Help Build The Archive!
 

As some of you may know, I and everyone involved with WatchFirstNow.com work hard to do our best to keep as many events and matches archived as possible. We have been fortunate enough to have the opportunity to broadcast (and archive) all of the Canadian regionals for the last 2 years.

The problem lies with events that we do not broadcast. Finding good quality video archives proves to be a never ending task. Last year we managed to accumulate 18 regionals worth of footage. 1853 Matches to be exact. But this is no where near enough.

Week 4 is just around the corner. With 8 regionals this week, Its my goal to get complete archives from 5 events. But we can not do it without help.

So we plea for help from the FIRST community. If you are a webcaster, PLEASE remember to record, and post footage online.

To everyone else, If you know of a good quality match video please post a link below.

Together we can piece together the past.

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

James1902 sent me this link in a PM: www.youtube.com/user/RoboVisionOD


It will be added to the archives asap.

Thanks James!

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

Bochek,

Is WatchFIRSTnow just downloading other people/teams/organizational video and uploading them to their own Vimeo Account and "Archiving" events?

Thanks,
-Clinton-

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

It seems like yes, this is what they are doing...I wonder if all teams whose footage has been taken from them know this and/or are okay with it...

EDIT: I see some of the videos that 1676 recorded are now on the WatchFIRSTnow site, but I know that we were never asked about them.

Taking others' work without giving credit or asking permission and declaring it as your own is neither gracious, professional, or legal.

I find it funny how WatchFIRSTNow is sending out a 'plea' to the FIRST community and asking them to 'PLEASE' record and post footage online, while they seem to then take the videos and claim them as their own on their account...

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

My apologies for the double-post, but I want to ask the question: Why not just submit videos to The Blue Alliance, which also hosts individual match data? If we truly want the FRC Community to come together to help with recording and archiving, why not focus on The Blue Alliance, which already streams most of the webcast live feeds, has an incredible amount of footage already, allows users to submit their own video, and also lets users offer suggestions for the site and try coding them out themselves, instead of splitting the footage up between different sites?

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

crossroads 2014 all matches except 1 and 2 on the mavericks youtube page

http://www.youtube.com/user/MavericksTeam2252

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

Indeed. And lack of features isn't a valid excuse - it's open source, so submit a pull request if there's a feature you want (or ask, somebody will know how to write it). Webcasting resources are spread thin enough as it is, and fragmenting them more won't help.

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

Woah, Time to put out some fires.

That is the source of some of the content yes. We are constantly looking for sources for videos. We are creating an archive so that there is one location to find all records.

We are not claiming any content as our own. In fact, we operate at a financial LOSS and have no source of income coming from the archive. We spent countless hours sorting and organizing content. We fund the project from our own pockets. To call what we are doing unprofessional is insulting.

There are many problems with submitting videos to TBA. Most YouTube videos have their audio removed after a few months due to copyright claims. And all of the videos linked on TBA are subject to users deleting their YouTube accounts or removing videos.

- Bochek

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

Thank you for the link, It has been added to our todo list.

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

There are other ways to create a one-location archive of match footage instead of uploading them to your own account, as shown by The Blue Alliance.

It is also insulting to other teams to have their footage stolen from them, without having been asked permission or have been given any credit. I have seen that this has happened to 1676 on WatchFIRSTNow, and I had no knowledge of it until I went to their site and discovered their videos are our videos. That is footage that 1676 has spent countless time on sorting and organizing, and all that I see WatchFIRSTNow has done to it is downloaded it from YouTube using a third-party and then uploaded it to their Vimeo. Downloading and then uploading others' videos to your own account without permission or mentioning their source can be seem by some as claiming the content as your own. Theft is theft in my mind, which I don't view as professional. Just as you are offended when your work is downgraded, members on 1676 work hard and take pride in recording footage of each match, and won't appreciate it when credit is taken from them.

In our 1,300+ videos on our YouTube Channel, most of which is match footage, we have not had a single video have it audio removed. But, the audio would still violate Fair Use on Vimeo, and could still be removed due to it being illegal. And, they are subject to being deleted/removed by users since they are their property, and thus the users retain the right to take down their work if they have their own reasons, which they should.

I'm not trying to put down your efforts, I am actually glad that people notice the problem of poor archiving and are leading the charge to step up the community's efforts. I just don't understand where the fairness is in taking other team's footage without permission or recognition and posting it on your own account without their knowledge.

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

One of the interesting implications of the user interface design of a video hosting site is the varying emphasis on implied ownership of content, depending on how you access the videos. In some pages, many sites definitely give the appearance of ownership, while in others, it's fairly clear that the content is hosted there because the uploader is asserting fair use.

