I had a very friendly conversation with TVW President and CEO Greg Lane this afternoon, and I think we came away with a mutual understanding about our little dispute.
TVW would like its coverage to be distributed as widely as possible, but they don’t want it to appear like they are responsible for editing or excerpting their raw footage. We bloggers, on the other hand, can’t very well illustrate our commentary by inserting a link with an instruction to, say, scroll to the 52 minute mark.
To accommodate both our needs, TVW is working on a technical solution: a flash player that we can embed into our posts—like YouTube—but with a contiguous time sequence as an optional parameter. We get an easier way to select and present pertinent excerpts, and TVW assures the integrity of their coverage by serving it themselves.
I think that’s a win-win. Of course, it doesn’t prevent anybody from downloading events and editing together clip reels, but my guess is the vast majority of bloggers will simply opt for the embedded player out of convenience alone. I figure that’s what I’ll do.
As for the contested clip, Lane informs me that they did request it be pulled back on Friday, and that YouTube has confirmed receipt of their request… but so far it’s still available for your viewing pleasure.
(©2006 TVW. View full source here.)
UPDATE:
YouTube has finally pulled the clip, so I’ve uploaded it to LiveLeak:
Well, that’s a good thing that they are taking responsibility for making it work.
I’m still confused about how the controversy came about with regards to this particular You Tube’ed excerpt, and would be interested in hearing what Greg Lane has to say in that respect. Specifically, who brought this up in the first place? What is the relationship of that initiative to any congressional campaigns? I know a Darcy supporter brought this clip to my attention, I want to know if Dave supporter was responsible, indirectly, for the request to pull this clip. Surely this is not the only clip from TVW on You Tube.
And what about the fact that it is unlikely that TVW will ever have available the kind of resources that You Tube makes freely available? Will TVW make a commitment to add resources as needed to meet all demand? I think not (they’d be foolish to do so)…
I think they still have some work to do in evolving a fair use policy that is workable over the long run. I suggest that any clips with appropriate, comprehensive, and accurate attribution should fit the bill, including something edited and with some comments on You Tube. Use away I say, let ’em sue.
Dave is a waste if the Intertubes…
I suspected all along that he might become more reasonable after you explained fair use law to him.
I think Lane’s response is at best bending the truth, and at worst, being disingenuous.
Saying they want to develop a Youtube like application is a bit weird since last year, they already had one. Up until recently, it was pretty easy to embed TVW produced flash movies, you just had to figure out on your own how to do it.
And, then recently, they hid their flash files behind a firewall that prevents you from embedding them on your own website.
Granted, Lane has come onto TVW recently and probably since the decision to hide the flash files was made, but he shouldn’t say they want to develop a product they already had but took away.
I still think TVW is on very shaky legal ground, and they probably know it – hence the compromise. But as compromises go, it’s not a bad one, so go ahead and take advantage of it – as long as they don’t make you sign any agreements to their terms.
Emmet,..
I know for a fact (from a creditable source) that the embedding option was not pulled intentionally. TVW changed to a server based delivery technology to be able to serve a larger audience and the code for how they embed their code changed. It was a technical issue only. Embedding is coming to TVW.org soon, very soon….