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

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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...

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.