TWIT hypocrisy part 2? ----- The TWIT Live Special of the Microsoft Surface Event

I'll keep this short....

We all know that TWIT appears to regularly violate other people's copyrights with its "Live Specials."  In the same breath they'll bully users of it's own content even when compliant with their purported "Creative Content" licensing.

So today we had yet another "questionable" example of wanton abuse of someone else's copyright in the form of a "TWIT Live Event" covering the Microsoft Surface announcement.

Now to be completely honest,  Microsoft isn't as explicit about rebroadcasting of it's live events as Apple but I did find a general statement of use of the company's Intellectual Property (or IP) that extends to online content.

As such, I managed to dig up a few sections where TWIT could be in violation of their Terms of Use for Copyrighted Content.

Specifically:  (from the Microsoft website)

"Offensive Use"

"Your use may not be obscene or pornographic, and you may not be disparaging, defamatory, or libelous to Microsoft, any of its products, or any other person or entity."

Laporte and Paul Thurrott repeatedly offered commentary during the "Live Event" that could be considered disparaging of the presenters especially Panos Panay.

AND...

"Link Methods"

"You may link to Microsoft content by using either a plain text link with words such as "This way to Microsoft.com" or by participating in an applicable Link Logo program. No other images may be used as a link to a Microsoft site."

Everybody else provided a hyperlink to the event.  TWIT decided to embed it in their own content and context.  If it were an Apple event there'd be no question how big a NO NO that is.

As for the actual event..

Surface tablets and a big all-in-one called "Surface Studio" that folds down into a desk with a big knob you can put on the screen...

Rah...

Who cares...this article is about hypocrisy not another boring product launch from a company desperate to be relevant.  

BTW, I'm referring to Microsoft but the observation could apply equally to TWIT...

At the end Leo wrapped up the "coverage" in his trademark style with a live read of a "Blue Apron" ad.

Nice of Microsoft to provide content for Leo's "reaction video" and Blue Apron to pay for it with an ad read.  

Maybe the term "reaction video" is incorrect.  Reaction videos usually don't violate commercial copyrights of whatever's being "reacted" to.

Here's the proof straight from the horse's ass...err mouth...

https://twit.tv/shows/twit-live-specials/episodes/309

Hypocrisy.

TWIT & YouTube: The Hypocrisy Engine and Why it Works (against you)

I told you I'd be watching and I'm keeping my promise.  This time it's proof positive of the double standard TWIT employs when it comes to copyrighted material.

TWIT had a "Live Special" that was nothing more than a live reaction video to Apple's September 7th event.  That's bad enough but TWIT was also rebroadcasting the event which is in direct violation of the Apple Copyright and Terms of Use of their website.

So why do I care?

As you know, My Digital Dynamic channel received a copyright strike due to a takedown of an UNEDITED vidcap of the broadcast of TWIT's move to the East Side studios.  Even though I conformed to the strictest interpretation of the Creative Commons license I still received a copyright violation that removed monetization for all videos on that channel most of which had no TWIT content.

OK, so TWIT's on my list but what about YouTube?  What do they have to do with it?

Everything..  There's a double standard at play here.

One that for me began years ago with the #microstopped mass takedown that yanked a Windows 8 HowTo video and continues with the recent TWIT takedowns of the past month.  YouTube provides the heavy hand to enforce what is often unfair and unsubstantiated copyright claims.

The fact of the matter is this.  YouTube is not your friend when it comes to copyright law and free speech.  YouTube is in the business of selling ads not political activism.  To that end they protect their Safe Harbor provisions and their advertising revenue at your expense.

It's a business not a public park.  They get to make the rules and however unfair or unevenly applied you have to operate within them if you want to put your content on their service.

BUT...

When they enforce the rules on one party and not another that sets up a double standard.  This is why I include them in my "hypocrisy engine."

Here's the companion video.   Much more fun than all these...words...

TWIT: Kicking puppies again ( on YouTube )

See that screen capture above?  That's the rule I went by for TWIT videos.  Guess what?  It doesn't matter.  

