “viral” (to use Law & Crime’s headline wording) and more likely to surface as a suggestion to TikTok users.

What this doesn’t indicate is that TikTok saw Anderson’s account and decided — without other contributing factors — to recommend she participate in a deadly “challenge.”

TikTok has long been accused of promoting “viral” challenges that can result in injuries or death. Most of the virality is due to hyperbolic, breathless coverage of something someone saw on the internet, rather than actually based on trending videos hosted by the platform. What happened here isn’t a malicious or negligent act by TikTok. If the allegations are true, the algorithm surfaced something that was trending. It did not target a 10-year-old with a deadly challenge.

Whatever surfaced in the “For You” section is shielded by Section 230 and otherwise protected by the First Amendment. The plaintiff and her legal reps want to dodge this inevitable discussion by framing this as a defective product complaint. And they disingenuously pretend this has nothing to do with other TikTok users who contribute to algorithmic promotion of trending content.

Plaintiff does not seek to hold the TikTok Defendants liable as the speaker or publisher of third-party content and instead intends to hold the TikTok Defendants responsible for their own independent conduct as the designers, programmers, manufacturers, sellers, and/or distributors of their dangerously defective social media products and for their own independent acts of negligence as further described herein. Thus, Plaintiffs claims fall outside of any potential protections afforded by Section 230(c) of the Communications Decency Act.

Sure, you can assert that in a federal complaint. But that doesn’t mean judges are obligated to pretend the allegations have no nexus with Section 230.

The details of TikTok’s recommendation system are cited as being a contributor to this death and an indicator that the app’s creators are distributing an intentionally flawed product that values profits above user safety. And, while it’s certainly true profitability and user engagement are more of a concern than the distribution of potentially harmful content, TikTok gives users the tools to curate their feed, as well as information as to how their algorithmic recommendations are compiled. It’s not a complete black box and it indicates TikTok is at least making some effort to limit exposure to harmful content.

The lawsuit is crafted to avoid Section 230 discussions but there’s simply no way to avoid them when you’re dealing with algorithmic recommendations that rely heavily on third party content and user’s own interactions with the service. Beyond that, there’s the First Amendment, which allows social media platforms to decide what content it promotes and which content it chooses to ban or hide.

The long list of supposedly “viral” challenges that have gone “viral” on TikTok included in the lawsuit is meaningless. Even this challenge (whose virality is, at best, disputed) is not something unique to TikTok. It dates back to at least 2008. It apparently resurfaced in 2014, where it was again granted news coverage and resulted in doctors being asked to explain why choking yourself might be dangerous. Late last year, it reappeared like a cicada/horror movie villain to deliver more media consternation and more obvious statements that any challenge that utilizes asphyxiation is harmful.

This is not to blame the victim for her death. This is only to indicate this is neither a new problem, nor one that is directly traceable to TikTok. Stupid shit is cyclical. The new constant is social media services with millions or billions of users that can cause stupidity to spread further and faster.

What this isn’t is an actionable legal case. TikTok possibly could have done more to suppress surfacing of “blackout challenge” content. What it didn’t do is present its service as a harmless diversion. Moderation at scale is impossible. And no one truly expects social media services to value users personally over total users as an aggregate. Whatever increases the latter is bound to get more attention from those designing engagement algorithms. But none of this adds up to product liability. And pretending it is just to avoid certain dismissal under Section 230 is a waste of a plaintiff’s time and energy. To make it clear, I’m not upset this parent decided to sue. I’m upset her lawyer wasn’t honest enough to let her know this effort would likely result in nothing but more heartache.

Filed Under: blackout challenge, blame, challenges, moral panic, section 230, viral videos
Companies: tiktok

Can You License A Video You Don't Hold The Copyright Over?

from the copyright-v-ownership dept

A few times in the past we’ve discussed the differences between ownership of an original creative work and ownership of the copyright associated with that work. I’m reminded of this distinction — which confuses the hell out of many people — after lawyer Eric Turkewitz tweeted at me a question about who would own the copyright in this (oldish) viral video of a camera dropping from an airplane while filming, only to be discovered by an interested pig. It’s gone viral a few times, and makes the rounds here and there. It’s mildly entertaining.

