Adverts Mysteriously Appended to YouTube Clips 96
hey0you0guy writes "For the past few months copyrighted clips of shows have been edited to include advertisements for Gawker Media. These clips have been uploaded to the video sharing site YouTube by a user going by the handle Belowtheradar. These clips are then being linked to by Gawker itself: 'Gawker.com, for example, on Thursday featured a YouTube clip from ABC's talk show The View. At the beginning of the video, there is an ad for Gawker. On Wednesday, Valleywag posted a link to a video of television satirist Stephen Colbert talking about Wikipedia. At the beginning of that video there is an ad for Valleywag, a blog dedicated to Silicon Valley gossip.' CNet contacted the copyright holders for the videos (which range from NBC to Apple), and mostly received responses of 'we're looking into it.' At least two groups did confirm they did not give permission for this kind of advertisement."
Adverts Mysteriously Appear in Inbox (Score:5, Funny)
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Probably... (Score:1)
I always knew that advertisers wanted eyeballs, but wouldnt think they'd gunk up a free vid site. Guess thats just high bandwidth spammers.
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What wouldn't anyone do for a buck, seriously? I hate to be all doom and gloom, but I suppose it was only a matter of time. As long as they go after corporate repostings of things I can watch on TV, and leave independent videos [youtube.com] alone, I won't get alarmed about it. Yet.
Re:Probably... (Score:5, Interesting)
Why would you think gunking up a free video site would give an advertiser pause? The only thing stopping them from physically grabbing your eyeballs and pointing them at their ads is that that kind of thing is illegal in most places.
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I'd just use public proxies and trojaned machines to bounce what I think might be construed as illegal. You think when I post as AnonyCoward, I use the same IP:source ?
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Shocking! (Score:1)
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If they think they can get away with it? Absolutely.
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--
Hello, friend. Is your media bland and undesirable? Visit gawker.com [gawker.com] today!
"mysterious"? (Score:3, Interesting)
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A user posting someone else's content on Youtube is normal, even though that makes it "grey" content (that is, the legality is uncertain). A corp. putting its own content on its own site and sandwiching it in ads is also normal.
But this is a corp. (acting through one of its members) posting grey content on someone else's site--namely Youtube, a site known to host grey content--and wrapping that grey content in ads for
Legal fees (Score:2, Insightful)
it is mysterious (Score:5, Funny)
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Will only get worse (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is this a problem? Now, instead of simply a DMCA takedown notice, YouTube is far more liable for damages because they made a direct profit off of the usage of unauthorized content. The users are more liable, too, since they will make a profit from YouTube.
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Not so, in the case of the subject of this article. YouTube is not making profits off this, these are examples of companies using a "neutral" distribution mechanism to get free views for their ads. It's whoever is appending the ads to the vids who are making the profits.
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It could be that the movie isn't touched at all but the link has become corupted.
I have forgot the name of the file spec/extention that allows itto happen. I think it is someting like
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YouTube is not making profits off this
According to youtube, it's revenue model is advertising based. So it is making a profit off this.
YouTube will be paying for user-generated content -- which is less inclusive than user-uploaded content.
If I append ads to Stephen Colbert and upload it, that's user-generated content. Youtube really has no way t
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The ads for Gawker.com and its related sites are in uploaded clips. If Gawker paid Youtube for the ads around the borrowed content, Youtube could then take the borrowed content down, ads and all.
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A means of paying users for uploads is what will "save" youtube, legally.
Could get better (Score:1)
Give them some credit (Score:5, Funny)
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New spam? (Score:2)
Re:New spam? (Score:5, Interesting)
Taken from some forwarded jokes. Layne
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Hell even sourceforge does that; my last email to the subtext discussion list had
Using Tomcat but need to do more? Need to support web services, security?
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URL snipped, as they're tracking clickthroughs. And the separating dashed line snipped because of the lame "lameness" filter.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:New spam? (Score:4, Insightful)
Opening ads (Score:2, Interesting)
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Oh noes (Score:5, Funny)
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(I admit it, I laughed out loud.)
I believe this internet-joke all started with this [machall.com] and curiously taken to extremes by this [vadriven.com].
Re:almost (Score:2)
I'm in ur base, killing ur d00dz [iminurbase.com]
Like YouTube at the Micro Level (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Like YouTube at the Micro Level (Score:5, Funny)
FREEEEDOOOOMMMM!!
Re:Like YouTube at the Micro Level (Score:4, Insightful)
Youtube accepts videos from people, and posts them to their website which features ads.
The sleazy advertiser is taking someone else's content, adding an advertisement into the content itself without permission, and reposting it.
While both involve advertisement, Youtube doesn't claim they'll post your video to an ad-free website, and they certainly don't steal your videos off your hard drive without asking. It's a WYSIWYG situation, anyone who uses Youtube knows the webpage has ads. The sleaze, on the other hand, is presenting these videos as something they're not.
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By playing the video on a site bearing the YouTube logo, they are by definition advertising on
something they do not own.
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These are just videos that one of our staffers uploaded. Gawker Media isn't going for that Mad YouTube Traffic; we just use YouTube as a repository for videos we embed on our sites. That's one of the intended uses of YouTube.
What some may question is whether Gawker Media's videos are fair use. The company and its staff argue that they are, as we are reporting on these clips as news, or making critical comment
Check the EULA (Score:2)
No one saw this coming? Free is not a business model.
