Several weeks ago, I came across a video on YouTube that used the song Nemo, from Nightwish. I'd never heard the song before - or of the band, and BECAUSE OF THIS VIDEO, I went out and bought the CD. As I'm willing to bet several people do!
But, I shared the information about this video in a story I'd written for a fanfiction site (listen to the song on this video while you read this story), and a day or so later - the video had been taken down for copyright infringement.
And I'm thinking, ya morons! I would never have known about this song except for this video, it gave you a new fan, and would probably have continued to give you new fans, but you take it down because you're not going to get a penny per each time it's played? So short sighted!
Then, just a couple of days ago, I shared here the video of a Star Trek Season 3 blooper reel, because it had like three whole seconds of Steve Ihnat and Yvonne Craig in a blooper. And now, today, I see that that video has been removed. It had been popular, over 48,000 views, so must have been up for at least a year. Yet two days after I share it here, it's gone. Coincidence?
And again, why? It was actually a pretty lousy video - someone had put text in the middle of everyone's faces so you couldn't see anything. (So yeah, obviously whoever originally had it didn't want it shown). But why? Why? Star Trek is over 40 years old, the actors don't get any royalties from the old show anymore, and the people who produced it are getting rich off the new series. Why do they even care about some 9 minute blooper reel? And if they really care that they're missing out on some money, why not put a link on the page to the real thing, sans that stupid obscuring text, and say, "Hey, pay a dollar and you can see this in quality video." People would have been willing to pay to see it!
But no, it's gone. It's just stupid.
Now I can see the point if its what someone has written. This happened to me. I spent hours and hours transcribing a Superman radio episode that had Batman as a gueststar. (The show was from the 1940s and out of copyright, I hasten to add.) I put this up on my site. A year later, I'm surfing the web, and see my entire script, plus the illustrations and annotations I'd made, on someone else's site. Which would have been fine, except they didn't even give me any credit for it! Nor had they changed the URLs for the links - so my server was still getting hits from them. (Not that bandwidth was an issue). But this just infuriated me. Yes, the show was out of copyright and anyone could have taken the time to do what I did, but *I* did it. Use it by all means, but at least do me the courtesy of linking back to my site!
But with music, or videos of old TV shows? There is only good, and no harm, in allowing them to remain on YouTube. They are free publicity. And since a lot of shows are never going to be released because they're not financially viable to do so, a lot of fans are being deprived of some good stuff for no good reason!
Just annoys the hell out of me!
Let joy and innocence prevail.
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