Whose video is it anyway?
Mar 23rd, 2010 by handolio
By now, surely the only person who hasn’t seen this Renault Clio being shunted sideways down the A1 (M) is the truck driver responsible, so just in case he’s reading:
While the Mail has since tracked down the unhurt 31-year-old Clio driver, details were thin on the ground on Thursday last week as the surely-it-can’t-be-real video started to spread. Without much background we decided not to run it.
But I’ve been fascinated by the way that mainstream news sites covered the story, and by the way that they’ve all felt free to use the video (which, let’s face it, has to be seen to be believed).
The footage was originally posted by the YouTube user dogswick. His notes explained that it wasn’t his film, but that he’s a friend of the truck driver involved, who had been given a copy.
Video diary
Looking at different papers’ approaches, I wonder how some stand with regard to copyright law. The Sun didn’t bother sourcing the story or its stills, and felt entitled to repackage the video into its own flash player, complete with an advert prequel.
Perhaps that’s what you’d expect from the tabloids, but the Mail did much better, reproducing stills from the clip that were each credited to ‘dogswick / Youtube.com’, and embedding the original video at the foot of its article.
The Guardian also embedded the YouTube video and had managed to speak to haulage firm Arclid transport. The Telegraph had less information and reposted the video in its own player, albeit with a credit to dogswick and YouTube.
Finally, the BBC had the most in the way of background, but while it linked to the YouTube homepage it repackaged the video into its own player. While Steve Herrmann’s link policy post acknowledges that a link from BBC News can generate an overwhelming amount of traffic, this is YouTube we’re talking about.
Anyway, you get the idea. No two sites seem to have the same approach, but at least those embedding the original video are acting within YouTube’s terms. Of course, even then we may all be infringing someone’s copyright if it turns out dogswick didn’t have the right to post the video in the first place, but that’s his lookout.
And I’d love to know exactly what’s happened there, because after getting some half-million views he’s decided to take down the video.
I wonder why? The approach from ITN might explain it – as many subsequent comments on his channel imply – but I have an alternative theory.
Might his mate, the lorry driver – now suspended from his job and the subject of a police investigation – have administered the sort of shoeing that would have Malcolm Tucker taking notes?
I wonder if dogswick knows what hit him.
The other part of it is that when a video gets popular on YouTube there’s no shortage of users happy to rip it off – simply capturing and re-posting it on their own account.
I find this particularly annoying*. The quality is usually worse and sometimes the original gets crowded out by the copies. Surely there’s just no excuse for this self-promotion at the expense of copyright unless somebody’s actually added something worthwhile in the process – like the Downfall Hitler meme?
There’s a YouTube ContentID tool through which copyright holders can submit their copyrighted content for reference. The automated tool examines user-submitted videos looking for audio or visual matches, alerting the copyright owner to infringements. It’s aimed at major interests such as film and TV studios, but given that it’s scanning what we upload anyway, couldn’t Google be using it to spot duplicated content?
*with the obvious irony that I’m only able to add the video to this post because somebody has done just that, given that the original has gone. The news sites have been forced to find alternatives, too.
Interesting, of course, but how about the underlying point that each and every news source feels perfectly at liberty to debate the events, while accepting that they may soon become subject to criminal proceedings?
I was initially in two minds about the (admittedly powerful) footage – is it really conceiveable that a driver could seemingly be so negligent (tellingly, we don’t know how the two vehicles came to be in such an unusual embrace)?
Apparently, the answer is yes. The Mail ‘tracked down’ the Clio driver, and has effectively tried the anonymous driver of the tanker in public, based on a grainy (but oh, so titillating) YouTube video.
Hell, it makes a good story, but once the video is out there – and has been covered by multiple national news sources – it effectively becomes its own self-perpetuating version of the truth.
Simple question: if a local newspaper editor had been offered stills of this incident 20 years ago – in the knowledge that a court case within the paper’s circulation area could be imminent – would he have printed them? Not likely.
Dogswick has asked how we feel now that the facts are out in the open. For those who don’t know, the driver has since been identified as John Tomlinson and, after appearing before the North West traffic commissioner he has been cleared of any blame and allowed to continue driving.
The main thrust of my post was the way that news sites seemingly feel free to nick content from YouTube, but the flippant ending seems a bit unfair now the full story has emerged.
Tom’s point seems more pertinent – that everyone feels qualified to debate the events based on the video alone. The footage makes things seem pretty one-sided; it’s a good job the traffic commissioner had more to go on.