An anonymous reader writes:
A friend and I came up with a very cool idea for a Google Map mashup. Movie filming locations combined with YouTube video clips and photos of the precise filming location. We setup up shop at MovieLandmarks.com and we've been banging away at the code and adding landmarks for the last month. It is almost ready to 'go public', but we've run into a snag.
YouTube just pulled some of our short video clips for DMCA violations. These clips were of specific filming locations, and were less than a minute long in most cases. Similar clips, from the same movie of over 5 minutes are still available on Youtube! What gives?
Our goal is to create a Movie Landmark search engine, linking fan sites and filming location information from around the web in one location, using Google Maps to present it in a unique way (ie. no cartoon bubbles!). We've implemented photo caching so that hits to our site don't unexpectedly suck up the bandwidth of sites being linked to, and we always provide links to the sources for the material we display.
So what do you think? Is this fair use of these Movie clips? And even if it is (I think so, but I'm biased), what can we do about it? We're just 2 guys with a great idea, not the means to take on the film industry. In the long run this benefits them — we are promoting their films, and hopefully selling a few through our Amazon Associate account. But they obviously don't see it that way.
