1: YouTube. 2: The RIAA. 3: Our Last Best Hope.

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

1) Don't post at YouTube:

YouTube Owns YourStuff (So does YouTubeTwo)

Excerpt:

In its Terms & Conditions, the wildly popular video sharing site YouTube emphasizes that "you retain all of your ownership rights in your User Submissions".

There's quite a large "BUT...", however. Not only does YouTube retain the right to create derivative works (emphasis mine), but so do the users, and so too, does YouTube's successor company.

2) Don't post in the open:

In case you haven't been following the news for the past few years, the RIAA will be more than happy to come after you for doing that. While the tv show and movie bigwigs haven't gone after vids much (arguments can be made for fair use re: clips vs. episodes/full-length films), the music industry is BAT-SHIT INSANE about musical artists' tracks being posted anywhere they can be listened to/downloaded for free (and yes, btw, you can download off YouTube if you know how). It doesn't matter how the song is posted; you've shared their material for free and they are completely mental about it. Ask the people who run the AMV, who had to take down hundreds (I believe) of vids after hearing from various recording artists' labels. Ask people who have been sued (not just issued C&D letters, but sued) and had to pay for downloading music.

3) How to host vids as safely as you can:

Set up a subdirectory at your own domain. If you don't own your own domain space, find someone who is willing to share. Password-protect the sub-directory using an .htaccess file. Don't use the name of the song in the filename of your vid (example: if you've vidded Buffy to Bring Me to Life, name the file BringBuf.zip). (Oh, yeah, zip your files to avoid hotlinking menaces.) Put spider-avoiding code in your .htaccess as well. If you don't know how to do these things, ask.

Bottom line - vidders create and host illegal downloads, plain and simple. Don't be stupid about it.

Comments

[yunafire.livejournal.com]

Seconded.

Although, I completely lack my own domain; I rely on sendspace, usually. So, even if I did know what an .htaccess file was, I probably wouldn't be able to use it.

To add fuel to the fire, I'm sure it's entirely possible for some vidders to get in heaps of trouble because some jackass YouTuber decided to upload their vid. Case in point: my one House/Wilson video was put on YouTube recently (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRNNsV2_0ww), wherein my screenname appears in the first few seconds. Granted, it's pixellated and a bit hard to read, but still...

-sigh- Damn YouTube >_<;;

[(Anonymous)]

search for my I Wish I Was a Lesbian vid... last time I tried I got two pages of results.

[absolutedestiny.livejournal.com]

that was me... didn't realise I was logged out

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

An .htaccess file is a little text file that you put on the server that creates protections for a directory or directories. It's pretty easy to set one up. I recommend Googling ".htaccess" and "password" to find some tutorials.

And yeah, you'd need your own domain to make it work.

[kristin1228.livejournal.com]

Arghhh I know how you feel Yuna! *hugs* I'm constantly finding my Bale and Queen of the Damned vids there, even the Hannibal ones...

[yunafire.livejournal.com]

To imagine your vids scrunched into that little streaming box.... -shudder- The pixellation!

Streaming videos are the devil's plaything.

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

An .htaccess file is a little text file that you put on the server that creates protections for a directory or directories. It's pretty easy to set one up. I recommend Googling ".htaccess" and "password" to find some tutorials.

[trythil.livejournal.com]

.htaccess files allow configuration for on a per-directory basis on a Web server. They're used primarily on Apache Web servers; Microsoft IIS does not support .htaccess files, but has similar mechanisms. (I don't know what IIS has, though; contact your sysadmin if you're in that situation.)

To use .htaccess, the server configuration must allow both .htaccess for the directory in which you want to use the .htaccess file and the directives that you want to use. Not all servers allow such modifications; contact your sysadmin.

Basic authentication (and I mean basic) can be set up by providing a .htaccess file that looks like this:

AuthType Basic
AuthName "Authorization Prompt Title"
AuthUserFile /var/www/passwords/passwd

Usage of this method requires access to the Apache htpasswd utility (which usually requires some sort of remote shell access to your Web service provider) or equivalent front-end. If you use such a front-end, it should give you the information you need to properly fill in AuthUserFile.

There are many ways to get more fine-grained control. The Apache basic authentication mechanism is modelled off the traditional UNIX authentication mechanism, so you can do stuff like allow access to only certain users or groups of users.[0]

Note that the password you send is sent as cleartext. So if you're worried about packet-sniffing, then this isn't the right method; you will want to go further and add better authentication and encryption mechanisms, such as what is provided by MD5-digest authentication[1] or https.

Again, this applies only to Apache servers. Other servers have their own means of implementing and managing authentication; read their documentation, or ask the sysadmin to do it. (Even on Apache servers, it's considered to be good practice to ask the sysadmin to do it and only use .htaccess files when absolutely necessary[2]).



[0] http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/howto/auth.html

[1] http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/mod/mod_auth_digest.html

[2] http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/howto/htaccess.html#when