BBC and YouTube Deal in the Works?

Algis writes to tell us the BBC is in the process of striking a deal with YouTube to allow BBC content to be posted on YouTube. Previously the BBC has demanded quite a few video be removed from the Google-owned video sharing site. "The deal between YouTube and the BBC however, is more interesting still, since YouTube is a global service that is completely free to all users. Shows cannot be downloaded from YouTube. Instead, they're watched online on the YouTube website, or the YouTube player is embedded in other websites for no cost to the user. This is the nature of content sharing that has seen YouTube grow from a company making no money, to a company worth almost $2billion to Google, in less than two years. Quite what the BBC-YouTube deal will entail is anyone's guess. It is highly, highly unlikely to include full-length current BBC shows. What could be possible is the addition to YouTube of much older shows, such as classics like 'The Young Ones' or 'Faulty Towers', in an effort to boost the shows' exposure and increase DVD sales of these shows."

Shows cannot be downloaded from YouTube?

Uhh, yes they can...

http://www.arrakis.es/~rggi3/youtube-dl/ [arrakis.es]

Re:Shows cannot be downloaded from YouTube?

The first rule of YouTube-dl is that you do not talk about youtube-dl, G*ddamnit.

Re:Shows cannot be downloaded from YouTube?

Mod it funny but consider it insightful. A lot of non-technical people believe that one can actually prevent a user from dowloading a file while allowing him to view it. We all know this is a shallow dream but this issue is fairly important for IP holders, they think they have a real control about how and when you can view the content.

I completely hope this means that

soon we will see ABC, NBC, CBS, and the rest waiting in the back of the line, looking at the door to YouTube and trying to bribe their way in like someone who doesn't know the bouncer at a good night club.

I think I did the analogies just right on that one...

Re:I completely hope this means that

Expen$ive talkshow host
      views=1,050

Random girl licking jello
      views=1,003,420,535,232

Can't download?

http://keepvid.com/ [keepvid.com]

That, plus a set of video converters/transcoders will give you a poor-mans (well, with a computer) Tivo for BBC content with this new agreement.

Ryan Fenton

Fawlty towers....

Not Faulty Towers, Basil will not be happy!!

"Shows cannot be downloaded from YouTube"

I use the VideoDownloader [mozilla.org] plugin for Firefox to download them, and then any of the various free FLV players to view them locally.

Danger Mouse?

Hey Beeb-tube, Give us back Danger Mouse, that show was awesome!

Re:Danger Mouse?

Black Books, Spaced and The IT Crowd were all shows made for Channel 4 in the UK. They may have been shown by BBC America (not sure about that), but they most certainly /weren't/ made by the BBC. Neither was Dangermouse. For some reason, Americans believe that the BBC create everything in the UK - they quite simply don't.

Also, why don't you get a multiregion player? Importing DVDs in the UK is very common.

Says who?

It's a comment on a blog, with nothing about the source of the story.

The article's keyboard-fu is weak

"Faulty Towers"? Ahem.

You know what I'm sick of?

You know what I'm sick of? Media companies that think they know what I'm going to like, or what's going to encourage me to buy stuff from them. Videos on YouTube, huh? Wow, way to stay on the edge there, BBC. I think the draw to YouTube is mostly from user-generated content. That's what makes it special. Granted, a good deal of that content is "clip from $SHOW that I thought was hilarious" -- good! Don't saturate me with all your comittee-selected video clips and ads at the beginning and end. Let the users decide.

[YouTube went from] a company making no money, to a company worth almost $2billion to Google

My first car -- which I still own and drove for more than 250k miles, is worth a lot to me. That doesn't mean it's making me money.

Says who?

It's only a comment on a blog, there's no quotes or anything about the source of the story, so it's speculation rather than a news story.

download from youtube?

On Linux use youtube-dl (python script)

But the BBC shouldn't worry. What gets posted to youtube is in a crappy
highly compressed format that looks like garbage compared to a DVD. After
seeing something I like on youtube, I'd rather buy the DVD than keep the
piss-poor a/v file from youtube.

Full shows are already there

And what's more, the BBC don't seem to mind too much. I know that BBC presenter Charlie Brooker [wikipedia.org] is well aware that his show is available on YouTube, and even has it embedded in his MySpace page and featured it in a segment on the show. YouTube contains lots of BBC shows which are never likely to get on DVDs and therefore never make them a profit, so why not let people watch them? They don't even have to pay for the bandwidth.

I like the BBC. They seem to be one of the few big media organisations who actually 'get' the internet. Their whole online service is second to none, and their new iPlayer looks set to to revolutionise the way TV is watched. See what happens when you don't have advertisers and shareholders to answer to?

WRONG!

Shows cannot be downloaded from YouTube

Hahahaha... Something is streamed to your computer (an flv file, which vlc supports these days), you can easily grab the location of the flv, and therefor you can easily download low quality crappy youtube uploads if you really want to. Google "download youtube" before making such bold and incorrect statements.

I mean... wow... That's the first thing I did when I discovered youtube: find out how to download the content.

