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#37

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

#38

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.

#39

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.

#40

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.

#41

I should hope that would be award-winning diligence.

#42

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?

#43

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 .

#44

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.

#45

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

#46

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.

#47

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.

#48

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?

#49

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

#50

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!).

#51

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.

#52

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)

#53

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).

#54

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).

#55

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.

#56

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