But, what caught Turkewitz’s eye is that the video on YouTube has the following description which includes “licensing information.”

It says:

Camera falls from a sky diving airplane and lands on my property in my pig pen.
I found the camera 8 months later and viewed this video. For licensing/usage please contact: licensing@jukinmedia.com

If you’re not familiar with it, Jukin Media is one of the biggest of a weird crop of businesses that rush in to try to monetize “viral” videos. Basically, they find various viral content and quickly contact whoever controls the video, and promise to get them money by “licensing” it for use in media. What this often means in practice — especially with Jukin — is that it goes around shaking people down for resharing clips of these viral videos.

Now, in some cases, there may be legitimate licensing opportunities, or potentially even real copyright infringement. However, I’m left scratching my head over the situation here. First off, the description (whether true or not), claims that the camera fell out of a plane and just landed in this person’s pig pen, where it was found many months later. I don’t know enough about regular property law to know if having the camera thrown from the sky onto the landowner’s property — and then left for 8 months — means anything in terms of who owns the camera, but there’s one thing that is pretty clear: the person who found the camera absolutely does not hold the copyright in the video.

A la the infamous monkey selfie case, there’s a legitimate question as to whether or not there is a copyright to be had in this video — but if there is, it’s not held by the person who found the camera (and, no, we’ll get it out of the way: it’s not held by the pig either, as only humans and companies can hold a copyright). At best, one might argue that there’s some copyright interest held by the person whose camera it used to be — the person who dropped it out of the plane. Even that is arguable. The copyright in a photograph or video is supposed to be limited to the creative choices made by the creator. If the camera was deliberately dropped from the plane with the intention of making this video then, there’s maybe a tiny sort of argument that they should get some level of copyright protection, though even then I’d argue it’s fairly limited, as the creative input by that person is fairly minimal (especially once the camera is on the ground and the pig takes over).

All that is to say — I’m not at all sure what rights Jukin has to “license” here. It can’t offer a copyright license, and if it is, that’s copyfraud — claiming copyright in something it has no right to. But, of course, in this age where the RIAAs and MPAAs of the world continue to insist that everything must be covered by copyright, I imagine that Jukin has likely been able to convince lots of people to pay up because it’s just easier, rather than recognizing that it has no rights to be licensing the video in the first place.

Filed Under: camera, copyright, falling from plane, licensing, pig, viral videos
Companies: jukin media, youtube

Those Viral Trump Supporting Singing, Dancing 'Freedom Kids' Now Plan To Sue Trump Campaign

from the how-these-things-always-end dept

Remember the little girls singing a song for Trump called the USA Freedom Kids? We wrote about it earlier this year after the performance was taken down due to a copyright dispute (of course). The video of the song went viral for a week or two and then died out:

Now, the Washington Post is reporting that the group is preparing to sue the Trump campaign and are no longer sure they support him as a Presidential candidate. The details are a little confusing and no actual lawsuit has been filed, so perhaps take this with a large grain of salt. Jeff Popick, who wrote the song, and is the father of the little girl in front, is claiming that the campaign violated the agreement it had with the group. Except, it wasn’t a written agreement, just a verbal one:

“This is not a billion-dollar lawsuit,” Popick said. “I’m doing this because I think they have to do the right thing. And if this means having to go through the court system to enforce them doing the right thing, then that’s what I have to do. I’m not looking to do battle with the Trump campaign, but I have to show my girls that this is the right thing.”