Newton's 3rd Law

\

For Every Action There Is An Equal And Opposite Reaction

Let me tell you a story....

TWIT: The Gloves are off....

I promised almost 2 years ago that barring people being led away in handcuffs I was going to stop covering TWIT and for the most part I did.

The continuing lewdness, misogyny and a tendency to circle the wagons at the slightest hint of detractors has hardly been  newsworthy.  As such, I was content to just passively watch them die in an implosion of their own making.

To that end I've never done anything to them that they didn't first do to themselves.  In fact, everything I've  written was meant more as a sanity check than attack.  

Believe me, I could have written so much more.  I could have documented the minutia of every misstep, every cruel word, every thoughtless act.

But I left such things to Totaldrama.   I wasn't interested in baldfaced attacks, name calling or sensationalism.  

TWIT does a fine job of that all on its own.

Well....guess what....

The gloves are off BITCH...

They came off because of the latest round of wagon circling.  It seems my video capture of TWIT's big move to the Eastside studios was a violation of copyright.  

At least according to the takedown notice I received today.

Unless something has changed that I don't know about, all TWIT broadcasts are licensed under a Creative Commons license.  As such, so long as you give full attribution of the source and don't try to make any money off of the content you can freely distribute whatever you capture.  

Even the most restrictive of Creative Commons Licenses allows what I've done all along that being...

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 

CC BY-NC-ND

This license is the most restrictive of our six main licenses, only allowing others to download your works and share them with others as long as they credit you, but they can’t change them in any way or use them commercially. 

from the official Creative Commons site...

Which is what I've always done with all my TWIT video captures even going so far as to never edit or cut out material that may change the context of the programming in the slightest way.  In fact, the most editing I've ever done with a TWIT video capture was to edit out the paid advertising reads.

There's no reason that I should give free advertising to a TWIT sponsor nor do I want any hassles with YouTube over it. So it just never happened.  

There are less restrictive licenses under Creative Commons.  In fact most of them allow remixing, parodies, just about anything you want so long as you attribute the original work.  Some even allow for commercial use.

I've always chosen the most restrictive interpretation making no substantive changes to the content or monetizing them in any way.

Even the rather damning videos creatively edited by those less than kind to TWIT were covered under versions of Creative Commons.

Which is the root of my newfound crusade.

You see, my innocuous little YouTube channel consisting primarily of videos of monsoon storms with it's 16 whole subscribers is somehow a threat to TWIT.

So much so that I've earned a copyright strike that puts my channel and my reputation in jeopardy.   The infraction is for a video capture of the TWIT move to the Eastside studio.  A video offered without editing, commentary and free of charge. 

For the unfamiliar, A YouTube copyright strike is a virtually indefensible charge of copyright infringement which in an Internet context is akin to grand theft.

The only recourse, a YouTube form to "Request" the retraction of the charge that demands full contact information. 

Just the thing for a copyright troll to pursue a frivolous lawsuit.  Or to bully a detractor into silence.

I won't be bulled but I'm also not stupid. 

Rack up too many copyright claims and you can find your channel shut down.  As such I've removed similar videos from the channel to prevent from being bullied into oblivion.  Unless you plan on asserting a claim on raindrops and lightning strikes you got nothin'....

So what's the game TWIT?  Are you attempting to rewrite your own questionable history?  Then stop making so much of it!  

Surprising that such a staunch liberal as Leo Laporte would chose a tactic favored by the Texas school board.  You know, that Conservative body that wants our children to at least "consider" that humans were running around underfoot of dinosaurs.  In which case the Flintstones could be considered a documentary series...

..Intelligent design indeed.

What's the threat of presenting content that's already been freely shared for those who care to watch?  

Are we trying to put the genie back into the bottle? Do we want to ensure that the free and uninhibited nature of TWIT is a premise without foundation?  Is anything not directly controlled by TWIT a threat regardless of the intent?

Then you better be damned sure that your edits happen well before the broadcast.  Perhaps the appointment of a propaganda minster would be in order.  Someone with the power over even the Fuhrer...

Josef Goebbels isn't available but I hear Roger Ailes is looking for a gig...

