YouTube Video Compilations Question

[TriForce]

Okay so after some amazing advice about traffic leaking over on my journey thread, I've got this idea to run a test with a YouTube compilations video where I basically grab some fail/win clips and pull them all together into one.

Looking at a few examples in my niche, some of these videos are regularly getting over three and four million views.

Ideally, once created this video will sit on YouTube and my site where I can start sharing it on Reddit and other forums.

Anyway, my question is - do these videos break any copyright law if I don't monetize the video on YouTube and credit the video source?

 

[Ryuzaki]

Anyway, my question is - do these videos break any copyright law if I don't monetize the video on YouTube and credit the video source?

Most of that stuff isn't copyrighted at all, but I have seen a company out there buying the rights to tons of these "meme clips" for the sole purpose of claiming the revenue on every video they find that uses it. That shouldn't be a problem for you if you aren't monetizing it.

But if you reason for using a video is to embed it on your site as some kind of validation of sharing your post instead of sharing the video directly, people are going to call you out on that, especially on Reddit. If your goal is to get people and links to your site and earn some money, I'd find a different type of "10x content" to use, like a really nice infographic, interactive charts and maps, etc.

The viral video stuff can work but what happens is the video itself ends up getting shared and not the page it's embedded on. And if it makes its way to Facebook someone will rip it for that format and take all of your credit and views, etc. Not that that can't happen with other types of content, either.

 

[seoauthority]

it depends on the type of material you are using.

Generally, works on the internet, specifically internet works, i protected by "fair use". Now what this means is usually up to the judges discretion - however, you are allowed to use small 'chunks" of other people's copyrighted work, as long as it is transformative - i.e you are creating somethign totally new out of it.

This can be a broad interprentation, such as when Shepheard Ferry (sp) won his case againt the photographer who had an issue with him using Obama's image for the "Hope Poster" - the judge ruled the image was transformed enough to fall under "fair use"

However, it can also be interpreted very narrowly. This is especially true with music, where even using a few bars of a song, can land you in trouble. YouTube specifically has algorithms in place to delete any video with copyrighted music in it, even a small sample, so be wary of that

Also try and limit your clips to a few seconds and you should be ok - introduce graphics on the page and perhaps even apply effects on them so they are transformed.

 

[TriForce]

Thanks guys. My idea was to create a "top 10 kitten fails" which would be made up of different kitten fail videos. I'd then host this on my site and push it to relevant subreddits and kitten forums.

After reading your comments @Ryuzaki, I totally get where you're coming from. The leak should really go to add value and I guess help establish expertise, authoritativeness or trustworthiness.

So would a better candidate be an infographic on kitten body language with the main article discussing what each item on the list means?

 

[Ryuzaki]

@TriForce, it depends on if you want traffic or links. The video will get traffic to itself but I don't think it'll get you much traffic to your page, even if it gets up to 10's of millions of video views. On Reddit, for example, if you post a Kitten Fails Video and people see the URL leads to a website and not YouTube or Vimeo, they'll check the Reddit comments where someone will have already linked straight to the video, bypassing your page and all the ads. They're dumb, but they're still people of the internet age and know all the tricks. You won't slip something this simple to see through past them.

The infographic idea or anything similar has a justification for being embedded on a web page because it includes discussion to deepen the understanding of the stuff on the infographic. Infographics aren't necessarily easy any more. We've all seen a million of them. You need to make a really unique and good one. An idea is to use something like BuzzSumo and see what worked in other niches and then remix that to your own niche to increase your general appeal and chances of getting a win. You can test it out on forums and social media and if it works well that means it might be a good outreach piece.

I'm not saying don't mess with videos though. I just mean that you're not going to fool savvy people into loading a ton of ads in order to see a video hosted on youtube.

Regarding the guy's comments about Fair Use and small chunks and transformative usage, all of that is true, as is using it for explanatory and educational purposes. That's for copyright stuff. Youtube doesn't care about that at all, nor does the courts. People can still sue you and the judge will decide if it's fair use or not. If someone claims your video, they get your revenue if they prove they own the clip, fair use or not. Youtube isn't a legal system, and in the real legal system you still need to cease use and spend money and time proving it's fair use. Not really worth dealing with.