Given the need to manage the content centrally (to make an archive consistent in function and appearance), uploading with a single account used only for that purpose is a good compromise. Definitely include an explicit credit to the original source, preferably including a link outside the video (so that if the embedding breaks, the content can still be found, and so that the source is clearly acknowledged).

Strictly speaking, it's not quite theft (which is always a criminal act, by definition). Copyright infringement can be criminal (relatively rarely), but is more frequently a civil tort. And even then, copying without permission frequently isn't copyright infringement, particularly if fair use or fair dealing are applicable.

As to the Vimeo FAQ item: that's an oversimplification, likely for the purpose of saving (a lot of) work for Vimeo. They're not explaining the limit of what's legal, or even the limit of their policy; they're explaining what they'd prefer that you do.

Regarding intellectual property rights, in the United States, there's a fairly straightforward (though not perfect) procedure for giving notice of alleged infringement, taking the content down, protesting the takedown and reinstating the content, and then opening legal proceedings (if desired). Basically, fair use is a defence to copyright infringement, and if you assert it using that procedure, the owner has to sue you and convince a court that it is not fair use.

That approach, writ large, underlies the Internet Archive's efforts to archive the entire public Internet at relatively frequent intervals. Their argument is that the value of having (what amounts to) a set of cultural artifacts frozen in time and archived by a neutral party outweighs the personal intellectual property rights of their creators, so long as the content is used for limited purposes that are justifiable under United States fair use law.

You might make similar arguments for this archive, though they might be somewhat weaker given the limited scope of WatchFIRSTNow.

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

St. Louis: (Thanks to 1094)

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...a3kGEuzrpMogTS

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

Have you tried contacting the TBA team to try and resolve these issues? My experience with them has been extremely positive and friendly.

I'm glad that you're interested in solving these problems, but I don't think splitting efforts is productive here, nor a good use of time and money.

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

Bochek,

You have Ads on your site below every video.(see attached picture)

My opinion is to ask and give credit where credit is due. As stated before maybe link to the original source. That way if the WatchFirstNow account (http://vimeo.com/user15100903) ever got deleted users would still be able to find the content.

I also find it interesting that none of the videos uploaded to your Vimeo account is public and the only way to view them is via the www.WatchFIRSTnow.com website that includes personal/private Ads.

-Clinton-

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

I don't know about you guys, but I use TBA for almost everything. They've been around forever, have a lot of match archives, have the scores in a convenient manner on the page. I also haven't heard a concrete reason to not use TBA. Please enlighten me if I'm wrong on that...

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

If you read what it says directly above the advertisement you would know that I receive no source of income from the ad.

I have plans to add a "video provided by" line to the page, but things take time. I am not a programmer, I pay to have the site developed.

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

I'm not sure why everyone is getting upset over this rather be grateful someone is taking the time out of THEIR own busy lives UNPAID (in Canada the Mentors don't get paid FYI) to put together this wonderful archive. No legal laws were broken... besides international cyber laws a very limited... Yes perhaps the Watchfirstnow team should have asked but what's done is done and this is a great database to be creating.

I think we are forgetting what FIRST is about that is working together to collaborate on ideas and information... aka SHARING VIDEOS to spread the word of FIRST and STEM.

Let's look at the bigger picture here.

Thank you watchfirstnow Team!

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

How does one contact WatchFIRSTNow? Whenever I click on the 'contact' tab on the site nothing is displayed.

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

You can email administrator@watchfirstnow.com

Help Build The Archive!
 

Here is what we recorded from Palmetto a couple weeks ago. I am currently uploading the matches I recorded from NC. I will post those when I have them

Palmetto:
http://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLX7C2lEqwF31fj6ITeW-n040d3ulKA1Oq

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

At the end of last season I tried to contact TBA to try and collaboratively work on embedding our archive into their match results content. I never heard back from them on the topic.

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

Thanks! Its been added to our list. You should see it in the archive in the next few days.

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

Create an issue and bring it up there. Somebody can help you out there with the development process (I wouldn't mind doing it, but it might not be for a while - I have a lot of other projects I'm working on and am still learning the TBA code base)

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

Hi Everyone!

Bochek, we must have lost your email to us. Please reach out to us on our mailing list at https://groups.google.com/forum/#!fo...nce-developers and we'd love to get involved!

The Blue Alliance is collaborative project because we know we can't do as many things as we'd like to with the time we have. Whether you're a developer who can commit code, or you want to help suggest more videos, data, or other ideas (coordinating at https://www.facebook.com/groups/moardata/ ), we'd love to have your help!