TWIT proudly professes to be more than just another podcast network.  They claim to be community driven but lately it seems like they're more of a cult.  

Communities are made up of like minded people with a common purpose.  OK, so far the same goes for a cult.  The difference is a community is made up of individuals some with controversial ideas.  Ideas that allow the community to learn, grow and persist.  

Cults usually end up with a lot of dead people and a weird website.

We've already got the weird website...

So what's next?  Well, I'm not putting my thunderstorm videos at risk over TWIT.  But I will keep writing.  I will keep watching and I will expose that which is offered freely be it good or bad.

You made a mistake Leo and Lisa.  I was content to be passive even sharing your content on occasion.  Always without spin.  

I'm not content anymore and it's because of you.  I don't have a hell of a lot to look forward to these days but you...you just gave me a new purpose.

I won't be bullied and you can expect greater scrutiny. 

None of which you can do anything about because what I produce will be backed up with irrefutable evidence.  

Meaning, unless you want it splashed all over the Internet, you'd better clean up your act.  I don't need to make shit up, you provide plenty of content and nobody has to guess at the context.

Tit for Tat.

I'm watching...

Stephen Colbert frees Birthday song for Yo Yo Ma

Did you notice?

Stephen Colbert's new Late Show is a success all on its own and breaking new ground in the genre is becoming the norm.

He sings, he dances and he tells a pretty good joke.  He's topically relevant with all the witty repertoire of his previous show and then some.

He's been unchained from a role that if we paid close attention to wasn't really that far from the "Real" Stephen Colbert we enjoy on the Late Show.

Which means he's not afraid to mix it up a bit and set a precedent or two.   Who else would have famous Cellist Yo Yo Ma sit in with a jazz band the entire show and wrap up with a rousing chorus of the "Happy Birthday" song.

Which is a precedent in itself.  

Until recently, "Happy Birthday" was considered a copyrighted work and any performance of it from a late night talk show to a kid's birthday party was deemed infringement without express permission and royalty payments.  

Meaning you didn't hear it much on TV.

All that went out the window last month with the pounding of Judge George H. King's gavel.  Meaning the beloved melody can now be belted out freely by tone deaf parents and talk show hosts everywhere without fear.

Last night was the first time since the ruling that a public performance of the song was heard on broadcast television.  Thus giving Colbert credit for yet another precedent while he and the audience serenaded Yo Yo Ma with the song in celebration of Ma's 60th birthday.

It was even more meaningful than John McCain getting booed by Colbert's audience for an off-handed remark against the Obama administration.  

It's better to elevate a tiny triumph of justice than a tired bit of political pandering.  Even if it's only a silly song sung at birthday parties.

It's Colbert's knack for bringing a little bit of nothing to light that can actually be a lot of something if you bother to pay attention...

Prosecuting Youtube

Let me preface this article with the following statement. 

I firmly believe that content creators have an undeniable right to profit from their work. 

That said, I do have a problem with a copyright system that allows "owners" (which are usually not the content creators) to assert claims on anything they "believe" to be infringing without question by spineless "services" like YouTube. 

I also have a major problem with services that employ a hostile process for redress of the "accused."   

You're guilty with little opportunity to prove your innocence.  It shows up in dire legal verbiage designed to scare away any challenge and immediate penalties that effectively cripple the medium for the accused user.  

In short, on YouTube a copyright strike makes you guilty until proven innocent.  It's a  process that demands all but an admission of "guilt" before allowing you to do anything further on the service while the "infringement" is active.  In the end unless you live with a copyright attorney it's virtually impossible to mount an effective "defense."

So in case you haven't guessed, I just had another run in with YouTube but this one put the proverbial nail in the coffin...

I'd been using the service (notice the tense there) for over 3 years and had hosted almost 300 videos at one point.  I have an active adsense account that allowed me to participate in a revenue sharing agreement with YouTube by allowing them to place ads in my content.  A mutually beneficial arrangement although the benefit was decidedly slanted toward YouTube.

