YouTube is clearly the most popular video sharing site on the web. But limits on video length, DMCA takedown notices and billion dollar lawsuits have damaged YouTube’s ability to facilitate serious copyright infringement. The smaller guys are now stepping in to fill the void.
Full length copies of well known TV shows and/or movies are readily available on a number of YouTube competitors. Watch, for example, The Office on DailyMotion, Scrubs on GoFish, or SouthPark on Veoh (update: GoFish and Veoh have apparently removed the shows I linked to).
And if searching for the shows on these sites is just too much work, there are other sites that aggregate and organize this content, and embed it on their own sites. Watch any episode from any of the 11 seasons of SouthPark on Allsp.com. And new site VideoHybrid is in a class of its own, with dozens of full length movies and virtually every popular TV show. VideoHybrid even gives statistics showing exactly how many times copyrights have been violated.
Its not clear if the MPAA and networks just aren’t focusing on these smaller video sharing sites yet, or if DMCA notices are simply being ignored. These sites aren’t hiding out and trying to evade the law - they’re funded by well known venture capitalists and, in Veoh’s case, copyright holders. And GoFish is actually a public company.
You raise some interesting points…
It’s all about the money. If small video sites can’t be sued out of a billion or two, it’s not worth the effort. If Veoh pays dividends for copyright holders, it’s all good.
lol!
I just thought by myself: “Hey, where are my South Park DVDs?”
Now I do not need to care about them anymore.
Regards,
René
ProBloggerWorld
Good stuff, looking forward to your recommendations for just plain ‘Hard Core’ content.
Dailymotion is definitely one the top sites for full shows/movies which infringe on copyrights. But if the amount of infringement is based on views, YouTube is the winner.
Both Allsp and videohybrid CRASH my IE7
Uhhhh… could you, like, not bring any spotlight to these websites, please?
Well, since the cat is out of the bag…you all owe me one:
EyeBum Movies
This site BLEW me away.
There is a really nice site named tv-links.co.uk which provides links to all these small platforms. There you actually find close to every popular TV-Shows and to tons of movies.
Thanks for this post. Also see http://www.forbes.com/technolo.....video.html
In my opinion copyright content is a big issue on the web but you will never be a way to really prevent it from beeing shared (see mp3). At the moment I think it also is used as kind of viral promotion tool for all the smaller video sites at the moment. I prefer Dailymotion just because all the copyright content on it… Also see Daniel Rust’s comment “Dailymotion is definitely one the top sites for full shows/movies which infringe on copyrights…” But to be honest content is still hard to find, unregularly updated or very fast deleted…
VideoHybrid is pretty cool, and i think now they are gonna go down … due to traffic offcourse.
While this is not news, I guess that TechCrunch is big enough that sometimes pointing to the obvious can yield good results. Lawsuits have become a stick used to milk money, and not a means to get justice. The big cos use them only when it pays off; and sometimes, as in YouTube’s case, it pays better to wait.
This is not really about The copyright infrigement but more about the money and the fact that a huge player (google) make money on the back of the big studio.
There is zillions of sites and users that are all together having a bigger money impact on the studios.
The thing about Google is that if the studios need to fight the biggest figther in order to show the other that copyright infrigement is something that should be taken lightly.
If the studios will win in this fight around this issue, this will bring a lot of PR to the studio and likely kill off a lot of future actions from the part of google, this is a very hard and dangerous fight that involved the future of google earth, google books and many more ventures that google are deploying in order to control the world’s data. If they win, they will control the market and take the lead and you can expect google to be unstopable in few years.
Dont forget also that there is also a lot of money involved, google has a lot of cash and will likely be forced to pay in this “game”.
Anyway, thats my 2 cents.
I’m with #7 Anthony on this one. Why shed any light on these types of sites and with a reader base of 350K essentially promoting them for free.
Yesterday promoting Digg spamming services, today pirates, tomorrow coming up on TechCrunch, the Top 10 email spamming services to try…
lolzz….
Good stuff.
You have pointed out some really good points. Some good links are provided by you. Thanks
Is a certain part of this post not evil? You know full well the techcrunch effect when you post about a site. Now almost at will you can cause issues for the guys that are running these sites. Perhaps previous to this they were able to make a living and stay under the radar, but you’ve completely shot that to piece now.
Mike
Splitter
I believe I read an article from an exec from Viacom in which he knew about what is happening on Veoh but said that they are focusing their energies on the sites with more traction.
That said, I’ve made comments that it’s pretty unbelievable that a site would take that approach in this climate, particularly with Eisner on board. It’s just inviting trouble.
Im thinking wow; This has to some how help Google’s defense -
- If they could prove that - you can’t stop what is happening on the internet with youtube; etc … Could that be a defense?
- Didn’t it work with alcohol ? prohibition?
