I have just read with interest Jay Neely's comments about Youtube and Soapbox committing sins by attempting to disallow copyrighted material on their website.
Well I've got more fuel to add to the anti-Soapbox fire. Earlier today I uploaded a video to Microsoft's new all-singing, all-dancing video sharing site. This was a video that I had shot myself about 30 minutes earlier. Shortly after uploading I went back to view the video again and was told in no uncertain terms that the video was a breach of copyright and therefore wouldn't be shown. I clicked on the provided link to get some sort of explanation and was told:
If you receive this message when trying to upload a video, it may contain copyrighted content, and your video may be blocked from the Soapbox on MSN Video website.
Two common examples of this are:
- The video is copyrighted by someone else. For example, a music video or a television show.
- The video has a soundtrack that is copyrighted by someone else. For example, a slideshow with a commercial song used as the background music.
Errr...I recorded the video myself. 30 minutes ago.Whose copyright am I violating exactly?
Just to p!ss me off even more I took a look at their copyright notice which (at the time of writing) states " If you believe that we have mistakenly taken down content you uploaded that you own or have permission to upload, you can also let us know that." What they fail to inform is how you should actually let them know. I searched around on the site and nowhere was there anywhere that I could inform them that they had made a mistake.
So what did I do? Headed over to Youtube.com and uploaded it there instead - with no problems at all. Well done Soapbox, you've just lost a customer!
-Jamie
UPDATE: The copyright block has now been lifted. Nathan Weinberg has the details here. My temper has been, well, tempered. Its worth noting that Soapbox is still in beta so draw your own conclusions as to whether that excuses them or not! I've decided to let them-off. This time.