Cheers,
Eugene

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

I think the reason people are reacting negatively to this is that teams like 1676 spend a lot of time recording, editing, and uploading their match videos. To have their videos copied with no credit to their original effort is what hurts. If another site started linking your videos without your consent I'm sure you'd be unhappy (even though they weren't yours to begin with).

It's great that WFN wants to create an archive. I'm all for it because I know personal youtube channels are not reliable and I'd love to be able to rewatch old matches 5-10 years from now. But I think the way to get 100% community support is to 1) Cite the source from your video and 2) Share the videos through TBA. If you need to pay someone to develop your website and really aren't making money off your site, it sounds like a match made in heaven for you to partner with TBA. WFN provides cited backups of videos and TBA provides the infrastructure by which to share them. This would be a huge improvement to the current situation!

My 2 cents. Good luck :)

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

That's not the issue. The ad is there because you get some benefit for it being there. It might be cheaper hosting, it might be money to the team, it might be money to you, whatever. The point is that the ad is there and that the only way to view the content you took from other teams is via a page with the ad on it. Even if you're not "profiting" in the traditional sense of receiving checks in the mail, it's still quite clear you're setting up your website to take this content from other people and make it only viewable on a site with an ad on it. That's not fair to the people that worked hard to make and upload the content.

The proper way to resolve this is to ask for permission to take other people's content. That simple.

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

This. The very act of using a third party piece of software to download match video and then reposting them on a site borders on/is copyright infringement. That's why youtube allows you to embed their videos into a site, kind of like what TBA does.

Also, the audio getting removed because of copyright issues is not as big of a deal as some would make it seem. I haven't seen many videos, if any this year where that has happened.

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

Just FYI, I sent an email about three days ago but haven't received any response yet.

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

^ does this imply mentors get paid in other countries? I didn't know that was a thing...

EDIT: I gladly donate my time on behalf of the students to see them learn and grow. It was just shocking to me to think that mentors get paid for their time.

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

I as a mentor in the USA do not get payed either. We, as mentors, benefit at the end of the 6 weeks seeing the students have fun and compete in the Regionals/Districts. So as the below statement reads last time I checked it goes against what FIRST stands for.

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

Try having your work purloined and see how you feel about it.

They only had to ask, but since they did not, it is copyright infringement, and I intend to pursue that.

Simply put: WFN has taken a teams work and is using it without permission. Intellectual Property Theft may be legal in Canada, but not in the United States.

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

Glad to see that this party didn't stop. Hope this drama can tide everyone over until someone gets "wronged" in eliminations on Saturday.

A lot of people watch stuff that happens on this site and in the greater community. Including a lot of kids.

"♫ You take the high road and I'll just sit here and complain on the internet ♫"

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

As author Lisa Kleypas said, "A good conversation always involves a certain amount of complaining."

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

You just made yourself look more childish than everyone in this thread...

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

Alright, let's stop this immature mudslinging and act like grown-ups. We all have been behaving like little kids in both this thread and in Shaun's (now-mod-closed) 'Video Stealing' thread.

WatchFIRSTNow has been gracious enough to remove the footage that I wanted to be taken down, and I'm sure if anyone else wants their footage deleted from WFN's account, all they have to do is ask. Thank you, WatchFIRSTNow, for complying with our request.

With that, how about the rest of us now show our GP to WatchFIRSTNow and bring this thread back to what they created it for. If you recorded an event and want to post a link to your playlist for WatchFIRSTNow to transfer to their Vimeo account, please do so below.

Also, if anyone has constructive suggestions for how to improve WFN or archiving in general, I'm sure it would be gladly appreciated, but perhaps PM those in charge or start a new separate thread for it instead of further bogging down and cluttering WatchFIRSTNow's thread.

P.S. - Mods, I know it was said that you would keep the 'Video Stealing' thread locked for 24 hours. Why don't we just keep that thread locked permanently so no more harm is done.

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

It'd be excellent if they would just take down the content that isn't theirs, without being asked. There's still three years worth of FiM footage uploaded, still with ads underneath it.

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

I'm not sure how you can call it "work" per se but when it comes to any sort of element of FIRST and online videos and pictures I would be honoured for my stuff to be spread about the community. Yes the common courtesy is to ask but we also have to remember that WHATEVER is posted on the internet is pretty much free game since there isn't exactly an INTERNATIONAL Cyberlaw that stipulates or mandates anything. Yes there are "Terms and Service Agreements" but how often would they actually hold up in civil court? Keep in mind the team affected the most is currently from the USA and WFN is run by Canadians.

