[IMC-Video] corporate video aggregating, etc

[Steev Hise]

On Jan 8, 2008, at 9:29 PM, Terry Portinga wrote:

> "Again, this is probably just the beginning of the "self generating"
>  commercial distribution it would seem to me."
>
>  I guess I just mean the inclusion of Indymedia Presents episodes on
> various destination sites and their search engines (unless video
> aggregate sites are something different). I don't know if this sort of
> thing grows exponentially or not.
>
> AOL's video search engine Truveo for instance.
> They even pick up videos from Ourmedia I noticed.


It's an at least somewhat interesting issue.  As has been discussed  
already a lot on the imc-video list, corporate videosharing sites are  
at best a "useful evil", so far at least.  and even if they're not  
explicitly re-selling indymedia and other videoactivist videos, they  
make money from this kind of re-use, as with all user-generated  
content that they offer, because every single click that Truveo or  
YouTube or Myspace or whoever gets on their site translates to - ka- 
ching! - money from advertisers.  so, what to do about this? probably  
not much, other than, while posting stuff to these services, always  
always also posting to non-commercial services and linking or  
embedding to those instead of the commercial ones, and always linking  
AWAY from posts on commercial sites to noncommercial, personal, and/ 
or indymedia sites (i.e. "for more information on this topic, see  
<link to some indymedia site/post>" ) - in other words, don't  
contribute to making them destinations, use them only as much as  
neccesary to lead people to OUR sites and our resources. beyond that,  
not much to do, but it is something to be aware of.   to sum up, it's  
a constant war for eyeballs. don't let the advertisers win it.

best,

steev

Steev Hise | steev at detritus.net | http://detritus.net/steev
------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
-----
"I've been an activist for more than 25 years, and I'm sick of being  
in a
sub-culture.  I'm sick of activism as a lifestyle. I want to win."
                 - Stephen Duncombe