Gates of Vienna: Vimeo Taketh Away

Vlad Tepes’ relationship with the online video hosting service Vimeo is at an end. His final attempt to obtain useful information from the company has come to naught.

Rosetta Tombstone

The bad news is that we do not have any response from Vimeo identifying who — if anyone — requested the removal of the Col. West Rosetta Stone videos.

The good news is that we now know Vimeo removes videos when a staff member or an outsider points out that they are violating Vimeo’s guidelines.

Vlad had assumed that adding subtitles to the videos was within the concept of fair use, and not a copyright violation. Not only was this a bad assumption, but more importantly, Vimeo didn’t like it.

Vlad has been generous in providing the email thread from Vimeo concerning these videos, and I have included all the emails at the bottom of this post. As you can see, Vimeo never identified anyone who had asked for the removal of the videos. Vlad followed up by asking them specifically for the name of the individual who had asked for the videos to be removed.

Vimeo replied, “Also, if a copyright complaint was issued to us, we include that information in the original email sent to you stating why your videos were removed. If there is no mention of who issued the copyright complaint, one of our moderators came across your account and found it to be in violation.”

So that is all we will ever know about who or what caused the destruction of “A Rosetta Stone for Col. West.”

During the Recent Unpleasantness, among the accusations that Pamela Hall aimed at Vlad were assertions that “Vlad knows who complained” and that “he and Baron Bodissey continue to suggest otherwise.” Additionally, “The Baron and Vlad apparently decided to pull the plug on this project; then they blamed us.”

I think these emails finally lay to rest any doubts about the inaccuracy of the above statements.

Vlad wanted very much to know who forced the removal of the Col. West videos. So did I, for that matter. But neither of us was ever able to find out.

Vimeo giveth, and Vimeo taketh away.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Vimeo emails, with Vlad’s notes:

This is the first email from Vimeo:

From: rights@vimeo.com
Date: April 12, 2010 11:49:10 AM EDT
To: [Vlad’s email address]
Subject: Attention required on your Vimeo account

Hi Vlad Tepes:

We see that you are uploading videos from TV, Movies, or something you found on the Web. We’re sorry, but our rules clearly state that you cannot upload this form of content to Vimeo. Please take 72 hours to remove the offending videos.

After 72 hours, we will review your account to determine whether you are in compliance with our Terms. If you are not, the offending videos and/or your account will be removed by a moderator.

For more information on our content policies, please visit http://vimeo.com/guidelines

If you believe this was an error, please reply to this email in a civil manner with your reasoning (“I see other people do it” is not a valid reason. We deal with as many policy violations as we are able to.).

Regards,
Vimeo

I replied to the above, asking what videos were the problem. I got no answer, then several days later, the channel came down.

This is the second email, with a complete list of ALL my videos which were removed:
- - - - - - - - -

From: rights@vimeo.com
Date: April 22, 2010 3:48:10 PM EDT
To: [Vlad’s email address]
Subject: Your videos have been removed

Dear Vlad Tepes:

The following videos have been removed for violating the Upload Rules of Vimeo.com:
http://www.vimeo.com/7798852
http://www.vimeo.com/7823394
http://www.vimeo.com/7830606
http://www.vimeo.com/7831606
http://www.vimeo.com/7832142
http://www.vimeo.com/7841865
http://www.vimeo.com/7859153
http://www.vimeo.com/7873359
http://www.vimeo.com/7874127
http://www.vimeo.com/7889014
http://www.vimeo.com/7923738
http://www.vimeo.com/8025072
http://www.vimeo.com/8121937
http://www.vimeo.com/8122259
http://www.vimeo.com/8122274
http://www.vimeo.com/8128222
http://www.vimeo.com/8128624
http://www.vimeo.com/8144991
http://www.vimeo.com/8166175
http://www.vimeo.com/8272197
http://www.vimeo.com/8281048
http://www.vimeo.com/8320035
http://www.vimeo.com/8379088
http://www.vimeo.com/8381256
http://www.vimeo.com/8403010
http://www.vimeo.com/8404521
http://www.vimeo.com/8448322
http://www.vimeo.com/8493085
http://www.vimeo.com/8496312
http://www.vimeo.com/8517287
http://www.vimeo.com/8585213
http://www.vimeo.com/8627484
http://www.vimeo.com/8639418
http://www.vimeo.com/8640406
http://www.vimeo.com/8714413
http://www.vimeo.com/8748201
http://www.vimeo.com/8774554
http://www.vimeo.com/8777694
http://www.vimeo.com/8806956
http://www.vimeo.com/8938273
http://www.vimeo.com/8942998
http://www.vimeo.com/9160718
http://www.vimeo.com/9337736
http://www.vimeo.com/9368617
http://www.vimeo.com/9477431
http://www.vimeo.com/9480431
http://www.vimeo.com/9570527
http://www.vimeo.com/9722714
http://www.vimeo.com/9773556
http://www.vimeo.com/9774544
http://www.vimeo.com/9775126
http://www.vimeo.com/9784259
http://www.vimeo.com/9794037
http://www.vimeo.com/9807926
http://www.vimeo.com/9824518
http://www.vimeo.com/9834810
http://www.vimeo.com/9840941
http://www.vimeo.com/9842589
http://www.vimeo.com/9843788
http://www.vimeo.com/9873664
http://www.vimeo.com/9880622
http://www.vimeo.com/9922016
http://www.vimeo.com/9951876
http://www.vimeo.com/9952542
http://www.vimeo.com/10025684
http://www.vimeo.com/10060996
http://www.vimeo.com/10079879
http://www.vimeo.com/10131286
http://www.vimeo.com/10137572
http://www.vimeo.com/10152843
http://www.vimeo.com/10154624
http://www.vimeo.com/10176525
http://www.vimeo.com/10210382
http://www.vimeo.com/10236973
http://www.vimeo.com/10240834
http://www.vimeo.com/10276081
http://www.vimeo.com/10326613
http://www.vimeo.com/10339640
http://www.vimeo.com/10347866
http://www.vimeo.com/10374632
http://www.vimeo.com/10374645
http://www.vimeo.com/10391252
http://www.vimeo.com/10405450
http://www.vimeo.com/10407145
http://www.vimeo.com/10527600
http://www.vimeo.com/10537132
http://www.vimeo.com/10661942
http://www.vimeo.com/10711881
http://www.vimeo.com/10718451
http://www.vimeo.com/10718575
http://www.vimeo.com/10718601
http://www.vimeo.com/10718624
http://www.vimeo.com/10718684
http://www.vimeo.com/10719552
http://www.vimeo.com/10719650
Vimeo does not allow TV shows, movie trailers, or stuff you found on the web.

If you believe this was an error, please reply to this email in a civil manner with your reasoning (“I see other people do it” is not a valid reason).

Regards,
Vimeo

Some of the emails concerning specific Col. West videos:

From: rights@vimeo.com
Date: April 27, 2010 2:02:09 PM EDT
To: [Vlad’s email address]
Subject: Your video has been removed

Dear Vlad Tepes:

Your video ‘Allen West Feb 19th Danish subtitles(9952542)’ has been removed for violating the Upload Rules of Vimeo.com:
Vimeo does not allow TV shows, movie trailers, or stuff you found on the web.

If you believe this was an error, please reply to this email in a civil manner with your reasoning (“I see other people do it” is not a valid reason).

Regards,
Vimeo

From: rights@vimeo.com
Date: April 27, 2010 2:20:20 PM EDT
To: [Vlad’s email address]
Subject: Your video has been removed

Dear Vlad Tepes:

Your video ‘Allen West Feb 19th in DC subtitled in Spanish(9873664)’ has been removed for violating the Upload Rules of Vimeo.com:
Vimeo does not allow TV shows, movie trailers, or stuff you found on the web.

If you believe this was an error, please reply to this email in a civil manner with your reasoning (“I see other people do it” is not a valid reason).

Regards,
Vimeo

From: rights@vimeo.com
Date: April 27, 2010 2:20:21 PM EDT
To: [Vlad’s email address]
Subject: Your video has been removed

Dear Vlad Tepes:

Your video ‘Col. Allen West subtitled in Dutch(9824518)’ has been removed for violating the Upload Rules of Vimeo.com:
Vimeo does not allow TV shows, movie trailers, or stuff you found on the web.

If you believe this was an error, please reply to this email in a civil manner with your reasoning (“I see other people do it” is not a valid reason).