Now, to be clear, a verbal agreement is just as binding under the law as a written down contract, but it’s still a lot harder to enforce, because you can’t point back to the actual wording of the agreement and people can obviously dispute what was actually agreed upon. In this case, the handshake agreement itself seems fairly fuzzy — and seems to involve Popick arguing that because the campaign changed its mind on a Freedom Kids performance, it now owes them… something, including a potential performance at the RNC convention (which obviously did not happen):

When Popick first reached out to the Trump campaign about performing, he spoke with various people including former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. His understanding from the campaign was that the Kids would make two appearances in Florida, where Popick lives. The first event didn’t come to fruition, and Popick says he asked for $2,500 in payment for the second performance, in Pensacola. The campaign made a counter-offer: How about a table where the group could presell albums? Popick took the deal.

When they arrived at the venue, though, there was no table, Popick says. The result was “complete chaos,” he said. “They clearly had made no provisions for that.”

The campaign offered another performance, and Popick and the girls flew to that event, but upon landing were told that plans had changed.

It wasn’t to be. When the plane landed, Popick had a message from the campaign staffer indicating that there was a change of plan. The campaign invited the performers to attend the rally, which they did, in their outfits. The campaign asked Popick not to talk to the media, he says, but then gave them seats within arm’s length of the press. “They just were constantly coming over, wanting pictures,” Popick said of the news media. “They wanted to take pictures, they wanted to ask questions ? and I had to be a real jerk.” The cost of the flights, rental car and hotel were all absorbed by Popick.

After that, he kept reaching out “again and again and again and again,” without luck. He was passed around between staffers; calls went unreturned even after calls were promised. Emails Popick sent to the campaign (which he shared with The Post) detail the interaction between himself and the campaign and his ultimate request. “We are now asking and DEMANDING for what has been promised to us and is now long-overdue (and has been rightly earned by us); that is, a performance at the convention,” an email dated July 9 reads. “Or, be made whole.”

The fact that no lawsuit has yet been filed suggests that going public first is the latest method by which Popick is hoping to get paid by the campaign. Unless there are more details here, I’m not sure how much success Popick is likely to have with a lawsuit. It seems like a stretch from a legal angle. Without a written agreement, and with any verbal agreement sounding fuzzy at best, with Popick adding his own after-the-fact requirements for alternative compensation, I doubt any legal dispute stands much of a chance. Of course, it still doesn’t look good for the Trump campaign, which had a (somewhat ridiculous) viral sensation in their camp and appears to have squandered it:

“At this point, my position is that I have no position, really,” Popick said. “What he’s done to my group or what he’s not done for my group doesn’t necessarily make him the best candidate, it doesn’t make him the worst candidate. I still have to mull that over. He might still be the best candidate as president of the United States ? or not.”

“What I think I’ve learned,” Popick added, “is that I’m not qualified to be a political commentator.”

Of course, as the Washington Post article notes, Trump has a fairly long history of screwing over small businesses that he hires and then refuses to pay. So perhaps this is just the latest in a long line.

Filed Under: donald trump, jeff popick, lawsuit, trump campaign, usa freedom kids, viral videos

DailyDirt: Ads Are Content… And Should Be Shareable

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Everyone complains about intrusive and annoying ads. If ads were entertaining and enjoyable, people would actually want to watch them. This shouldn’t be surprising to anyone reading Techdirt on a regular basis. Somehow, though, it’s much easier to find ads that are annoying than enjoyable. Here are just a few examples of viral ads that prove that commercials don’t have to be irritating or pushy to convey their marketing message.

• Jean-Claude Van Damme has performed his most epic splits ever for a Volvo ad. But before that, JCVD had a lot of practice doing the splits on film. [url]
• Goldieblox mashes up a Rube Goldberg machine with a Beastie Boys cover to promote its girl-targeted toy that is supposed to expand girls’ toys beyond just dolls and pink accessories. If there’s a formula for a viral ad, it probably should contain some catchy music or a Rube Goldberg contraption. [url]
• One of the most viral online ad campaigns of all time has to be Blendtec’s series of ‘Will it blend?’ videos. Will an iPad blend? Yes, but first they had to cheat a little and bend the iPad in half to make it fit into the blender. [url]