Again I will reiterate what I have said before... this should NOT be about legalities but rather continuing to spread the word of FIRST via archived matches. WFN isn't altering the videos, they are simply moving it from one server to another so everything is in one space and doesn't get lost years down the road if teams shutdown.

Basically what it boils down to is the WFN needs to work out some kinks. They are ASKING for solutions and this is your OPPORTUNITY. Resolve the issues without getting into your legal resources. Suing people over this would be the most stupid thing I will EVER see because it will actually most likely do MORE HARM than good.

REMEMBER what we are preaching about... STEM Education... Inspiring Science and Technology AND remember who we are doing it for... the STUDENTS! Teaching them to reach out to a legal power rather than civilly working out the issues personally is not the way I would handle the situation.

Let's put on our thinking caps and give WFN some realistic solutions they can work with and develop (this isn't going to happen over night folks).

I leave you with this article...

Family photo from Facebook ends up on Czech Ad

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

If created in the U.S., it's a copyrighted work if it is a creative work of authorship fixed in a tangible medium of expression.

I didn't actually view the allegedly infringing material, so I'm curious: was 1676's footage original (i.e. the video was a creative work by someone on the team¹), or was it a direct copy of FIRST's feed? Because if it was a direct copy, no matter how much work you put into making that direct copy, no new copyright exists.²

As for the question of whether it's enforceable in Canada, yes, it probably is, if the copyright holder is willing to bear substantial inconvenience. There actually are international treaties that govern copyright that specify procedures for handling foreign copyrights.

I'm still curious about their intentions, and whether they intended to claim fair use/fair dealing, intended to infringe, or didn't know one way or another.

¹ For completeness: or, was the copyright assigned to the team or its representatives (official or unofficial)?
² There is, of course, ambiguity about what a direct copy is—but the core consideration is that only creativity can create a copyright.

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

It's not. They sit in the stands and--with almost ridiculous diligence--record every match.

I doubt Ryan is talking about suing anyone. Is it legal? I don't know, and frankly I don't care. Would your grandmother be ok with you copying someone's hard work and getting something out of it for yourself without asking? Use your own compass. Mine says it doesn't matter what other good could come of it, you're taking something (video views) from someone, you ask and you credit.

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

I still think this is a valid thing to do. We barely have any match footage from 2004 save some matches at Championship and a few others here and there on YouTube. No I don't think YouTube accounts are just going to go away, but stranger things have happened and it never hurts to have a copy as a backup.

But I think the appropriate way to handle it would have been to ask if you could archive their content first, not just going ahead & doing it. Always get permission when it comes to re-using & re-hosting someone elses video content. If you didn't capture it & edit it yourself, you need to ask.

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

I should hope that would be award-winning diligence.

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

So quick question on feasibility:

(not an original idea by the way, it was hinted at in the other thread)

The stated benefit of WFN over TBA is that WFN's archives are potentially more permanent, as long as WFN stays around or transitions maintenance of the archive if they ever move on.

The downsides of centralizing the videos are that you imply ownership of the material, but also that you also steer traffic away from the original hosting location. I think an embedded video (like on TBA) still doesn't highlight the work a team does to contribute the video very effectively (as say, a watermark with the team logo/#), but at least the view counts hit their YouTube account, not a 3rd party's.

Would it be an effective compromise for TBA/WFN to freely rip a 2nd copy of any video they want to maintain a backup database, and on each landing page for a video you have an embedded video/link on the top to the original source, and a "visually unappealing" simple link to the backup video in their database? I would think that 99%+ of the traffic would go through the first link, until the link breaks, and people would access the backup. As long as the content creators are diligent about keeping their videos accessible, which most of the teams concerned about infringement would likely be... traffic continues to be driven through the source accounts of the video instead of the backup copy.

Thoughts?

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

Speaking of archiving, what happened to the GTRE 2012 match footage? It used to be on WFN's vimeo account, but now the matches are only available on YouTube .

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

I think the Dropbox/Box solution, or server set up with ZendTo, or maybe even a GoogleDrive with GoFileDrop would be a lot simpler and a lot easier to settle.

Everyone submits their videos voluntarily, and we have a 'write-only' archive (with special read-only permissions). So everyone still has control over how their video is displayed/showcased, but we still have the back-up in case accounts are lost/videos disappear in the future.

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

Yeah, this was brought up in the other thread
I like the idea, in theory, but am not sure what the best way to accomplish it technologically is. Videos are big, and server storage costs money. If we use Dropbox/Box, those can act as CDNs and other sites can embed from there. But we'd then have the problem of limited storage (50 gig on box - that goes away quickly when you're storing limits) and problems of bandwith usage (something like this could be against the TOS and get the account banned).

