I had one video removed last week due to a copyright claim by ITV Network Limited, which was a 1960's Coronation Street introduction from a Granada Plus repeat in 1997, I've been lucky as I still have my account from what it appears. Yet I do take strictest care over copyright and I do acknowledge it, but I'd rather be warned and asked to take a Video off rather than it being taken off from me or indeed suspension of my account.
I also noticed people who upload old ITV Sport clips, seem to get their accounts closed with no ifs and no buts.
A fair few episodes of The Bill were taken down this week. Yes they were full episodes, but from 6 years ago at least. And this is the funny bit...ITV PLC took them down! No, not Talkback Thames or Freemantle who actually make and distrubute the show. ITV seem to think they now own the world. What harm are shows from so long ago doing anyone? I wouldn't mind if ITV were repeating them but...ah shucks
The BBC do seem to be more sensible with it. Certainly there are some departments of the BBC who enjoy the You Tube clips, and have used them for research.
I think short clips are good promotion for a channel, and the action is not really making ITV look very good. Fair enough if the clips were going to be on ITV.com, but I can't see it happening.
My entire account was suspended a few days back and all videos deleted.
About this time a year ago I'd been contacted by the BBC to use one of my youtube clips (a bit of defunct cable channel L!VE TV) to use in 'Room 101' and got a nifty £100 for it as well, so it seems a shame that they've now all been removed. I've still got them on my hard drive but it seems stupid to re-upload them all as they'll just get removed again.
Ridiculous this all is..the only thing I've ever had removed was a Kath and Kim ident from when they first switched to the Seven Network here in Australia.
Most of the broadcasters here either turn a blind eye, or are perfectly fine with it (as is the case with the ABC and Network Ten), who welcome the free promotion - hence why you see lots of Big Brother Australia clips about. The ABC don't have the biggest promotional budget either so they're very happy to see parts of things uploaded and have even done so themselves in a few cases (they're also very big on podcasting, DRM-free of course).
A few months back though there was some twelve-year-old who set up an account pretending to be the ABC and managed to get a whole bunch of videos from one particular TV series deleted. Went down like a lead baloon with the various people whose accounts were suspended as a result of it..
