YouTube Purged - Why Its No Substitute For Public Access
YouTube demonstrates here why it is not a free speech forum. In this instance they say that they may pre-empt the showing of government (read: public) meetings if they claim to be unsure of the source.
VIDEOS TEMPORARILY DOWN - NOTE TO OUR VIEWERS
Posted: Sat. 02/10/07 by Dan ManattPoliticsTV.com’s videos are temporarily down - we are disappointed to report YouTube has suspended our account.
Recent videos e.g. the Scooter Libby Trial and DNC Presidential Candidate Videos ˜ will be reposted in a matter of hours, and our full archive of 350 original videos, to which we own full copyright, will be posted very soon.
We apologize for the inconvenience.
PoliticsTV.com posts 95%+ original content to our account, and in recent weeks has posted 100% original content. Even so, YouTube has suspended the account, either because of the small number of off the air clips we posted under fair use. We are also trying to determine if this action was taken in error due to a mistaken believe that PTV‚s original coverage of congressional hearings, etc., was taken from C-SPAN or other sources, when in fact it was original content to which we of course had copyright.
Thank you for your patience and your continued loyalty. It is our aim to simultaneously be good corporate citizens, abide by copyright/fair use rules, and serve the public interest through our programming efforts
It is often touted as the new platform for civic conversation and engagement, and is the modern technological replacement for the older institutional forum of public access television. However, It is not a public platform but is rather privately owned, and the corporation has complete control over deciding to remove something that something they don’t agree with. I suppose that it in itself shows that it won’t work that well as a substitute.
Michael Eisenmenger of the Manhattan Neighborhood Network elaborates further on this….
Well, a lot of us were saying this back when YouTube and other similar commercial sites started. All one had to do was read their “Terms of Use” policy (which change frequently) to see that your content would be on shaky ground and borrowed time. Their main reasons for starting up in the first place were to be bought out by other larger companies. The ‘free’ and ‘loose’ start-up stage of these sites is simply a way to collect more users and up the eventual buy-out price.
Sites like YouTube are the venture capitalist adaptation of commercial TV - but instead of selling ‘viewers’ to advertisers, these sites sell ‘users’ to advertisers (and the unpaid labor users put into their content creation). Free Speech was never really part of that equation (or business model) - since they still own and control the means of distribution - same as commercial newspapers, radio and TV.
The problem is also that corporate entities either can’t or don’t recognize ‘creative commons licenses’ nor ‘fair use’ consistently. The liability issues that PEG has long since resolved (linking all content to identifiable local producers whom assume liability) - just don’t hold water in the anonymous user world of online content.
That said, archive.org is a much more suitable site for on-line media of a PEG bent. As a non-profit - they get it - and work to protect it. They should be celebrated and supported for their hard effort.
on February 26th, 2007 at 8:06 am
Agreed — YouTube may not be a perfect replacement for public access because of “fair use” concerns. But consider its merits:
1) It’s free. I use YouTube’s first cousin, Google video, regularly to store and serve many gigabytes of video data — and I don’t pay a penny for any of it. I do this even though the company I co-own already has a streaming server in place and available. Why? Because storing and backing up 500MB files for every hour of video costs money, and if I can avoid it, I will. YouTube has since been bought by Google, and there are indications that Google videos and YouTube videos are sharing the same search space.
2) Anybody can use it, within the confines of their terms of use. They can also do it all from their own homes or offices. No extraordinary equipment or software is necessary, beyond what is readily available at your nearest BestBuy.
3) It’s incredibly easy to use. Got a video? Upload it and serve it to the planet. You don’t have to pay for Real Networks’ streaming Helix server, you don’t have to pay someone tens of thousand of dollars each year to maintain and configure the server, and you don’t have to personally have a fat pipe to serve up the content (or pay for that bandwidth).
4) From a viewer’s perspective, it’s 100% “on demand” programming. I search for something, I find something relevant, I watch it when I have the time. The Internet is beautiful for custom programming based on individual queries. The catch is that you have to know how to phrase queries and wade through the muck. This will change over time as search improves, which will likely make Google even more dominant.
