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

[cofax7]

One of the problems with the Youtube thing is that if someone uploads your vid to Youtube, and it's got your name/contact info/website on it, and the record label decides to go after vidders, well, Youtube's given them your information right there. And if you're not the one who uploaded the vid to Youtube (which often happens), you've got no way to take the vid down to protect yourself.

Which is not to say the record label/RIAA might not go after the Youtuber, but you're just as likely to get hit.

All of which assumes the RIAA is going to go after vidders, and yeah, I haven't heard of it yet, but I won't be surprised when it starts.

[of-carabas.livejournal.com]

Oh, sorry - separate paragraph, separate issue, I should've been clearer on that. Yeah, that YouTube concern I do get, no worries. Heck, there are a ton of reasons for vidders to hate YouTube (vid theft anyone?). I was just talking about that YouTube-Owns-Your-Stuff link there. I don't see as vidders should particularly care about YouTube having the rights to make derivative works of our copyright-infringing derivative vids that they can't legally admit to knowing about, you know?