Unless You Created that Video, Stop Acting Like it's "Yours"

Posted 2/6/09

An interesting trend, which has been touched on before, has sort of taken an interesting turn over the last couple of weeks.  You see, there is this culture of bloggers that basically run an entire blog made up of other people’s videos.  It could be a commercial that a major company has posted to YouTube, or a video cap of a game highlight, or even an old video that some kid found at home and converted into digital format for internet-goers.  I think I’ve shared my feelings on this type of blogger in the past, but lately, some of the chatter around it has really gotten under my skin.

It has almost become a competition for people to post the latest and greatest commercial from Nike, Gatorade, etc.  If a blogger is lucky enough to find the video “first”, then a little research is done to see if anyone else has posted the video.  If indeed he/she is the first, then the blogger spams out his/her “find” to all major blogging outlets in hopes of gaining links and traffic.  (There are obvious ethical issues with this facet of video blogging as well, but we’ll save those for another day.)

So here is the latest interesting scenario…

Blogger #1 “finds” (not creates) this video and spams it to the world.  Fine.  And as the links start to roll in, they become extremely happy for essentially doing nothing.  OK.  And then blogger #2 comes along, “finds” the video just as the blogger #1 did and posts it to their own blog.  No link or credit is given out as the video was found on YouTube or you know what, who cares where it was found.  Bottom line is that they found it on the internet just like blogger #1 did.

Now, blogger #1 finds out that the video was posted and since they think they were “first” to post it that they deserve some sort of credit for it and are now upset!  Wait what?  Yes, you read that correctly.  And then posts to friends start about blogger #2 stealing “their videos” and not “linking back” and yada, yada, yada.

Does anyone else see anything completely ridiculous and wrong with blogger #1?  Let’s break this down…

You “found” someone else’s video.  FOUND it.  F-O-U-N-D it. (Insert hand signals here)  Then posted this other person’s video like it was your own.  Spread it to the world like you have some sort of stake in the video.  And then became upset when someone else in the entire World Wide Web, decided to post it without giving you a link back.  W…T…F is wrong with you blogger #1?  With all of the millions of visitors that sites like YouTube receive each day, you actually had the balls to claim some other person’s video as yours?

My final thoughts…

If you didn’t create the video, stop treating it like it’s yours.
If you didn’t create the video, stop spamming it to the world expecting returns.
If you didn’t create the video, buy a DVR/Tuner or video capping software.

If you didn’t create the video, IT’S NOT YOURS.


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Original article from http://www.thesportsdollar.com/2009/02/unless-you-created-that-video-stop.html