If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: ads, beastie boys, commercials, girls, jean-claude van damme, marketing, media, rube goldberg, splits, viral videos
Companies: blendtec, goldieblox, volvo

Chicago Blackhawks Fire Reporter Over Silly Old YouTube Videos

from the oops dept

When we typically discuss companies coming to blows with content control (aka censorship), the stories tend to be about what would otherwise be obscure wrong-doings going viral on a national or international level. Major automakers concocting horrible advertising around suicide, for instance. Or multi-state bus companies learning that bathroom-ing on their customers isn’t the best practice and catching the resulting backlash. But the practice of shining the light on yourself by being overly protective of your brand doesn’t only happen at the macro level, it can have a local effect as well.

That’s the lesson the Chicago Blackhawks are learning right this very minute. If you’re not in Chicago, you probably haven’t heard of Susannah Collins, who reports for Comcast Sports Net on the Blackhawks. In fact, if you know who she is at all, it’s probably from this line of low-brow comedy videos that she produced on YouTube. While some of those videos are likely NSFW, there is nothing more racy in them than a bit of colorful language and suggestive talk. It’s about as harmless as it gets. That is, of course, unless you’re the Chicago Blackhawks who, for reasons that make absolutely zero sense, decided that those videos surfacing were cause to five-hole Collins’ career and have her fired.

In a letter to the Vice President/General Manager of Comcast Sports Net Chicago, team chairman Rocky Wirtz demanded that reporter Susannah Collins be removed immediately, citing his awareness of comedy videos made years earlier that he found “incredibly offensive to a number of audiences, going well beyond professional athletes.”

He only learned of them after her innocent, unfortunate slip of the tongue last week brought them back to the fore, but it didn’t matter to Wirtz. Although they had been a fully disclosed non-issue upon her hiring, they became instant, retroactive reason for a swift dismissal.

The locals in Chicago were immediately upset over the firing. Certainly part of the reason for the animosity is the silliness of firing a reporter over sketch comedy videos she did on YouTube years ago. But, in true bad PR fashion, the real anger comes over the team’s almost epic level of hypocrisy. You see, Wirtz cited the video’s offensiveness as the reason for asking CSN (which is owned by several local Chicago teams, including the Blackhawks) to fire Collins. This, from the same team that has young women in tiny outfits shoveling up ice shavings between periods during games. This from a team that plays a sport in which fans will cheer on two grown men committing assault upon one another and then have the nerve to call it “part of the game.”

But the real fun comes with the magnifying glass now being placed squarely on the team’s official “ambassador,” Bobby Hull. The article linked above is one of several that makes the point nicely.

Hull’s second wife, Joanne, whom he wed in 1960 and divorced in 1980, told an ESPN documentary in 2002 that she “took a real beating” at his hands. She described an incident during which Hull “threw me in the room, and just proceeded to knock the heck out of me. He took my shoe – with a steel heel – and proceeded to hit me in the head. I was covered with blood. And I can remember him holding me over the balcony, and I thought this is the end, I’m going.” She filed to end the marriage in 1970 after several more incidents, but they reconciled until Hull threatened her with a loaded shotgun in 1978. Their daughter, Michelle, also described his pattern of behavior to “Sports Century,” and she now works as an attorney specializing in domestic violence.

Should you think this was a one-time minor indiscretion of old-fashioned domestic abuse, Hull’s second wife complained of similar treatment, Hull was later convicted for trying to punch a police officer, oh, and there was that one time he was all warm and fuzzy about freaking Hitler.

But, hey, I guess if there aren’t any YouTube videos, it never happened, amirite? That is, until your unreasonableness turns the magnifying glass back on you and now you have an entire city calling for the head of your so-called “ambassador.”

