An interesting fact has been pointed out by Geert Desager, Business Development Manager & Strategic Consultant at Tagora and blogger at Brandopia, who asked my humble opinion about a problem he’s facing while seeding a viral clip for their client. In fact there are two problems he’s facing. The first one is about being under fire from a community or its spokesman, the second one is about having the copyrights to a commercial, which kind of illustrates the entire problem you have with viral videos. How can any video host determine if the uploader of the clip has the copyrights and approval of the client? I’ve had the same problem when I was seeding clips myself for a specific company. The entire point for an ad agency to create a viral video is that other people are needed to make it viral. In the first place, that means you’ll have to make the content available to other people and by doing so offer them the possibility to spread the story. Consumer in control. Surely you’ll remember the 2.0 mantra…
As logically as it sounds, dumping a clip on a viral site is the next step after creating/shooting/editing it. And this is where the problems can start. In this example, being too open about the experiment has caused a small backfire from some websites towards the agency because the clip is obviously seeded as an intended viral campaign. What went wrong here?
The first problem Geert and Tagora (the agency he works for) had was that they got striked by VideoSift. Playing the devil’s advocate, I have to choose the side of VideoSift here, because the first rule of their posting guidelines says:
Please don’t self link. While you may see this site as a great way to promote a project you are working on, it would be bad for our content if everyone just put up videos of them and their friends doing random things. YouTube and GoogleVideo will let you do this already, if you think that the project you’ve put together is truly amazing and we must see it, please upload it there and email us. We’ll take a look at it and if we think it’s really great too, we’ll add it for you. If you skip this step your account will be deleted. Hey it’s harsh, but it’s harsh love.
So one lesson to learn here is to take a close look to the local policies of the site or community you’re submitting a video to. They make the rules, you’ll just have to follow them. This isn’t about owning the rights to the content, it’s about integrating yourself in a community. Indeed Dag is right when he says “This is your video, and you posted it to a community site where it’s against the rules to post your own stuff. It’s as simple as that.”
The only way to bypass this is to either know someone inside the community, or the be an undercover member who seeds lots of movies, also those unrelated to the agency you work for. Then when the day comes where you find yourself in the position in which you actually have to seed a movie, your existing reputation at that site or community will cover you. You just don’t have to link it to the project you’re working on, and just pretend it was one of the many things you’ve posted. Although this might sound weird, you’re most likely not going to get backfired from it because you’ve also actively contributed to the community or site, and have built up some credibility.
On the other hand, there’s the refusal of Revver which was based on ‘copyrights’:
Strange thing however at Revver , while trying to upload the video they replied to us to say that there were copyright issues. Incredible! We acquired all the rights for difusion of this video online on a global scale… so, I don’t see the problem. To be continued…
And this is really the same thing for sites like YouTube and others. If you seed the movie because it’s part of your strategy, how could you explain that you have the copyrights? The only reason to do so is to send an email or contact the site owner, stating you’ve been granted the rights to distribute the content you want to upload and share. You can’t upload anonymously, although it would fit in better to make it viral, because if a video site would follow a strict policy (which they don’t always do), the clip would be removed. On the other hand, if a viral is really good and has the potential elements of starting a life on it’s own, agency-related or not, it will take off. Probably the best thing to do when you start a viral campaign is to host the videos at the branded site and upload them with a cover identity – a user profile specifically created for this single campaign. If any problems should occur, you can still come clean afterwards.
Eventually Revver added the video file after having sent a standard email notification requesting more details about the work.
We have reviewed the video you recently uploaded to Revver, and while we would like nothing more than to make your submission available to our users, unfortunately we cannot yet do this as we are concerned that this submission may infringe a third party’s rights.
Under the Revver Terms of Use and Content Licensor Agreement, which you agreed to, you have a duty to ensure that material you submit to Revver does not infringe anyone else’s rights, including their copyrights. Of course, U.S. and international copyright law impose the same obligation on you.
While Revver is all about encouraging you to create new works by helping you to be rewarded for your creativity, it is essential that you respect the rights of other creators in turn. As a result, Revver has to take seriously any actual or suspected infringement of someone else’s copyrights. This does not necessarily mean that we are convinced that you have infringed, but we must err on the side of caution.
In light of our concerns, we ask you to provide us with sufficient assurances that your use of any such material is not infringing. [cut]
And this is what I appreciate the most. Revver sends you a notification when they have doubts. After providing sufficient details about the content and the fact you own the rights about it, they allow the clip to be featured on their site. This is something every video hosting service should do, and it makes seeding legally possible.
