Google has continued to anger its Youtube userbase over the past couple of days by initiating a new draconian version of its automatic copyright infringement detection tool, which has begun claiming videos on behalf of game developers the world over, meaning lets players and reviewers will lose advertising revenue on huge numbers of their videos; in some cases we're talking hundreds. Fortunately, some developers see how this might be a problem and have begun helping some video makers regain ownership of their videos.
Google has used this tool in the past and it's typically been used for rooting out copyright protected music, but in this its targeting videos that are easily covered by fair use law. The fact that Google is impartially removing ownership from these videos too, is potentially crippling people's livelihoods as an entrepreneurial spirit has grown up around Youtube and its adverts, letting people make a reasonable living if they can pull in a few hundred thousand views per video.
These videos also generate a lot of free publicity for the developers and counter to traditional corporate trends, they actually recognise this and a few are hoping to turn the situation around. Ubisoft is one of them. It's released a set of guideliines for those affected, suggesting that they send through a link to the video and a note of who flagged it and Ubisoft will have it reverted.
Blizzard has similarly said it will help out those affected, as has Capcom.
Here's hoping Google pulls its finger out of its ass and sorts this, as it has the potential to kill some of the biggest channels on the entire site.
[Cheers CVG]