Over the years I'd dealt with a few copyright claims for music and game footage but none were ever elevated to the level of being an outright DMCA copyright violation.  My response was fairly routine.  

I'd either remove the "alleged" offending content if I was feeling generous or if I felt the claim invalid I'd contest it with varying degrees of success.  Over the years I had actually won a few disputes and got the so-called "owners" to back off.  If I lost I usually just deleted the offending video and was done with it.

I never intentionally tried to infringe anyone's copyright but if somebody thought I was trying to take their bone I wasn't going to risk any of my dogs fighting in a rigged game. 

But this was different...

The videos in question were about 2 years old and were simply some footage of a friend of mine testing Windows 8 Enterprise Evaluation edition in a VM.  

There was nothing about the videos that was a privileged information even when they were initially posted.  In fact I never saw anything obvious in Microsoft's EULA that mentioned a restriction on recording footage of the OS.

Unfortunately for me, Microsoft decided yesterday that it didn't like seeing footage of someone actually using their operating system and subsequently filed a take down demand with YouTube.  

Of course that's just supposition as YouTube almost never informs you of the exact "infringement" leaving you to guess.  Only recently have they began testing of an editing tool capable of removing alleged copyrighted content identified by their ContentID system.  Making every upload a coin toss...

Which means anyone who chooses to show a Windows desktop in their video could soon find their content ripped off of YouTube without warning, receive a copyright strike and never know why.

To me, this is nothing short of abuse of the copyright system.  It's bad enough that perpetual copyrights have become the norm effectively shutting anything remotely commercial in the past 50 years out of the public domain.  Now anything that even resembles or has elements of a copyrighted work can be suppressed. 

We're not talking about someone posting some unreleased Hollywood Blockbuster or the latest music video featuring Beyonce's... assets. 

It's about corporate bullying facilitated by a broken copyright system with lapdogs like YouTube doing their bidding. 

And I've had enough...

YouTube always sides with the accuser and as I already mentioned you're given feeble mechanisms for rebuttal. 

This latest insult was the final straw and my response was to delete the entire channel.  I'd rather sacrifice 3 years of work than suffer the Scarlet Letter foisted on me.    

Now some may say I'm in the wrong and list the myriad of ways a copyright holder can claim the exclusive right to distribute anything related to their "property."

Perhaps as things are now that's so but again I reiterate, this was not content that denied anyone their payday.

I like analogies so let's try one that is a little less ambiguous than a video of some geek clicking around a  Windows desktop for an hour...

Imagine you've just bought a brand new car.  It's the first one you've ever had and it's exactly what you wanted.  You're bursting with pride and want to show it off to all your friends and family on the Internet. 

So you record a video, spend hours editing it till it's perfect, upload it to YouTube and send everyone a link who cares to have it.

A month goes by and suddenly your video gets a takedown notice and you get a copyright strike against your account.

Why?  Because the manufacturer of your brand new car claims that they have the exclusive right to any  exhibition of it. 

Seem ridiculous?  It is but that's how the copyright system currently works.  All an "owner" has to do is make a claim and YouTube will dutifully begin prosecuting you.

Which is why I've deleted the channel and removed all the content.

It's bad enough that Google's acquisition of YouTube has resulted in the mass suffering of its users by herding everyone into Google Plus whether they wanted it or not.  

Add in constant attacks by prepubescent teens and quasi-sociopaths determined to destroy your self esteem and your dreams of PewdiePie fandom soon evaporate.

All of that I can deal with.  When you put your stuff out there for all to see you learn to develop a thick skin. 

But when I get branded as a criminal with YouTube as proxy Judge, Jury and Executioner to pass "sentence" it's a step too far. 

YouTube's copyright enforcement system is flawed, ambiguous and to my mind designed that way.  

Hiding behind the shield of "Safe Harbor" they fail to define what constitutes an "infringement" in order to profit off the legitimate work of millions of YouTube creators.  At least until such time as someone makes a claim against you be it legitimate or otherwise.  Leaving a bewildered user base potentially branded as criminals without recourse.

This is one content creator that's had enough.

