Yes of course. I understand that the material used by the OP is on the right side of the “public domain” border by half a century margin or more. That was my point. The OP should of course defend his rights with all available resources. (Or move to another hosting provider).
I am myself an independent musician primarily working with classical music. I have fought many battles on Youtube to fend off invalid copyright claims. I have been close to DMCA notices sometimes. It is not so bad if someone believes I have “ripped” a recording, this is a typical case on youtube. Of course I am able to prove authencicity of my recording material at all times. But what bothers me so much is the awful attempts to fool ignorant people that public domain works are copyrighted. This is so so bad.
Under federal antitrust law, it is illegal for companies to make agreements to hinder competition. What we have here are individual artists performing public domain classical music and arrangements and attempting to publish them. There is an agreement among the large publishing companies and Youtube to prevent small artists from publishing their own versions of public domain music. This is a serious crime. Even though it is implemented through a search engine and software, it is still a restraint of trade. In other words, these companies are using illegal means to prevent you from competing in the market. It is affecting the livelihood of many legitimate musicians.
Even though most of us don’t have the money to hire lawyers to sue the big publishing companies, there is something we can do. Please contact the US Department of Justice - Antitrust Division to complain about this practice. Here is the website you can go to file a complaint. Citizen Complaint Center Maybe if enough people complain, the Justice Department will do something about it.
Sorry, I missed this question. I’m a still photographer guy, so I don’t use it myself, but literally every video person I know posts their professional work on Vimeo. I’ll see if I can find out why.
Thanks, I’d really like to know. With over 300 videos on YouTube posted over 4 years or so, I have been impressed with them. They moved my account from a 10 minute max clip to (apparently) unlimited (I’ve posted 2 hours at once); their quality has vastly improved over time, their features (multiple resolutions made from one upload, custom thumbnails, etc.) have improved, and I think they rank pretty high in search engines, probably because Google owns YouTube. It would have to be a great advantage difference for me to switch to Vimeo and pay for it, too.
OK, the basic answer I got basically boils down to it looking more professional, being the industry standard for artists and professionals. They also said the $200 pro account is not necessary, with the $60 plan being enough for most filmmakers. (One person basically said Vimeo is known for a serious filmmaking/cinematography scene, while Youtube is known for “well, cat videos.”) Nobody’s really given me any technical considerations for why it’s better.
One thing I do know that Vimeo offers is personal branding and password protection for your videos, but I’m not sure if that’s available on the $60 plan or the $200 pro plan. So if that’s important, there’s that. But, mostly, it seems to be an image thing. I do admit, I do have an association with Vimeo looking “more professional,” but that’s more a result of all the people I personally know in the videography/cinematography business use them. I used to hate Vimeo with a fiery passion, because it always loaded so friggin’ slow compared to Youtube. Now, it seems to be much more responsive.
I got a couple more answers: Vimeo has a cleaner interface and a more refined look (both of which I agree with.) If you are embedding video in your website (which is how I come across most Vimeo videos), there are more and better embedding options, plus with the Pro site, you have the ability to do your own branding (so no Vimeo logo–you can brand it with your own logo). Also, many claim the video quality on Vimeo is better than Youtube, even though both now support HD. Certainly, when Vimeo first came out, the quality was much better, but I don’t know whether that’s objectively true today or not. The videos seem a little nicer to me on Vimeo, but that may just be confirmation bias. Vimeo also promises one-hour response time on their customer support on business days on pro accounts. You can also sell your videos (with both rental and buy pricing) and revenue split is 90-10 after transaction costs. Password protection was also mentioned.
As a still photographer, I embed all my content on my pages, and I don’t allow other branding. If I were in video, the embed/branding options would be a big consideration for me (although it appears there is a hack that lets you remove Youtube branding on your pages.) Also, the customer service. If response times really are in that 1 hour range, that’d be important to me.