Regards,
Vimeo

From: rights@vimeo.com
Date: April 27, 2010 2:21:04 PM EDT
To: [Vlad’s email address]
Subject: Your video has been removed

Dear Vlad Tepes:

Your video ‘Col Allen West speaks in Washington D.C. Feb 19 2010(9773556)’ has been removed for violating the Upload Rules of Vimeo.com:
Vimeo does not allow TV shows, movie trailers, or stuff you found on the web.

If you believe this was an error, please reply to this email in a civil manner with your reasoning (“I see other people do it” is not a valid reason).

Regards,
Vimeo

From: rights@vimeo.com
Date: April 27, 2010 2:21:05 PM EDT
To: [Vlad’s email address]
Subject: Your video has been removed

Dear Vlad Tepes:

Your video ‘Allen West War on Terror(9722714)’ has been removed for violating the Upload Rules of Vimeo.com:
Vimeo does not allow TV shows, movie trailers, or stuff you found on the web.

If you believe this was an error, please reply to this email in a civil manner with your reasoning (“I see other people do it” is not a valid reason).

Regards,
Vimeo

From: rights@vimeo.com
Date: April 27, 2010 2:21:03 PM EDT
To: [Vlad’s email address]
Subject: Your video has been removed

Dear Vlad Tepes:

Your video ‘Col. Allen West titled in French(9775126)’ has been removed for violating the Upload Rules of Vimeo.com:
Vimeo does not allow TV shows, movie trailers, or stuff you found on the web.

If you believe this was an error, please reply to this email in a civil manner with your reasoning (“I see other people do it” is not a valid reason).

Regards,
Vimeo

Final email sent to Vimeo:

From: [Vlad’s email address]
To: blake@vimeo.com; andrea@vimeo.com; steve@vimeo.com
Sent: Sunday, May 02, 2010 10:58 PM
Subject: complaints and videos

Hi guys

I have written a few times to ask about why the David Littman at the UN-HRC video has not been restored. It is a video I edited on commission for Mr. Littman, who represents 2 UN-NGO’s directly.

I have not had an answer as to why this was not restored. This was weeks of work for both Mr. Littman and myself.

Also, I would dearly appreciate knowing please, who claimed copyright on what videos on my channel, specifically the Allen West translations, if indeed there was a complaint about those videos, which I assume there was as I got specific notice about their deletion.

The channel is vladtepesblog and any answer would indeed be appreciated.

Thank you in advance:

Final email from Vimeo:

From: Andrea Allen
Date: May 3, 2010 10:58:41 AM EDT
To: [Vlad’s email address]
Cc: “Whitman, Blake” , “Niebauer, Stephen”
Subject: Re: complaints and videos
Reply-To: andrea@vimeo.com

Hi [Vlad],

Vimeo does not allow syndication of television broadcasts, which our moderators found your account to be uploading.
Also, if a copyright complaint was issued to us, we include that information in the original email sent to you stating why your videos were removed. If there is no mention of who issued the copyright complaint, one of our moderators came across your account and found it to be in violation.

Please read our Guidelines very carefully. www.vimeo.com/guidelines

Upload ONLY videos you create and have the necessary permissions to upload. You may only upload videos you have created yourself or participated closely to help create.
You must own or hold all necessary rights (copyrights, etc.) to the videos
Directors, DPs, editors, musicians, graphic effects artists, and actors may all upload work in which they have contributed significantly.
“I have permission” does not mean you created it.
Public domain videos are also prohibited.
Users uploading popular or professional content that they have created should add their role and involvement in the video description and on their profile to avoid accidental deletion.

No videos that are just compilations of scenes from TV or movies.

Truly,
Andrea Allen
Community Manager — Vimeo.com
vimeo.com/andreaallen

As Vlad mentioned in his final email to Vimeo, one of the videos that he lost — and concerning which there were no copyright or ownership issues — was his lengthy edited and titled version of David Littman’s testimony at the UN Human Rights Council. This video represented weeks of work for both Vlad and Mr. Littman.

Mr. Littman’s Vimeo project cannot possibly be recovered now. This sad fact appears to be of no interest to Vimeo.