Or, I know that TBA runs on Google App Engine. That charges $0.026 / GB / month, but also charges $0.12 / GB of outgoing data (source). While cheap, those numbers are nonzero, and someone would have to pay for them. Plus, one of the reasons TBA moved to their current YouTube solution was to avoid having to pay for data storage for tons of video.

But I bet there's a way we can come up with something that works for everybody, a solution is out there somewhere

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

We could try and get free hosting and set up a database (Rackspace sponsor an entire regional?).

The 'simplest' solution is the Drive one, which is about $10 per month for 1TB.

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

For the whole hosting thing.... firstvideoarchive.com has been doing this for around 10 Years... or more... I pay for a HUGE amount of storage and a HUGE amount of bandwidth. When TBA and soap and any other old video archiving site went down either temporarily or for good I have hosted the videos and still do. I actually have 2 servers with similar specs for this purpose. I do this as a convenience for FIRSTers everywhere, it costs me some money but nothing i cant handle each year or two. Back in the day we would setup an FTP location that would be shared via PM to allow uploading and downloading of the files and allow downloading and splitting. If you want to do something or have video available to upload please let me know. While I have your attention may I download anyone's video to my site? I will after seeing this come up, put on each page notes on the top about who donated video. Keep in mind this is a system that has been in place for a LONG time.

Thanks.

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

Just throwing it out there -
As much as I appreciate everyone's efforts to document the history of FIRST, is this maybe something FIRST itself should be doing? They're always about PR and Making it Loud, but they have all of us struggling to record and archive matches independently. Any thoughts on directing some of the effort in these struggles towards procuring an official solution?

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

Just a suggestion - have you looked in to using a storage platform like S3? That's probably the best way to scale a video archiving service in FRC

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

If we just waited for FIRST to do things, they'd never get done. That said, webcasting (and archiving) is the next thing FIRST needs to standardise. Ideally, they'd work out a deal to get a 4G Mobile Hotspot for each event, set up a single space for all webcasts and archives. HD would be great, but they haven't even gotten there for Championship yet, so I'm not holding my breath.

Given how bad FIRST has been for so long at similar things (FMS problems, match results/rankings/etc page inconsistency, @FRCFMS inconsistency), they would probably need to hire some good people or contract a legit company to get a system like this working well. I just can't see it happening in the next couple seasons (prove me wrong, please!).

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

I will have to take a look at s3, i like the idea of only getting charged for what i use but in some instances this could be bad when i upload large files temporarily then have someone else download them.

Thanks for pointing them to me.

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

This is a useful conversation...but I'm a little scared to participate given the passions involved.

Here's a thought though: WatchFirstNow wants to be an archive for FIRST competition videos. Notwithstanding the ownership issues, why can't links to their archives be added to TheBlueAlliance (which only accepts youtube videos AFAIK)? TBA is pretty barren for video content as it stands. Would WFN be willing to mirror their content on Youtube to be linked by TBA? Alternatively, would they be willing to edit TBA (which is open source) to permit embedding from their site?

(apologies if this has already been suggested)

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

It would be much more trivial to modify TBA to allow for embedded vimeo videos. Then, you'd only need an export of some database relating vimeo keys to specific matches from WFN (since their archives page URLs aren't really helpful in figuring out which match is being shown).

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

Also WFN would have to open up their Vimeo archive. You currently can't link to the videos directly (they're in a "Secure Vimeo LocalStorage Proxy", whatever that is).

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

As a Vimeo Plus user it is relatively easy to allow everyone to view the videos on the channel. I think WFN should go one step further and strip down the player to basics (again easy to do) and allow anybody to embed the videos. Teams then can find videos of their matches and embed them on their own websites for their alumni to follow. Vimeo ultimately is the archive here, not Watchfirstnow.com.

I would love for our teams videos to be added to the archive, but only with that caveat. I put a lot of work in to putting together our teams matches, as I too was no satisfied with how video is currently archived. I don't see Youtube going away anytime soon and in terms of search result ranking, Youtube videos are always going to rank higher than Vimeo.

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

While discussing this in the other thread, the point was brought up that teams want to use the analytics for their videos.

Re: Help Build The Archive!
 

To be clear, I'm not talking about waiting--I'm wondering if some of the people who are already putting in great effort couldn't reduce the contenciousness (and other difficulties) of the situation by finding a more official underwriting, perhaps even at the region level. From the perspective of outreach and retention, official support is hopefully a good thing.