So, these things may or may not be important to you, but I just wanted to round out some other reasons. It seems to me that if you are into creating viral videos or videos intended for the largest possible audience, Youtube would be the way to go. If you’re looking for creating personally branded content on your own business website, Vimeo would be the way to go.
Thanks, Pulykamell. Your last paragraph may sum it up for me.
Youtube allows me to prevent insertion of ads or promos from them, except when there is a copyright dispute. I noticed that if I don’t challenge it, they place ads on my videos. Since most of my stuff is original, or I challenge most claims they make, I rarely see ads.
I might try one of the cheaper Vimeo accounts just so I can make a comparison. And things may change, so I’ll keep an eye on the situation.
Someone said above that Youtube is a free service and you should be happy for its existence. And move somewhere else if you get in trouble. Well this is partly correct. In my case it is however not the entire picture.
Youtube/Google also has a service called AdSense which allows for content producers (like me) to get shared ad revenues from published material. This is a business agreement between me and Youtube and Youtube could start earning money from this. I pay with my own work!
This mechanism is however completely screwed up since the AdSense service is always blocked for any uploader having any content id dispute going on. I have at least one of my recordings in disputed state 99.9% of the time. In other words I think Youtube is effectively breaching the contract here, or at least they try to “bully” me and others to just donate my material to larger and more powerful media producers.
The tactics used include false copyright claims on public domain work. Very very bad. Of course they do not explicitly write “I own the copyright” but rather “I administer this work”.
Also disturbing is the fact that I publish under an open license (CC BY-SA). So actually I permit anyone to monetize my work as long as cred is given and the license conditions are re-applied on the sharer’s usage. I am surprised that this clever license mechanism not yet had found its way to being used for commercial actors.
I am just saying : “This is my work, you are free to use it and even earn money using it as long as we stick to some simple rules”.
Youtube and media companies are saying: “No this work is administered by Corporation XYZ and we want to get the whole cake. Capisce?”.
I just uploaded a digitized version of a vinyl LP track of “O Magnum Mysterium” by Tomas Luis de Victoria, performed by my High School choir in 1974-75.
YouTube hit me with one alleged copyright violation posted by “Kobalt Music Publishing” and another from “AdShare MG for a Third Party”
The recording is not a commercial recording. I don’t know who the fuck Kobalt Music Publishing or AdShare MG might be, but they don’t have any rights to my high school choir’s performances’ recordings.
Are there any penalties for making a false copyright claim. If not, what is to stop me from file a complaint against everything on youtube? Or a DRM complaint against everything on the interwebs?
Although I agree that most of YouTube’s claims are chickenshit, the rights they are referring to can probably be found on the printed music your High School Choir used in 1974. Arrangements can be copyrighted, so even a 15th Century composition might have a 20th Century arrangement, and be subject to copyright laws.
Makes no difference. Rights can be purchased, you know. Do they now own the rights that are claimed?
The notices don’t take the form of letters from the aggrieved parties, but instead a sort of status in “Video Manager” in YouTube, reading “Matched third party content”; that textstring is a link which opens to a blurb reading:
[QUOTE=YouTube]
Your video may include a song owned by a third party. For example, this might be a song playing in the background or someone performing a song.
To hear the matched song please play the video on the right. The video will play from the point where the matched content was identified.
Your video is available and playable.
Here are the details:
“O Magnum Mysterium- Victoria”, musical composition administered by: 0:15
Kobalt Music Publishing Your dispute awaiting response by 01/16/14
[/quote]
No links to Kobalt are provided, so I have to (ahem) Google them. And try to find contact information. There is a link to “dispute” the allegation, which I made use of.
Oh, and the second claimant, AdShare MG, has already changed their flag to “Claim released”.
[QUOTE=Doug K]
There is [Section (c)], but I don’t know what the mechanism for enforcement is.
[/quote]
Nice! I keep that handy and will make use of it as seems appropriate!
In my experience, that is often the outcome to a first-level challenge. It appears that the claimant (a robot) does not wish to pursue it further, since they have a poor claim in the first place. It’s a bluff, and you called them on it.
