By “YouTube fragment”, you don’t mean just any old piece of something larger on YouTube (say, two minutes clipped out of a Star Trek episode), but rather a segment of a copyrighted work that has been busted up into fragments, but is available in whole by watching those fragments, correct?
If so, then I think this answers the questions raised about why they addressed this issue this way. What I wonder is why it is that certain people who post here consistently want to question the “management” regardless of what they do? I mean, really, in this case, was the reaction of the manager in question what would be considered “jackbooted” thuggery? :dubious:
It’s not a bad term actually. These segments are more than simple clips and since they’ve been deliberately fragmented in order to put the full length movie on YouTube the term fragment describes them rather well.
Yes, the situation appears to be up in the air again. We’re awaiting clarification. Ed’s first reaction was that our policy (allowing links) was fine, and that prompted my earlier post. On re-think, it’s now being reviewed again. So, no final word yet.
I used the term “YouTube fragment” to mean “a ten-minute clip taken from a movie, where the entire movie is fragmented into ten-minute clips so that the entire movie is available in ten-minute fragments.” I thought it was clear from the context, and I’m sorry if not.
I’ve investigated further. This is complicated, so I’ll lay it out in bits:
On inquiry, it appears the entire movie HOUSE OF WAX has been uploaded to YouTube in numbered 10 minute chunks. If so, that’s clearly an attempt to evade copyright through illegitimate use of the fair use provision, which allows excerpts. That being the case, it was right to delete this link.
We doubt we’re under legal obligation to do this, but as part of a publishing company whose work is constantly being pirated we feel we owe this courtesy to other parties in the same boat.
This is a special case, though. Our default assumption is that anything on YouTube is there legally and is OK to link to, and we needn’t go to unusual trouble to ascertain this.
However, if a case like this is called to our attention, and if on investigation we find it’s clearly a case of attempting to evade copyright, we’ll take down the link.
Generally speaking you won’t get into trouble for posting a link to something like this but we do ask that you exercise care in what you link to.
Interesting – if I want to link to a fragment, but that fragment is part of a larger whole, the link may end up getting deleted (if someone raises the issue). But I can then re-search for another clip that shows the same thing, but is not part of a playlist showing the whole shebang – and request it to be reposted?
I hope YouTube finds a way to prevent whole-movies-as-playlists because the above sounds like it can be fairly cumbersome.