I'm tired of the constant badgering of copyright trolls with YouTube's blessing and no recourse.  I'm tired of finding my videos mysteriously losing monetization without warning or reason.  I'm tired of YouTube's flawed "ContentID" system throwing innocent users into copyright disputes based on false positives. 

But ultimately, I'm just tired of participating in an abusive relationship.  

Or maybe I'm just tired of writing about A-holes...


UPDATE!

Apparently I wasn't the only one getting screwed over by Microsoft and thousands of other YouTubers including some Microsoft employees suffered the same treatment at the hands of a 3rd party marketing agency called "Marketly." They decided to slap a takedown notice on just about anyone with "Windows" in their video's title.  

When I checked my account today, I no longer found a copyright strike although I'm unsure whether that was because I deleted the channel or the takedown was released.  I will risk uploading the same "offending" videos in a new channel focused on IT this week and see what happens.

How to have a succesful YouTube channel.

Mug shot smile?  Maybe his move from #18 to #6
on YouTube afterward had something
 to do with it...

Shakira, PewdiePie, Super Bowl commercials and Justin Bieber.  There's no accounting for taste but one thing they all have in common is that they consistently have more YouTube views than you do.

Why is that?  What are they doing that you're not.

Talent? 

Debatable, there's plenty of trash with views over a million.

Fame?

Some would claim YouTube takes care of that all by itself.  Of course if you're already famous then YouTube is just icing on the cake. 

Ok, so what about content?  It's king right?  Only the best and brightest rise to the top enriching us all...

Then again, if everyone watched a playlist of the top 10 YouTube videos for any given week the collective IQ of the planet would plummet 40 points.

That doesn't mean the entirety of YouTube is a wasteland, however.  There are those hidden gems that deserve more attention but never seem to get it.

The most successful YouTuber's didn't necessarily get that way because of the quality of their content but rather the way they delivered it.

I've had an active channel for about 3 years now with a small (as in microscopic) amount of success.  One thing I've learned is that while content may be king, viewers are a picky bunch.  If you manage to get their attention you still have some work to do to keep it. 

You may have the voice of James Earl Jones, the charisma of Harrison Ford and a Wall street banker's  wallet but if your video stinks you'll be lucky to break 100 views.

If you're a YouTube partner, it's all about engagement.  10,000 views that only last 5 seconds each won't make you a dime.   Actually, it'll probably get you kicked off the service.  YouTube protects its advertiser dollars and actively looks for people trying to cheat the system.   So ignore those "pay per view" scams.

Truth be told, I came to the game a bit late.  YouTube was already well established by the time I got around to trying it out and found it a saturated medium.  There aren't any original ideas left just original ways of delivering them.  I thought I had a niche of starting up a channel for older gamers until I found 100 channels with the same idea.  

I've done a lot of things wrong, some because of ignorance, some because of resources but mostly just a lack of talent on my part.

But my failings may be instructive....

So let's take a look at a few.  If they seem obvious that's only because they're easy to forget.  It's not uncommon to get so wrapped up in the message that we screw up the delivery.

I'll start with the basics.

First and foremost make sure you've got a decent camera or capture software if you're grabbing screens from a PC.  Low resolution, bad sound and the like turn off viewers fast no matter how good the content is otherwise.

Second, don't make a video just to hear yourself talk.  Only people that are already famous can get away with that.  You're asking someone to invest precious time in your creation, don't make them sorry with crap content and grainy party videos.  Trust me, nobody really cares about your lost weekend in Vegas.

Third, learn how to use your equipment.  Keep your subjects in frame and keep your edits simple.  You're not going to be the next Steven Spielberg with a webcam and Windows Movie Maker so don't try.

Fourth, grow up and have some respect for your viewers.  If you'd be afraid to see it on the nightly news then it shouldn't be on YouTube.  That means we don't need to hear any of your bodily functions thank you very much. 

Fifth, do some planning.  Meandering dialog and poorly organized content is confusing if not boring as hell.  Want to kill a channel, ignore this.