Filed Under: chicago blackhawks, history, hockey, reporter, susannah collins, viral videos
Companies: blackhawks, nhl

Viral Video Of 9-Year-Old Girl Football Star… Taken Down Because Of Music

from the now-back-with-awful-music dept

If you follow the “hot viral video of the week” you probably have seen or heard about Sam Gordon, the 9-year-old girl who is pretty damn good at football, (the American kind for all you foreigners), as shown in an impressive highlight reel her father put together:

As tends to happen with these sorts of things, Sam was everywhere this week, with all sorts of press coverage including appearances on morning TV shows and such.

Just one problem. The original video had all sorts of famous songs in it:

Without the music in that video — Jane’s Addiction covering The Doors’ “LA Woman” and The Germs’ “Lexicon Devil” (as part of a medley) and the Beastie Boys’ “Soul Fire” (also in a sense a cover) — this video wouldn’t be nearly as effective, and thus not as viral. Her father Brent Gordon, who originally uploaded the video, chose these songs because they are exactly what this video needs. As any Hollywood director knows, pairing the right music with any video makes it way more effective.

Normally, the Beastie Boys, Jane’s Addiction, The Germs, and The Doors could choose to get paid when a video with their music goes viral like this. But that does not appear to be the case here, at this point anyway.

Sure enough, soon after people started pointing that out — and even though the video had something like 2 million views lined up already, it went down due to a copyright claim. It looks like ContentID showed up late, because the “takedown” mentions a bunch of possible copyright holders, without saying who made the final call:

After all that, Sam’s father, Brent changed the music to something that wouldn’t get pulled down — though people are already complaining that the new music is “lame.”

We’re pleased to see that the video is online, because that Sam Gordon is a sight to behold, with amazing moves and no small amount of moxie, which is the main reason people liked the video so much. But it’s a shame that the music is now so bad that we couldn’t even make it through one viewing without muting it. With the other soundtrack, I ended up watching it five times in a row.

And thus it was proven for the umpteenth time that A) The right music makes all the difference in a video, and B) Copyright, while necessary, tends to rain on parades, especially when multiple rights-holders get involved.

Of course, depending on your general position in this debate, you can make one of two arguments here. The copyright hardliners will say that this proves the importance of good music and that Gordon should have paid up in the first place. Those who find problems with today’s copyright system will note that it’s not like your average person is going to even be able to license, let alone want to pay for, songs to stick on a video like this (especially without knowing that it’s about to go crazy viral). The music industry could make this easier with a simple database / store option (“want this song for your non-commercial video? $1 — click here to buy the license”) but they don’t seem to want to do that. So, instead, we get this situation where no one wins. The video has crappy music. The good music providers don’t get paid. How is that a good solution?

Filed Under: contentid, copyright, sam gordon, viral videos

Weezer Appears In Others' Viral Videos

from the spreading-the-wealth dept

A few years back, the band Weezer put together its famous Pork & Beans video, which included a bunch of famous YouTube viral video stars. While there were some temporary issues when the band or its label screwed up and made the video itself non-embeddable, eventually things worked out. Apparently, the band is taking it up a notch this time. Rather than inviting YouTube stars into a Weezer video, the band is appearing in a bunch of videos for YouTube stars, on their own channels — effectively distributing the wealth. The YouTubers get to keep any ad revenue, but, of course the whole thing helps promote Weezer’s new album. Kind of amazing when you realize that it really wasn’t that long ago that the record labels were insisting that YouTube was harming musicians, huh? Anyway, here are a few of the “Weezer Invades YouTube” videos:

Filed Under: fans, viral videos, weezer

'Ya Dun Goofed': Evidence That Censorship Is Both Needed And Not Needed

from the you-been-reported-to-the-cyberpolice dept

If you happen to keep up with the latest internet memes (you know who you are), you almost certainly have heard about the whole “ya dun goofed”/Jessi Slaughter saga. If you (lucky you) aren’t aware of this, and wish to find out (and, I warn you, you may be better off not knowing about this), all the details are at that link. Frankly, after watching the key videos, embedded below, the whole thing really feels faked for the sake of attention. The whole thing is so over the top that it feels like a calculated attempt to get viral YouTube fame.

