March 19, 2007

For you, ze war is over

The copyright nazis are marching on YouTube. The "Channels I'm Watching" function allows you to monitor favourite YouTubers' videos. There were at least a dozen regularly-updated channels I was keeping an eye on; these guys had a good record for adding both recent and old ads, many of which I've featured here.
Within the last week, eight of them have had their accounts suspended. I can only conclude that the legal paranoia besetting YouTube's new owners is behind this.
I can think of a few reasons why advertisers and their agencies would object to the online sharing of intended-for-TV ads, all of them feeble (old campaigns might undermine new marketing strategies; bloggers like yours truly can take the piss; modern eyes would laugh at the hangups of yesteryear, and so on), but it would be a very odd day if YouTube were the target of an ad-related lawsuit.
I'll be keeping my own account, for now, but will start to use some of YouTube's rivals a little more often: DailyMotion, LuLu TV, Metacafe and Revver. I'm sure some of you lurkers can think of some others.

2 comments:

Amelia said...

It's so incredibly short-sighted isn't it. Though the cats falling down toilets and exploding farts are all well and good, so much of what I wanted from YouTube was not UGC. You're right, it's the old ads, film trailers, clips from shows - stuff that entertains, stuff that makes you think, stuff that you want to the write about...
I have not started with the YouTube alternatives, but maybe this weekend is the time!

SchizoFishNChimps said...

Amelia, DailyMotion is ad-friendly.