-RB
Well video hosting industry is taking the path of music industry(interms of copyright violation).
Mike, thanks for the great links; I didn’t know that I can watch so much crap for free
Chad with a yahoo email address. Nice.
I think its a big problem for legitimate start-ups.
Here at http://www.fukeo.com (NSFW) we have spent a large effort in only indexing legitimate video content, unlike most ‘adult’ video sites that scrape and/or host longer form copyright material.
It makes it difficult to gain traction with a legal business model if a punter can go elsewhere and get copyright content for free - and that applies to all content, not just adult content.
Unfortunately, the copyright owners will wait for someone to become ’sueable’, but in the meantime legitimate models are crowded out…
I know a bunch of other blogs that do it.. but I have to say I’d rather just download them…
Everyone seems to forget about newsgoups, which is still the best source for these types of files…
That was foul… you just shut down some of the best unknown video sites on the internet. I see NBC, CBS, FOX, etc. all scrambling to send out hundreds of requests for content removal right now.
I hate you. Thanks for letting all the idiots in the world know about some of the coolest sites on the internet.
If they shut down, I’m coming after you.
http://www.cavenger.com has better programs. Entourage and Chappelle’s Show are two of my personal favorites
Well, it seems that Videohybrid.com isn’t working anymore…
I loved this post. It sends the message to content producers to think about long term. Want to fight youtube? There will be plenty of youtubes out there, and they’ll just keep coming. It would be much more intelligent for the long run to deal with youtube, and keep their commercials, and let their shows be seen right after airing. They’d still get commercials, plus some of youtube’s revenue share. maybe I’ll turn http://www.capyblanca.com into my own youtube after/if these sites go down!
If you want hardcore here’s hardcore! Latest movies and tv shows! http://www.peekvid.com!
Well if it means anything, some of the videos have been moved or taken down after being featured here and on Digg.
Regarding the newsgroups (comment #28) : http://maxt.dk/archives/2006/1.....ewsgroups/
Also, I’m pretty sure the “right” companies were already aware of those sites… I don’t think they’re just sleeping…
Interesting stuff. However, I agree with #22 - prohibition does not work. BTW, Apple made a good move with DRM-free music. MPAA should follow.
But Chad wasn’t this really hard work in itself writing such a long tail ??
I perfer http://XoinKs.com for my video content.
hmm, all of a sudden the videohybrid site has been replaced by what looks like a parked page, chock full of ads…
wonder if the site owner decided to monetize some of this TC traffic !
My favorite video sites..
1. http://scoopvid.com
2. http://xoinks.com
3. http://tvgush.com
4 http://scooptube.com
I think its just a matter of time before the copywrite holders start going after the little guys and consumers the way that the music labels have. Thats going to get ugly.
Also, my site runs 1 video a day, every day. It is like the woot.com of video. It is a good way to limit your video intake. Personally, I am overwhelmed when I go to youtube.
IcyGrill.com
l have youtube, it shows & broadcast everything and everything, they dont have a filter!
Hi Michael,
I never knew those sites existed; I will have a look. I hope they are as responsive as YouTube…
Woot gives you something. It gives you just one thing, but the value is great. Icygrill gives you what value? Karl Rove? Please, who hasn’t seen that. Show me a full-length, just released movie a day and then you can compare yourself.
Puzzled. I am sure there are lot of entrepreneurs willing to going into that field or finding the niches, if law is “officially” ignored. Personally, I would not go into that field.
http://www.televee.com/ lists most of these in an easily searchable database.
The more the big guys get busted, the more and more private sites will pop up, and the harder they will be to find.
http://www.bloggingwv.com
The more the big guys get busted, the more and more private sites will pop up, and the harder they will be to find. . . unless the big guys are busted and have to pay $1B and the law becomes more well defined through that precedent. After that I’d love to see any video site be less than diligent about screening out mainstream copyrighted content with a potential liability of fine per individual infringement. I would also like to see shady ad networks like adbrite and cpxinteractive continue selling these sites’ inventory.
It is a catch-22 for the small guys. They want to traffic (if their servers can handle it) to make money, but as soon as they do, what protection do they have against the injunctions lawsuits?
I definitely think there is room for other players besides YouTube, with less stringent criterea (file size, format, etc.). How they will monetize without attracting the ire of the copyright holders is another matter…
And if you want high quality anime - http://www.idkwtf.com/anime/
Ed–
I check Woot.com every day to see what is there. I rarely buy the items. I log in every day for that rare day when there is something I like. It is not about the bargains, but about the portions and editorial. I do not browse bestbuy.com, for instance, because there is too much. You could replicate it with anything as long as you are providing some piece of content on the page.
Maybe a comparison isn’t fair in terms of quality or size, but in terms of vision, I think we are on the same page.