Either way, whether it’s real or not, what’s fascinating is how different people have reacted to it. Over at NewTeeVee, there’s an interview with Kenyatta Cheese, where he notes that the most fascinating thing about it is that after the video above happened, there was another video chat (via Stickam), where a bunch of the folks who had supposedly been egging Jessi on, really are incredibly nasty to her in a chat, and she totally ignores it. I mean totally ignores all sorts of angry insults. For whatever reason, YouTube has taken that video down due to a “terms of use” violation, so you can’t see it, but you can imagine it (I saw it before it was taken down). Basically, a few folks were chatting by video, and in the text chat, people were hurling all of the worst kinds of slurs at Jessi, and she acts in the complete opposite way as in the video above: no crying, no anger. She just focuses on other folks.

As Kenyatta notes:

What’s more interesting to me is the fact that just after her very public breakdown, she went back on Stickam a few hours later, completely unfazed by the insults being hurled at her…. The chat is filled with the kind of stuff that parents would call ‘bullying,’ however, she’s totally ignoring it all. Clearly the internet has created a new kind of teenager, able to filter out the kind of noise that would “ruin” the life of folks like Star Wars Kid just years before.

That seemed interesting to me, though, I’m not sure I buy that. First of all, it’s a single anecdote involving a single person and (again), I’m still not convinced this is real.

After reading that interview earlier, I had considered doing a post about that claim of the “new kind of teenager,” but figured that the “evidence” was so weak, it wasn’t worth it. However, I was then amused to look at the submissions for Techdirt, and find a note from reader athe pointing to a professor in Australia who is using the saga as evidence of why the internet should be censored. In other words, he looks at the same videos and comes to the exact opposite conclusion as Kenyatta did.

Where Kenyatta sees a teenager who can filter out bullying and get on with her life, Professor Matt Warren, looks at it and sees a horrible, out of control internet that needs to be censored.

Professor Matt Warren, the head of Deakin University’s School of Information Systems, said as long as parents who don’t understand the internet kept giving their children access to it, there needed to be ways to control its use.

“You simply can’t have free access to the internet,” he said.

“It has to be controlled, censored and people have to be held accountable for their actions on it.

“We punish people who drink, we punish people who speed and we have to implement laws to that effect when it comes to the internet.”

Thankfully, people are taking professor Warren to task in the comments on that article, noting that censoring Jessi wouldn’t have helped. The Australian internet filters certainly wouldn’t have stopped the ability of a girl to go online and make some videos. The real issue (if this story is actually real — but it would apply to others as well), is that this is yet another example of where better parenting, rather than Big Brother governing, would probably help out. And, no, that doesn’t mean spying on everything a kid does, but getting parents to at least talk to their kids about what happens online, and what their kids are doing online, along with the risks associated with being online.

Filed Under: australia, censorship, cyberbullying, teenagers, viral videos

People Realizing That Viacom's Filings Take YouTube Quotes Totally Out Of Context

from the this-looks-worse-and-worse dept

I had pointed this out in a comment yesterday, but with so many press reports suggesting that Viacom’s filing found some sort of “smoking gun” in the YouTube emails concerning founders talking about “stealing” videos, it’s worth pointing out that Viacom appears to have taken these quotes totally out of context. Thankfully, TechCrunch is putting some of them right back into context and noticing that Viacom is clearly misrepresenting what YouTube’s founders were talking about. The key quote that Viacom (and many in the press) are highlighting is the following:

In a July 29,2005 email about competing video websites, YouTube co-founder Steve Chen wrote to YouTube co-founders Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim, “steal it!”, and Chad Hurley responded: “hmm, steal the movies?”

