In the past two weeks Youtube yanked 4 of my videos. Four! They blocked them because of copyright infringement issues, which is ridiculous because 99.9% all of my videos are in the Public Domain in the U.S. and Canada. The last video they removed was a compilation called "Scratch of a Hero". In it there was a 1 minute clip from LES DERNIERS JOURS DE POMPEI, or SINS OF POMPEII starring Georges Marchal. French film studio Gaumont owns the copyright in Europe but the claim they made with Youtube is that the copyright is worldwide, even if the the film itself is not even listed, under its French title or the original English title, SINS OF POMPEII, at the U.S. copyright website.
The film is in the public domain in the U.S. but Gaumont and Youtube say the copyright is across the entire planet. So basically they've re-written the law. This is not the first time Gaumont has done this. They also claim the same thing for FABIOLA and GOLGOTHA, which are also in the Public Domain in the U.S. and Canada and I had to remove videos from those films. I work hard on my videos compilations. It takes me hours and hours to compile all those clips. The same thing with my Fan Dubs. I could fight this but at this rate I won't have any videos left on my channels which means I'll have to go through the tedious process of doing counter claims with everything I've uploaded or will upload so instead I've decided not to upload anything at my 3 channels until further notice.
Youtube is not Youtube anymore but THEYTUBE.
That's just nuts, man. Sorry Youtube is being such a pain.
ReplyDeleteIs there any alternative site?
ReplyDeleteAs far as I know there's really no alternative. I couldn't do this on Vimeo. Daily Motion and Metacafe are terrible, filled with endless ads. I have an account at Daily Motion and I can't imagine working with that. Beside, Daily Motion is based in France so it would be worse than Youtube.
ReplyDeleteI thought of this post when I read the following:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.news4jax.com/news/Technology/Google-Alarming-rise-in-censorship-requests/-/4882254/15142634/-/14ar8ml/-/index.html