TV Licencing

Nice how the BBC gives its content freely to those that cannot be charged the TV licence, while they persecute those that HAVE to pay it by UK law. That said, I had my first good experience with them the other day when I got a visit from the TV licence inspector, I answered the door and it went something like this:

Inspector: I'm here to discuss your TV licence.
Me: I don't have one.
I: I know.
M: Come in and look, there's my TV, there's the aerial point with nothing plugged in to it. I can't get a signal at all in here.
I: What do you use the TV for?
M: Computer and DVDs.
I: Plan to watch any television in the future?
M: Like I said the signal is poor, so the answer is no.

He then put a mark on his clipboard and I haven't heard from the TV licencing dogs since. Goes to show how much they want that £140 a year though, if he did believe I was watching TV then I could go to court and face prison.

Re:TV Licencing

...as the BBC doesn't do anything that the commercial broadcasters don't do.

Except they do it commercial free, and produce much of their own material without commercial pressure.

Could this be....

YouTubes first step in actually making money?

Additional content...

Such as Doctor Who Confidential or Tardisodes, which are not the shows per se, may be distributed this way -- thus freeing up time slots on the beeb for more shows!

Awesome BBC

I think It's awesome that the BBC is going to have YouTube foot the bill for their bandwidth instead of making the UK citizens do it.

Rock on BBC!

Spelling....

such as classics like 'The Young Ones' or 'Faulty Towers',

That's Fawlty Towers, you insensitive clod from Soviet Russia!

Yeah, I know...it's a quote from the story....
What's journalism coming to?

What a disaster

Why does "progress" in media seem to always involve taking high quality video or music, and making it a lot worse?

YouTube videos are a nightmare - the BBC should be embracing bit torrent and as little compression as possible.

If I can see it, I can save it

In general, if I can see it on my computer monitor, I can save it for playback later.

Even with DRM I can plant a movie camera in front of my monitor and send the film out to be developed and digitized.

Long Live The Analog Hole.

Obligatory Young Ones quote...

Oh, have you got a video?!

This coming on the heels of this piece of news:

YouTube deals fall apart, the center cannot hold [arstechnica.com]

Big content producers are going to want to retain control over their own content, obviously. And it's so easy to do so with the internet. You don't need youtube if you can develop your own video site with flash player and all in six months.

What youtube should do is offer to license its software or host the content, and charge for licensing and/or hosting. It can slap ads on those videos that aren't paying for either service, but not for their paying customers. Licensing their software should also include the stipulation that youtube can link to their content or content page via search results.

Otherwise, youtube would only be good for homemade videos. Which is a large enough market in and of itself. But don't expect big content producers with their own means of putting their videos on the web to sign on.

Just a comment about an error in this post

It says "Shows cannot be downloaded from YouTube. Instead, they're watched online on the YouTube website, or the YouTube player is embedded in other websites for no cost to the user."

However, the first sentence is untrue at least for firefox users. There is a firefox plugin that can be downloaded from the link below:

http://javimoya.com/blog/youtube_en.php [javimoya.com]

This video downloader plugin will allow one to download almost any video from youtube, yahoo video and windows live video!

iPlayer alternative

Maybe it's to placate the criticism over the Microsoft only iPlayer. If they made the content on iPlayer also available on YouTube (probably with geo locking so that only people in the UK* can watch it) then Mac and Linux people could watch the content as well.

*yeah, I know, proxy servers make such things pointless, but I would still expect them to try.

Finally, some real BBC content for Democracy

I've been using Democracy to download and watch video podcasts, and the BBC's EULA has always been really weird. The closest thing we get to the news is a weekly update from Newsnight, and even then the EULA says we're authorized to subscribe for 7 days.

On another note, Democracy says that you can view Google/YouTube and Yahoo! videos, but while the searches work great, clicking the download link results in "Not Found" 100% of the time. Has anyone else experienced this and found a fix? I'd really like to have daily news updates from the Beeb in Democracy, no matter how it gets there.

Thanks..

youtube

awesome, i cant wait

-----
camila17
visit my site...http://radio.gsm-ok.pl/ [gsm-ok.pl]

Sales?

This probably isn't an "effort to boost ... sales". The BBC exists for public service, and has been experimenting with various ways of making its current and archive material available for free to the public. The main thing which prevents this is concerns about the impact on commercial producers of similar content, and whether that would be damaging. Just recently the BBC Trust http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/ [bbc.co.uk] have approved plans to make more stuff available. (I'd search for a link to the news story but it's hard to search for "BBC" on the BBC!)

The BBC's public purposes are http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/framework/purpose_re mits.html [bbc.co.uk]

• sustaining citizenship and civil society
• promoting education and learning
• stimulating creativity and cultural excellence;
• representing the UK, its nations, regions and communities
• bringing the UK to the world and the world to the UK
• in promoting its other purposes, helping to deliver to the public the benefit of emerging communications technologies and services and, in addition, taking a leading role in the switchover to digital television.

DVD sales exist to support these goals.

Full episodes

It is highly, highly unlikely to include full-length current BBC shows.

Why is it unlikely? UK TV Licence payers are paying for the programs to be made, so the BBC will not be losing any revenue if many of its veiwers started watching programs on YouTube instead. However, there is the problem of international viewers, who have not paid to watch the programs. If YouTube can set something up so only UK residents can watch BBC stuff, then full episodes will be allowed for definite. I'd put money on that. Even if this is not possible, I still don't think full length shows are unlikely.

Re:Uh.

More like DHIMMItube! 'struth, folks!