Wednesday, January 14, 2009

YouTube, Copyright, and Another Reason to Use Animoto

This morning Mashable reported that YouTube has started disabling the audio aspect of videos containing the unauthorized use of copyrighted music. Included in the Mashable article is this example of a video that has had its audio track disabled. I've seen other content removed from YouTube in the past for copyright violations. I understand why YouTube has taken this action and I don't disagree with it at all.

I find this case interesting because the style of video effected is the audio slideshow style, a style of video simlar to those that you can create in Animoto. In the case of videos effected today, the video remains working, but the audio is disabled essentially leaving you with an automated slideshow.

Applications for Education
This case of YouTube disabling audio from video slideshows provides us with a reminder to use Creative Commons licensed music when creating audio slideshows. One way allow your students to creative audio slideshows without worrying about copyright infringement is to use Animoto. Animoto provides a long list of royalty-free music that students can use in their video slideshows.

1 comments:

Coach Burk said...

A friend of mine had his video of his 6month old tagged as a violation because there was music on a radio in the background. This made me to check my videos. I had one that was tagged as copyright issues, but the owner was contacted and says it is ok. As long as they get to see who is visiting and other stats about that video. I disputed, because it was a video I made with animoto using their music. I am just waiting for the video of my son dancing to Choo Choo Soul to be banned. The singer of the American Choo Choo Soul (Disney) has the video as her favorite and commented on the video.

As Mashable fans have said, this is the death of youtube.