Vimeo gets it wrong AGAIN - deletes "Craft of War: Blind"
May
Vimeo seem to be the new darlings of the video hosting scene, but they’re looking less and less good to me.
Just after the fascinating article on video site terms of service in which they didn’t come out too well, we hear that they’ve deleted the incredibly popular “Craft of War: Blind” (one of our Machinima of the Year 2008 list) from their servers, apparently because “videos depicting people playing the game like walkthroughs, strategies, raids, pvp,etc aren’t allowed”, according to author Percula, second comment down.
It’s blatantly obvious from a thirty-second glance at the video (possibly-broken YouTube version here) that this isn’t a gameplay video, but high-quality animation that happens to be set in a gameworld. And this isn’t the first time Vimeo have deleted quality Machinima, either - Baron Soosden has had some of his videos taken down in the past.
Vimeo really need to get their act together. In the meantime, anyone got any recommendations for alternate hosting sites? I’ve really been impressed with Blip.tv, who host BloodSpell, although I know a few other people weren’t so keen - comments? And of course the Internet Archive is still awesome for Creative Commons-licensed content.
Not trying to sidestep the issue here, but actually, I’m a little surprised COW:Blind didn’t run into problems earlier than this on Vimeo, with the commercial music being against their TOS. Baron has put some of his best work in jeopardy there in the past for the same reason. Vimeo may have cited their “gameplay videos” rule to one or the other of these guys (sometimes hard to tell what has actually been said and what has been assumed when there’s no Exhibit A), but the sad truth is they’d have another (stronger) reason for takedown lined up right behind this one because of the music choices.
So me personally, I’m sad for both these guys getting vids taken down, but I’m tending to tone down the victimization casting a bit because - whether or not I agree with the laws on commercial music - those laws, and the risks at video sharing sites when ignoring those laws, are so widely and well known at this point that it’s really old news.
Blip’s not a bad alternative if you know how to circumvent their encoder. The bummer about Blip is a fairly distinct lack of organizational and community features (last I checked anyway) like groups, user playlists, contacts/friends. I think people really like these features at places like YouTube and Vimeo, it gives those sites a feeling of versatility that I just don’t get off Blip as a visitor, much as their creator upload options are second to none.
Oh, and while we’re at it, I sure wish there was a way for one user to maintain multiple “channels/shows” at Blip.tv instead of either cramming everything into one show or having to create a separate account for each show. At YouTube (“Playlists”) and Vimeo (“Groups”, “Albums” and “Channels”), ways are provided around this limitation which provide additional layers of organization all under one account. Blip by comparison feels very one dimensional. If they turn multi-dimensional, I’d be first in line to make them a higher priority spot for my work.
Good point on the music. It’s a right pain, but it’s true.
(All the Vimeo takedowns seem to have been citing game content, not music. Could have been a front or standard letter, though.)
One of the reasons I’m big on publicising these sorts of events is that the more bad press the video sites get for spurious or dubious takedowns, the less likely they are to do it, and the more likely new video sites are to consider having different policies. But that’s a longer discussion.
I agree, Blip’s really most useful if you have the capacity to encode your own .flv files. If you do, though, it’s very good quality, and I’ve had nothing but good experiences with their people (who are very cool).
I’ve been seeing a few good alternatives to Vimeo and YouTube.
One hosting site is WeGame. The site has a very great design, a pleasant community, and unique add-ons that make the site unlike any of its kind. WeGame offers a video recorder for various games. Some of the more notable games that are compatible with the recorder are World of Warcraft and Half-Life 2 (or any other Valve games).
Another hosting site that I partially recommend for you, Hugh, is MachiniCast. The reason why I say partially is that there are a few problems with the layout. The design is very slick for a community-oriented site, but the main page seems kinda bland when compared to WeGame. However, the somewhat smaller size of the community (when compared to other hosting sites) allows for various users to gain a certain degree of popularity.
Anyways, I hope this helped you a little bit.
I’ve found Viddler a good host for machinima, although I don’t get too many hits on there (small community) the quality of the uploads is excellent.
Here’s an example: http://www.viddler.com/explore/Darth_Angelus/videos/30/
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