Perhaps it seems like stealing if you are reposting something made by someone else -- like you post + host a clip from South Park, expecting the people who watch your South Park clip are going to go to your blog and therefore will see other things you've posted, and now it's upsetting that someone is linking straight to that South Park clip, by passing your work completely... that would seem like stealing bandwidth -- the only thing is, you'd be stealing South Park to do that.
If they've linked to a video you've made -- then great!! Of course, you might prefer the viewer of the video gets the full experience, seeing the blog post, your text, etc, but hey -- reality is you won't always have control over that. I teach my students to always think about the fact people will see their videos out of order / some will see them all, others will jump in in the middle... some will see the blog post / read the text -- others will use FireAnt and may or may not read the text... I tell them to always assume the video will get separated from the blog post. The best / clearest way to make sure you get credit / notice for your own video is to put the credit you want to get in the video. Adding "www.yoururl.com" at the end for 2 seconds does this perfectly.
I would _much_ prefer someone links to my video than downloads it and re-uploads it to their server. That way I can see how much traffic the videos are getting, and the viewer can see from the URL the domain of my site, and if they are savvy enough, will delete the end of the URL to see more of the site...
It's not "stealing bandwidth". I'm hoping to get as much traffic as I can. If I was worried about it costing too much, then I would use ourmedia or blip.tv to host my video.
AND -
In answer to the original question, it is not "fair use" to link to directly to someone's video. It's just a normal part of how the internet works. "Fair Use" is a term that means you are using copyrighted material without a license / without permission, because the common or cultural good that comes from what you are doing outweighs the copyright holder's interests. It's an extension of free speech.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use
http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/fairuse.htm
You don't need to invoke fair use to link to something -- linking does not infringe on any copyright restrictions. There is not difference in the law between linking to someone's website, blog entry, audio file, or video file. Linking is linking, and no permission is needed. This question was settled 10 years ago, and without the ability to link freely to anything you want without permission, the internet would be a very very different place. (Can you imagine only being allowed to link to something after getting written permission from the website's owner?? Or a world where people would charge each other money for permission to link?? The web would be a zillion stand-alone islands, and not a WEB if that were the case.)
-- jen
jenSimmons
http://www.jensimmons.com
On Apr 12, 2006, at 8:55 AM, Michael Sullivan wrote:
One of the problems is see is that some folks have the above opinion,
that others are stealing their bandwidth.