Sixth, make it interesting!  Think about everything that's in the shot.  Nobody wants to see a window behind you unless it's got a great view outside of it.  If you're the star then make sure you're worth seeing and  be comfortable in your own skin.  If you're not comfortable on camera or speaking to people then why the hell are you on YouTube? 

Seventh,   If you're doing a how-to video then for heaven's sake show HOW you actually do something, don't just talk about it.  Show the tools of the trade and actually use them.  Think of it this way, most people had more fun in auto shop class than English in High School.

Finally, be aware of copyrighted material.  It can show up where you wouldn't expect it.  Embedded music in a video game, a radio playing in the background or even singing a few bars of a favorite song can doom your monetization dreams.  Always upload a video privately and then monetize it to see if it trips YouTube's draconian ContentID system.  If it comes up with a so-called VIOLATION at least you can correct the issue before it goes viral without you getting anything for all your hard work but a Copyright strike and empty bragging rights.

I'm pretty sure why I'm a YouTube failure for many of the reasons above.   Take heed!

The video below will illustrate what we've covered above.  Hopefully I broke my own rules enough for you to get something out of it!

Enjoy!

They say it's all about the Content (ID)

You know me...

I'm all for free enterprise and hold firmly to the belief that everyone should just keep their cotton pickin' hands off other people's stuff.

But I'm also conscious of how the tenets of a "Nanny State" abused by corporate interests can tread on free expression if not free enterprise.  For the few of us who can leverage the new media and turn a few pennies for our efforts, it often seems that our creativity is stifled by the size of the retainer we pay our attorneys.

Case in point.  YouTube's dreaded ContentID system.  The ultimate expression of corporate trolling and abuse.  Upload a video that happens to include the faint echos of somebody's transistor radio and 100's of hours of effort can be seized by any number of "Third Party" copyright holders. 

YouTube is a medium but one that would prefer to expand its server farms instead of its legal team.  As such they stay far inside the so-called "safe harbor" rules on copyrighted material.

Safe Harbor is legalese for "Don't Shoot the Messenger."  It's expression of good faith has coalesced in the Content ID system.

Content ID comes into play when your uploaded content is compared against a software algorithm designed to find matches with known copyrighted material.  If it finds a match, YouTube flags the content and offers you the choice to either acknowledge or dispute the claim.  Until recently those were your only options.  It's a deck that is without doubt, stacked against you and the consequences of losing a challenge will at the least deprive you of revenue or at worst get your channel tossed off of YouTube.

Other possible consequences are:

Having your video blocked in some countries

Having Ads placed in your video that you get no revenue from

Having your Video removed from YouTube

I've gone through the dispute process and actually won a few times but only when my argument was either irrefutable or the supposed "infringed party" gave up their claim.  99% of the time, however, you're going to end up having to acknowledge what may or may not be a legitimate copyright claim.  If you care about your content being seen and the "violation" isn't egregious enough, chances are you'll just get a commercial stuck in your video.

There's another option, however, that on its face appears to be middle ground.

I'm talking about new functionality in YouTube that allows  you to remove the supposed "infringing" content from your video without having to go through the pain of re-editing it. 

The Content ID system can pinpoint to a high degree of accuracy exactly where in your video the "infringing" content resides.   It's been able to do that for years but other than annoyance it served little purpose. 

Until now, that is.  Considering that raw HD videos can be 10's of Gigabytes in size with 100's of fragile timing cues easily lost by a careless edit, a tool to easily deal with flagged content is welcome.

In the Video below, I show you how to use this new functionality offered by YouTube.  It's still in Beta but I've been satisfied with the results so far.  The best part is that once the infringing content is removed you're free to monetize and distribute the video however you wish.

Check it out

Just Talkin Tech - Episode 4 No Refunds!

It's all about the product or rather what really qualifies as one.  In this episode we're discussing how software companies can sell you a defective product and you have no recourse but to accept it.  It's a casual but spirited conversation where I try to explain the difference between owning something and just having a license to it. 

In the end anything you don't own affords you very few rights when it goes wrong.   The sad fact is when it comes to a "product" you can't hold in your hand like software code or music (CD's are just a medium BTW) you  don't own anything.