7 comments:

Zhenne said...: It sounds like there are no existing copies of the videos that were removed. Were no copies of the videos saved?; 5/03/2010 11:40 PM
Vladtepesblog.com said...: There are other issues related to this beyond that. Many web sites embedded videos from this channel. Even if they where reposted somewhere else, it would be a great deal of work, putting behind all the current work that is in the queue, to try and send the embed codes to all sites involved. In fact, I only know about a small percentage of them. Just the sites that bothered to work the trail of breadcrumbs back to me to request the vids be replaced. I have no way of knowing where they all are in any case.
Yes I'm pretty sure I can find many of them here and there and the ones I can't find I can probably rebuild. But the issue runs deeper than the mere existence. Its about the sites interlinked all over the world who found this material inspiring, informing, and helping to build awareness and resistance to their own, and all of our common problem.

In any case, onward and upward. I will find a place for them sooner or later and start the arduous task of re-uploading, and attempting to inform all who had them, that they can be found again.; 5/03/2010 11:55 PM
Vladtepesblog.com said...: Oh just by way of post-script, I will not be restoring the Allen West videos.; 5/04/2010 12:16 AM
Anonymous said...: My bet is nobody requested the deletion of these videos, Vimeo removed them of their own volition. Youtube is well known for spontaneously removing anti-jihad video, why shouldn't Vimeo be infected with the same virus?; 5/04/2010 5:29 AM
Anonymous said...: Sounds very clear to me.

Vimeo says that even if you have permission by the copyright holder, it will not let you post any videos unless you created them (or unless you were a significant contributor to a collective creation, which, arguably, is the case for the Rosetta Stone project). So it's Vimeo being more royalist than the King himself, as the French saying goes.

Let me see if I got this right.

The GoV side assumed that someone on the Geller-Spencer-Hall side must have asked for removal (a reasonable assumption). The Geller-Spencer-Hall side got all worked up. It assumed that the the GoV side was "lying" because they themselves did not ask for such removal, except for one video, the request being made by Hall to You Tube.

Public insults followed, flowing from G-S-H to GoV.

That's clearly a case of misunderstanding, followed by over-the-top reaction from Pamela Geller (who seems to make a habit of it). It also seems Pamela Geller was hurt by the tone of some private e-mails sent to her in the course of the matter. Which might have led her to go postal publicly.

Of course I don't know what has been going on privately, but it does seem to me that nothing happened that cannot be settled with a nice handshake (and a beer summit in the White House garden, perhaps).

However, it also seems to me that the most important part of the dispute is still up in the air : what does the Geller-Spencer-Hall consider as fair use in such instances ?

They did not say. More to the point, it seems that Hall has a more extreme view than Geller and Spencer on the subject. Hall seems to say : there's no fair use, just link to my videos on my blog.

Geller says : Hall is a hard-working girl and she deserves to be heard (which is rather non-committal, really).

But Hall and Spencer insist they did not ask for any removal, and take great offence over any suggestion that they might have. Does that mean they would agree to some degree of fair use, provided credit was given (as it was here) ?

It seems to me that Geller, Spencer and Hall have to define a common policy here, since they seem to be at odds with each other, in spite of the fact that they work closely on the same project. When such things happen, the easiest wriggle out of it is to make a loud chorus against the common "enemy", here being GoV.

It's also the best way of ensuring issues are not resolved.

But they need to be. There's no way Geller-Spencer-Hall, or any part of the counter-jihad movement, are going to be succesfull if the power of the Internet is not harnessed to its full extent.

And this is not a one-man (or one-woman) operation, however mighty and dedicated they may be (and Spencer-Geller certainly fall under that category). The collective, viral quality of the Web will be a major factor towaards that end.

This takes cooperation. Or, at least, unspoken consent to let other people help your work go viral.; 5/04/2010 7:28 AM
Cobra said...: The solution is to cut the trio loose, figuratively speaking..
The chaff has been segregated from the wheat.
I vote with the wheat, i.e., the GOV.
Period. End of story.; 5/04/2010 1:52 PM
Professor L said...: I think randian has it:

No videos that incite hatred, include hate speech, defamatory or discriminatory speech or videos depicting unlawful acts or extreme violence.
-- From Vimeo guidelines

Seems pretty simple to me. All it takes is one self-righteous moderator, and the video is caput. In this case, I guess the mod in question falls hook line and sinker for the Religion of Peace line, and doesn't think there's anything worth keeping on such "hate speech".; 5/05/2010 5:07 AM

Monday, May 03, 2010

Vimeo Taketh Away

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