Posting Copyrighted Youtube Links

December 22, 2006 7:42 AM

Is there a policy on posting Youtube links to stuff that is (most likely) under copyright? I apologize if this has been asked before, but I swear I searched the archive...
posted by unknowncommand to Etiquette/Policy at 7:42 AM (12 comments total)

There is no policy. It's generally assumed that it's YouTube's problem, but if it's stuff that is so under copyright as to be short-lived on YouTube, it would likely make a bad MetaFilter comment/post.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 7:45 AM on December 22, 2006

If I recall, that's actually the line that's been drawn by mathowie, tentatively: if it's streamed through a flash application (like YouTube) then it's the streaming site's problem; but if it's just linking to a direct download, then it's not kosher.

But that was pretty tentative, as I remember. Maybe somebody else remembers mathowie saying that.
posted by koeselitz at 9:53 AM on December 22, 2006

Come on, everyone knows that linking to copyrighted material is illegal. Linking to sites that link to copyrighted material is also illegal. In fact, just thinking about copyrighted material without the author's written consent is illegal.
posted by mullingitover at 12:35 PM on December 22, 2006

Dear AskMe, because of a post on MetaTalk I thought about copyrighted material without the author's written consent, and now a warrant has been issued for my arrest and they're coming to get me and all the lawyers have gone home for Xmas break. What do I do??
posted by languagehat at 12:48 PM on December 22, 2006

Put your ID on the ground next to you, lie down, put your hands behind your head, and when they bust in scream "I AM NOT RESISTING YOU" until you run out of breath. Then the RIAA's lawyers disappear you.
posted by baphomet at 1:33 PM on December 22, 2006

Well, as it turns out, posting to Metafilter using text smuggled out of Guantanamo is a massive pain in the ass. But it works, as this clearly shows.
posted by languagehat at 3:11 PM on December 22, 2006

The lifetime of any clip on youtube seems to be extremely small. A few months ago I did a little experiment where I grepped out all the youtube links that I had in a chat channel over the last year or two, and tried visiting them. It seemed like about half were "Removed at the request of <somebody>" or "Removed because it violated the TOS." And this was only going back perhaps a year or two. I predict that all these youtube posts on Metafilter will be extremely boring and pointless in about five years.
posted by Rhomboid at 3:59 PM on December 22, 2006

I predict that all these youtube posts on Metafilter will be extremely boring and pointless in about five years.

Comments themselves begin to spoil immediately after hitting the Post button. Always sniff before reading. Wash hands after delmoi.
posted by hal9k at 5:33 PM on December 22, 2006

This comment was rotten as I typed it. In fact, I'm putting it here just so it stops stinking up my computer.
posted by quin at 7:42 PM on December 22, 2006

I predict that all these youtube posts on Metafilter will be extremely boring and pointless in about five years.

All links die. Nearly any link to a news site will be broken in a couple of months. Blogs shut down every day. Domains expire and all the content that was linked now goes to domain squatter. This is not anything special with youtube.
posted by smackfu at 10:42 PM on December 22, 2006

This is what the various Firefox extensions that download videos are for.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 2:36 AM on December 23, 2006

All links die...

No shit. The other night I read through the Kaycee Nicole threads and I don't think I found a single working link.

I know that's not surprising or anything, but it seems sad that no one, as far as I know, has preserved the non-Metafilter aspects of that story...
posted by Ian A.T. at 8:41 PM on December 24, 2006