Week 10: Copyright on YouTube

I talked a little bit about copyright in last week’s post about my screening of the documentary Paywall, so this week I’d like to go a little more in-depth. There are a few things to keep in mind around copyright on YouTube; a lot of this is because institutions who put video onto YouTube become information producers rather than simply providers. With this shift in roles comes a certain amount of legal responsibility that might not have been there before, which can be intimidating to institutions who might not feel like they have the expertise (or, more likely, time) to worry about it. This isn’t actually as big of a hurdle as one might worry about though; the average librarian has a much better understanding of copyright than the average YouTuber, and YouTube itself provides resources & documentation on the big things that folks are likely to have to worry about in a way that’s easy to understand. The company also has a number of systems in place to help protect themselves, a handy (but sometimes overkill) byproduct of interactions with Viacom in the late 2000’s. So, what will libraries have to worry about, and how might they overcome these hurdles? Continue reading “Week 10: Copyright on YouTube”