http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20060727.html What goes on the Net stays on the Net: Is there a beer bong on YOUR resume? By Robert X. Cringely Who owns your words? My words (the ones you are reading) are owned not by me but by PBS, which pays me for them. What about your image, is that yours? I do happen to own my own image, if little else. And what about video? If you have put video up on the Net, do you own it? I own NerdTV video and PBS has certain rights. But what happens if someone takes an episode of NerdTV and puts it up on YouTube? Ah, now THAT'S complex. For those who live under rocks, YouTube is at present the most successful web site solely devoted to hosting video submitted by its members. There are similar sites from Google, Yahoo, and many others, but right now YouTube is the biggest in terms of average daily plays, serving up a claimed 100 million very short shows every day. But who actually owns those tens of thousands of short clips of friends doing the samba or falling off motorcycles? Facing a copyright infringement suit filed on July 14th intended to answer exactly that, YouTube management a few days ago decided to clarify in their terms of use exactly who DOES own all that video. They do. Here are the exact words of the new YouTube license: "...by submitting the User Submissions to YouTube, you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the User Submissions in connection with the YouTube Website and YouTube's (and its successor's) business...in any media formats and through any media channels." The YouTube license says "you retain all of your ownership rights in your User Submissions." And while that's true, the license explicitly gives them the right to do whatever they want with your video. They say they don't have the rights to sell users' content, but the wording says otherwise and there's nothing in the license to prohibit them from doing so. This kind of language ought not to be so surprising given the "I welcome death and hold the vendor blameless" nature of most technology product End User License Agreements, but it is pretty strong language for a video sharing site, most of which seem to try mainly to distance themselves from control of the material for fear that it violates someone else's copyright. But not YouTube. They want it all. Under this new license, then, it would seem that they could produce a Best of YouTube DVD and sell it on late night TV. They could take your musical performance, strip the audio from the video, and sell it to almost anyone for almost any use. They could refuse to take down your video, no matter how embarrassing. They could charge YOU for your own video. And of course they could insert ads in the video virtually anywhere. Maybe YouTube will do none of the above. Maybe, with its first-ever serious copyright infringement case going to trial, YouTube just wants to make sure future submissions are legally covered, whether the company ever resells or remixes them or not. Still, I have to worry. YouTube has expressed some interest in carrying NerdTV, for example. What rights do I convey to them if I submit my episodes, which are presently covered by a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License (CC BY-NC) license? This CC BY-NC license allows viewers to mangle and share NerdTV episodes in any way they like as long as they don't rent or sell that subsequent product and keep the CC BY-NC license text intact. By submitting my episodes of NerdTV to YouTube, would I compromise my own license, giving up the farm in the process? Yes. By submitting my NerdTV episodes to YouTube I'd be giving up the very rights I claim with my CC BY-NC license. YouTube could publish a "Best of NerdTV" video collection, sell it, throw in some commercials, replace my voice with that of another interviewer, and of course never pay me a cent in royalties. But not all the news is bad according to Stanford University law professor Larry Lessig, father of the Creative Commons family of licenses. I can allow NerdTV to be on YouTube, according to Larry, but it would be really stupid for ME to put it there. "YouTube does need to be pushed on this, as these terms are ridiculous," says Lessig. "But if you are not doing the submission, then I wouldn't worry about it. E.g., if I get your show from you under a CC BY-NC license, I don't have the right to transfer to YouTube anything except BY-NC rights. They can't take anything more than they're given. If they want more, they would need to get it from you. But if you submit to YouTube, then you do have the authority to grant these terms, and so you would be granting them. So bottom line: Don't you submit, and don't worry if your (many) fans do." So forget about any formal relationship, then, between NerdTV and YouTube. I'd have to be crazy to submit my own work, as would any professional videographer. And they'd have to be crazy to run 60-minute interviews with geeks, which hardly fit in their 2-3 minutes of video business plan. The other part of what's happening here is YouTube feinting toward going public and having all these intellectual property rights -- whether they are ever really used or not -- goes a long way toward describing a company that can make money, which up to now YouTube definitely has not done. But why do we care about this stuff, anyway? Not just the licenses, but the videos, themselves? Why are these little videos so compelling? I think the people who submit them are looking for more than just Andy Warhol's 15 minutes of fame. I think they are looking for some connection. In a world where geographical and temporal distance are becoming less and less important, YouTube and its ilk simply represent a new way of making friends. And the fact that many of the most popular videos are so bad probably comes, too, from an adolescent need to make a quick -- even if negative -- impression before the opportunity is lost. With this in mind, I met this week with managers for a VERY large Internet property -- one that offers variations on all the current social networking fads like MySpace, FaceBook, and video sharing like YouTube. Why did they think people submitted this material that could often be viewed as personally embarrassing or exposing inner thoughts to any wacko with a DSL line? They hadn't a clue. A table full of ultra-smart executives in their early thirties had no idea whatsoever why anyone would be so reckless as to use their service. They were simply too old to make sense of it and knew that. But whether they understand their members' motivation or not, they'll gladly take the tens of millions of advertising dollars such a phenomenon represents. Ed Sullivan probably didn't really understand the Beatles, either. Maybe the answer, as Jack Weinberg put it during the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley in 1965, is to not trust anyone over 30. YouTube CEO Chad Hurley is 29 and running out of time. ___________________________________________________ interesting Rocket River