5) People with a shoestring budget and something to say simply cannot reach the same kind of global audience with public access television that they can with the Internet + YouTube + Google video/search. Geographic boundaries mean nothing. (I’m disregarding Internet content filtering in place in some countries, like China, to make an apples-to-apples comparison of the mediums. I doubt that public access television signals from the U.S.A. makes it “legally” across China’s borders, too.)
I will add a caveat, though: these are the merits as of today. The net is glutted with content, and providing easy access to useful information is the continuing challenge for web content providers and search engine companies. What is, unfortunately, likely to happen is that more and more emphasis will be placed on the pay-per-click model, which means that those who pay more $$ for more visibility will get it, at the expense of independent information providers with smaller budgets. When this happens, it will be the modern version of the Big Three television networks selling commercial time to the highest bidder. If you can’t afford prime time costs you’re commercial will get relegated to the 2AM slot.
I heard someone in our office say this month that Google is now the single largest advertising outlet in the world. It took them less than 10 years to dominate that space, and nobody saw them coming. Internet players are extremely difficult to predict, as is the technological changes they will create and the regulatory/censorship challenges they will face. The public access points have their own threats and regulatory concerns, too, and are not without their own challenges.
It’s definitely an interesting time to be alive.
–
david mezera, president
david@donet.com
donet
33 west first st., suite 230, dayton, oh 45402
v. 937-226-6896
f. 937-226-6961
like a very smart friend
www.donet.com
on February 27th, 2007 at 4:43 pm
Dave’s analysis here is insightful and pretty much accurate, though it also seems to feature an oversight that is rather common in the discussion about the role and relevance of PEG access as we move further along into an era of new technological platforms.
It is essential to keep in mind that the core value and importance of public access is not based on nor dependent upon any specific technological delivery process, such as cable TV, web file sharing, etc…, or whatever the prevailing technology device is at the time.
Yes, YouTube does not feature the same ‘fair use’ and equal access considerations that public access is based on, which is the heart of the point. Access is about just that - access. It is about the public’s right and ability to communicate amongst themselves via media platforms that are open and non-discriminatory, nor geared towards or dominated by a single form of speech or by discriminatory considerations (i.e. commercial speech).
Cable TV will change, evolve and transform into a completely different mechanism over time, that is a certainty. Let us not confuse the efforts to ‘preserve access’ as being efforts to preserve ‘cable tv’, but rather what the purpose of the work of the many involved in this public service really is. That is to ensure the ability (and just as importantly, the RIGHT) of people, all people, to have access to using whatever the predominant form of communication is for purposes of creating, distributing and accessing information content. This should be available to all citizens without that ability being constricted by allowing these platforms to be dictated and controlled, not by democratic principles, but by strictly commercial concerns (i.e. control), or through unwarranted or excessive governmental interference.
As Dave points out, the internet shows uncomfortable signs of heading towards becoming a technology that operates much along the lines that broadcasting operated on 50 years ago, with power consolidated into the hands of the ‘Big 3′ corporations who serve as gatekeepers and providers of content. If that happens, then we will have managed to have accomplished no meaningful change with the advent and implementation of all of this new media. Rather than creating new ways to provide for better methods of citizenship participation, we will simply have managed to establish more efficient ways for commercial interests to sell us stuff as passive consumers. Meet the new technology, same as the old technology.
- Andy Valeri, USTV Media
on February 27th, 2007 at 8:47 pm
As a follow up to the previous comments, you can read and watch more input on the purpose and value of community media and public access television here at Scratch Pad - Field Notes on Community Media, the blog site of Mike Wassenaar, current chair of the Alliance for Community Media.
Wassenaar’s site also posted this good article “Chad Vader Creators Take Lightsaber to Tom Still’s Assertions About Cutting Funding For Local Cable Access” rebutting the internet vs. public access television nonsense coming out of the Wisconsin debate on cable franchising.