YouTube videos

[imslp]

I'm thinking of implementing a YouTube submission system on IMSLP, with the goal of permitting the submission of the best YouTube videos. However, I wanted to ask exactly how frequent it is that YouTube videos are removed from YouTube. More precisely, there are two ways to implement this:

1. Have an automatically maintained list of submitted YouTube entries. The benefit is that it will automatically remove any YouTube videos that have been removed. The drawback is that you will not be able to label the entries under subheadings, or maybe even move them around.
2. Use FTE templates like currently used for normal files. The benefit is that it is much more flexible, but the drawback is that manual maintenance is required to remove any files removed from YouTube.

So basically, it is a tradeoff between flexibility and automated removal of removed files. Comments/suggestions?

[coulonnus]

When I am looking for the video of a piece I go into http://video.google.com/
and type the composer, piece and Op. number. Perhaps you could automatically provide the complete Google-video search link for each piece page.

Is Youtube the only decent site which provides videos?

The drawback of my suggestion is that Google has become less rigourous over the years. When there are too few results Google attempts to please you with results that contain only some of your search words.

But of course Google has excuses if some results have been removed from their host site.

[KGill]

Wait...are we really going to assume that the enormous bulk of YouTube videos are not there illegally? Wouldn't this open us up to a whole host of copyright issues? I mean, yes, there are a comparative few YT videos of classical music that are up there legally, but it isn't that easy to find them and even if you do find a possibility, how would its suitability for IMSLP be ascertained?

[Carolus]

The key issue with respect to copyright, as I understand it, would be whether a given video is actually resident on IMSLP's server or the IMSLP entry in question is actually an embedded link to the video hosted on YouTube's server. Links - even to items which infringe copyrights - are not infringements themselves. I expect we're talking about embedded links here rather than items being uploaded to our server.

[KGill]

OK - but I guess I'm just wary of even linking to copyrighted items (don't we have a policy on the forums not to?). If we did it deliberately and systematically then couldn't that be seen as taking advantage of YouTube's much less stringent copyright control to still accept files here that would be illegal to upload on the actual IMSLP servers, thus effectively augmenting our collection? I don't know, I suppose it just feels like we'd be edging closer to the pirate segment of the internet if we started doing that Would it really not cause any trouble at all for us litigation-wise?

[pml]

My understanding is that notification of copyright infringements and takedowns do occur from time to time (with greater frequency for commercially viable material), and do we really want to be taking the word of the YouTubers that they have permission to post their stuff? How would we assess / guarantee the honesty of a particular YouTube channel?

PML (YT account: phi1ip2)

[imslp]

Actually, I'm pretty sure that YouTube has agreements with many of the major labels (I can go and check to make sure). This would mean that many of the seemingly copyright-infringing videos on YouTube are actually legal (or else I'm pretty sure you will not see a huge chunk of the videos currently available on YouTube). Even if the videos are of questionable legality, I do remember that one case said linking to infringing content is not itself infringing (essentially Carolus's analysis).

In any case, I will of course do more research on this issue to be completely certain, but I did want to first get a sense of any comments you guys may have about this expansion. There will definitely be more chances to discuss later in the implementation cycle.

[KGill]

Actually, I'm pretty sure that YouTube has agreements with many of the major labels (I can go and check to make sure). This would mean that many of the seemingly copyright-infringing videos on YouTube are actually legal (or else I'm pretty sure you will not see a huge chunk of the videos currently available on YouTube).

Does this apply to the classical music selections available there as well, or are you mainly referring to VEVO which as far as I'm aware concentrates on popular stuff? Over the summer one of the most prolific uploaders of CM videos was shut down due to a complaint by Hyperion, and something like 1500 videos were removed...