Read the terms, please (Score:5, Informative)
I assume a lot of people just click through the terms and conditions, but as a perpetual cynic (and coming from a family of legal folk), I generally have a quick read through. Here's an interesting excerpt from youtube terms [youtube.com]
For clarity, you retain all of your ownership rights in your User Submissions. However, by submitting the User Submissions to YouTube, you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the User Submissions in connection with the YouTube Website and YouTube's (and its successor's) business,
So, big surprise ! They've got a derievative work with an ad all over it. And I asked a lawyer. She said that that's pretty standard boilerplate, except hardly anyone modifies your content to include ads. The delivery of ads has been traditionally out of band of the content stream, but this makes sense.
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NOT granted permission to prepare derivative works: Gawker, Valleywag, ebaumsworld.com, reallybored.net, nothingtoxic.com, triplekiss.com, etc.
A couple of things... (Score:5, Insightful)
2) Appending means they're being tacked onto the end. If they're being added at the beginning, they're being prepended. Next time save the embarrassment and just say "added."
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According to a couple of dictionaries I consulted, "prepend" is not a recognized word, and "append" refers to adding or attachment without regard to where.
I propose that "append" was adopted by the computing community to mean a specific type of data transformation where the new addition was placed at the end of the existing data, and "prepend" was a neologism invented to describe the opposite
Re:A couple of things... (Score:5, Informative)
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/prepend [reference.com]
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/append [reference.com]
Yes, prepend is 'slang' as are all new words before they get officially adopted.
Yes, append can mean 'attach' and not just to the end.
But don't forget you're on a nerd site and any programmer worth his salt will immediately think 'add to the end of' if you say 'append'.
You get a few points for the technicality, but you lose quite a few more for not speaking the local lingo.
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It's a guerilla marketing campaign! (Score:2)
Predictable (Score:1)
So we all just wait until a network sues, then see what happens.
Clock's Ticking Down (Score:2)
WELL NOW WE KNOW.... (Score:2)
Common practice, unlikely ... (Score:3, Insightful)
I doubt anybody will follow in their footsteps once the courts make an example of them, and that is very likely to happen.
In related news, The halfwit blowhard Amanda Congdon [10zenmonkeys.com] managed to get her little 'quote' of disdain in to the news article above ; so it's official, every worthless media-wh0&e not worth watching has gotten their 15 minutes of fame. Way to push the story.
---
speaking of 15 minutes of fame [douginadress.com].
Big Deal (Score:1)
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"Mysterious" gimme a break (Score:2)
seems stupid (Score:2)
If they are linking to the videos from the site that the ads are for, wouldn't people obviously already know about the site?!?
Marketing for marketing sake?
Re:Declare ownership of a limited public good (Score:1)
This is the reverse of the eBaum's World business strategy. eBaum's just strips copyrights and watermarks fro
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Ummm.. no, because some (most?) people find the videos on Youtube, without going to Gawker first.
it's called the tragedy of the commons (Score:3, Insightful)
newsgroups, email, many news aggregator sites (not slashdot, thankfully): all it takes is 1 or 2 committed asshats to ruin the fun for everyone else. usually advertising and spam. they see their own aggrandizement at the sake of everyone else's misery, and they choose to make everyone else miserable for the sake of something selfish and smammler in importance
it's predictable and inevitable that any utopian scheme that relies on everyone to behave nicely will fail. there's always one a**hole who will act like an a**hole. it's pretty much guaranteed. human nature is what it is. there's no vhanging or getting around it's good, it's bad, and it's ugly
Re:it's called the tragedy of the commons (Score:4, Insightful)
The comments are a commons, it's interesting that it's not too bad. One still sees occasional trolls, but several mechanisms weed them out: moderation, ignoring ACs, and Slashdot's filters. Eliminating graphical content helps, too.
I'm still surprised that you don't find groups of trolls banding together to subvert that. It wouldn't be hard for several to make a few intelligent comments, acquire karma, and then burn it all to moderate an ascii-art goatse image to +5. Presumably this doesn't happen because there are too many real moderators pushing such idiocies down; the wealth of mod points is on their side.
Wikipedia, too, is a commons where a combination of benign dictatorship (locking down controversial articles, banning troll users and unregistered users from some articles) and the general good-will to hide the trolls works to make the commons quite liveable.
That doesn't work for most physical commons. Modding down a troll is cheap; cleaning up a polluted river or the air is expensive, and not amenable to many people putting in a little work.
well said (Score:2)
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This sort of thing used to happen all the time. Probably the reason that it happens less now is only that it's old hat. Now wh
It must have something to do... (Score:2)
It must have something to do with that "opinion center" on Slashdot. Can somebody Tivo the Internet for me? Thanks.
you forgot the rest... (Score:3, Insightful)
The two groups went on to say "And we are kicking ourselves for not thinking of it first!"
Hey Columbo... (Score:2)
Ads are everywhere... (Score:1)
Then again, people do say 'there is no such thing as bad publicity', and I just hope they are wrong. Let me live my life without adver
My question is... (Score:1)
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-30 reputation for gawker.com
Been Done Before (Score:2)
Schwab
A simpler and more likely explanation (Score:1)
The identification added (they're not the only ones to do this by far) is usually done to discourage others from linking to the video and stealing bandwidth. In this case it appears that adding tags has become a habit.
I don't see how one could complai
It's GAWKER MEDIA that's doing it, people (Score:2)
I believe it's Gawker media policy to do that for all Gawker-media originated (i.e., wasn't off some other (non-Gawker) blog) videos to put the ads in the front.
I'm surprised it's come up now - Gizmodo has been doing this for a few months now...
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Then again, Gawker's flagship properties don't exactly cater to the type of person who reads Slashdot, so maybe this crowd's cluelessness was inevitable.