That looks damning, right? Except the context shows that they weren’t talking about copyright infringement of big name Hollywood content at all. They were talking about looking at other viral video sites that were popular on the fringes at the time — usually showing random silly homemade videos that went viral and putting those videos on YouTube. Furthermore, when you see the full discussion, you can see that in the context, they were joking about taking that content. Really, they were discussing what kind of site they wanted YouTube to be: should it be for more serious videos, or should they focus on those kinds of traffic-getting viral videos. In fact, in the context of the discussion, they play up the fact that their content is user-generated, rather than pulled from outside sources:

SUBJECT: Re:http://www.filecabi.net/

Jul 29, 2005 1:05 AM, Steve Chen wrote:

steal it!

Jul 29, 2005 1 :25 AM, Chad Hurley wrote:

hmm, steal the movies?

Jul 29, 2005 1 :33 AM, Steve Chen wrote:

haha ya.

or something.

just something to watch out for. check out their alexa ranking.

-s

Jul 29, 2005 7:45 AM, Chad Hurley wrote:

hmm, i know they are getting a lot of traffic? but it?s because they are a stupidvideos.com-type of site. they might make enough money to pay hosing bills, but sites like this and big-boys.com will never go public. I would really like to build something more valuable and more useful. actually build something that people will talk about and changes the way people use video on the internet.

Jul 29 2005 6:51 AM, Steve Chen wrote:

right, i understand those goals but, at the same time, we have to keep in mind that we need to attract traffic. how much traffic will we get from the personal videos? remember, the only reason why our traffic surged was due to a video of this type. i?m not really disagreeing with you but i also think we shouldn?t be so high & mighty and think we?re better than these guys. viral videos will tend to be THOSE type of videos.
-s

Jul 29 2005 6:56 AM, Steve Chen Wrote:

another thing. still a fundamental difference between us and most of those other sites. we do have a community and it?s ALL user generated content.

-s

Not quite the discussion that Viacom implies. In fact, the more you look at the full context of almost every quote that Viacom and the press are playing up, the more and more Viacom’s entire argument crumbles.

Filed Under: context, copyright, takedowns, videos, viral videos
Companies: google, viacom, youtube

Ok Go Explains Video Embedding Issue, Blames YouTube (Partly) And EMI (Only A Bit); Sells Uniforms

from the but-that-doesn't-make-much-sense dept

So last week we discussed how EMI was seriously harming the ability of the latest Ok Go video to go viral, by putting on geoblocks and forbidding embedding. The band had said it was upset about this and pointed people to a Vimeo version — despite the fact that EMI is suing Vimeo for posting music videos (um, oops) and Vimeo supposedly hates commercial content.

The band has now come out with a more detailed explanation that puts more of the blame on YouTube, while also explaining how the band gets to “snort drugs off the Queen of England” (so it’s got more important things to deal with). Well, specifically, the band points out that way back when, Google agreed to give record labels a bit of money every time someone watched one of their videos on YouTube. That much is well-known, of course. However, the band claims that this little bit of money is only paid on videos that are seen directly via YouTube, rather than on embedded videos. Why? Well, because advertisers on YouTube only let ads be shown on YouTube itself, so they’re not suddenly showing up on some random website (though, of course, those same advertisers probably have no problem using Google AdSense, which does the same thing, but….). So the band suggests the issue is more with YouTube and its refusal to count embedded videos in the views… though it claims it’s been arguing with EMI to allow the video anyway.

This still seems backwards and shortsighted by EMI. Even if it’s not getting paid for the embedded videos, it seems quite likely that the embeds actually lead to more views on YouTube itself, as people click through. Instead, now, all of the views are going to go to Vimeo. The company EMI is suing. Sensible.

In the meantime, though, Ian from Topspin alerts us to the news that Ok Go is using the Topspin platform to offer up, as a part of its “reason to buy,” the uniforms and props from the video shoot. Of course, I would imagine those things would be in higher demand if EMI let people embed the video in the first place…

Filed Under: embedding, ok go, regional blocks, viral videos
Companies: capitol records, emi, google, vimeo, youtube