Give Credit Where Credit is Due
Luc Bergeron has cut together an amazing set of time-lapses made by other people into a well executed video and posted it to YouTube (since removed, see update at end). It’s the kind of use that remix culture promotes. While I’m a supporter of remix culture—it is how we’ve always worked after all and if you’ve followed me at all, you know I think Kirby Ferguson is spot on—here’s the thing that chaps my ass about it, regardless of the copyright legalities: Decent attribution of any of the creators of the content is not given in the video. It leaves the easy assumption that one person created all of this.
I should say that there’s the most meager attempt at attribution at 3:34 in the video where Luc says, ”On each clip presented in this video, you can see the number that refer to list below”. He obviously means below in the sense of below the video on the YouTube page. Of course, below means nothing when you embed the video somewhere else, like when Maria Popova links into it on curiosity counts.
Ok, so when you’re on the YouTube page looking at the caption, there’s a link to this Google+ page. Go there and you see a list of links to the source videos there was a link to a Google+ page that contained a list of links to the source videos. OK, so that’s credit of a sort, but I’m sorry, that’s not good enough even if the creators of those videos are totally cool with this usage either through permission is given via a Creative Commons license or other arrangement made by the parties.
Proper attribution would have listed names in the video in the commonly accepted place for such attribution: the credits.
End. Of. Story.
I see this happen all of the time and I think that this is something that so many people that are in the free and remix culture movements miss on. As much as the proponents of those movements agree that attribution is important—it’s a core requirement of every Creative Commons license, for example—there’s so very little push to make that happen. And it’s something that drives anybody who is in the middle ground of this debate screaming away from the idea of letting people use their stuff.
You’ll notice that I’m staying silent in this rant on the rest of the copyright implications with this video. That’s because I don’t know if Luc got permission or not from the creators of all 179 sources. Maybe he did. Maybe he didn’t. But this rant isn’t about any other copyright implications. It’s about one thing: Giving credit where credit is due to the people who created the stuff that this video was cut from, and doing it the right way.
Listen, regardless of the rest of the debate around modern Copyright practices, attribution—crediting where ideas or parts come from—is essential. It’s the right thing to do. It makes creative types a lot more friendly towards the whole idea of letting others build off their work instead of feeling ripped off. So do it. And press on others to do it. Kick their butts and call them out when they don’t do it or they half-ass it, even on something as beautifully edited as Luc’s video.
One more thing I should mention: I’m know I’m picking on Luc here, but I wouldn’t be writing this if this were the first or even hundredth time I’ve seen this problem. Noticing the issue this time was simply the straw that prompted the post.
UPDATE 2/20: Since I posted this, Luc’s video has been removed due to a copyright claim. Apparently, as one would easily suspect but which I didn’t want to accuse without knowing, Luc did not get permission to use the clips. Discussion continues on the Google Plus page where some of the people whose clips were used have weighed in and others are trying to defend Luc based on fair use. Discussion continued on the Google+ page until it was deleted, probably by Luc. Messy stuff that’s played out about as one would expect if you’ve seen this sort of thing before.
