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| Photo: C. J. Papachristou |
Here is a story of injustice, humiliation and hypocrisy that many of us have experienced at YouTube:
1. Say, you are a teacher and you need to post a short video clip for educational purposes. It is basically your own production but contains some material whose copyright you don’t own. You submit the video to YouTube...
2. The sophisticated YouTube system inspects it and finally approves publication. They send you a mail congratulating you and urging you to disseminate your work as widely as possible!
3. On your admin page, a message appears informing you that your video contains copyrighted material but you needn’t worry about this. All you have to do is acknowledge this fact and accept a few on-screen commercial messages...
4. Suddenly, a few years later, you receive a less than kind mail from the YouTube admin accusing you of copyright infringement and threatening to close your account, which is severely compromised and put on probation. To even have mere access to your account, you are required to go through the humiliating process of watching a childish cartoon and taking a multiple-choice test!
A naive question: If a giant site like YouTube, possessing the most sophisticated system of copyright detection, cannot assume responsibility for what they publish, how can a “common mortal” like yourself be held responsible for not having predicted a distant-future change of policy of some stupid copyright holder?
Epilog: Perhaps the most dignified response to this humiliating, hypocritical treatment is to withdraw all your material and close your YouTube account yourself, anyway. I know this is extreme, but it is certainly one thing to consider...
Costas J. Papachristou
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