Looks like YouTube is testing allowing users to post their work to their site under a Creative Commons license. Only official registered partners can participate in the pilot. They are also working on downloadable content, both gratis and for a fee paid with Google Checkout. It looks like the videos won’t be encumbered with digital restrictions management. I can certainly imagine the awful irony of CC’d works being put under the lock and key of DRM when you download them.
Will the downloads be subject to digital rights restrictions management (DRM)?
- For this pilot test, all videos will be downloaded in MP4 format, which is not DRM-managed. Users will be subject to certain legal restrictions, dependent on the license a partner has chosen for their downloads.
They are offering four licensing options:
- BY-NC-ND
- BY-NC-SA
- BY
- PD
In an effort to promote the sharing of information, we are testing free downloads of YouTube videos from Stanford, Duke, UC Berkeley, UCLA, and UCTV (broadcasting programs from throughout the UC system). YouTube users who are traveling or teachers who want to show these videos in classrooms with limited or no connectivity should find this particularly useful.
I’ve always been annoyed when teachers show us grainy YouTube videos in class, and sometimes when the network is congested buffering can take a while. Maybe the downloadable videos will fix this.
February 28th, 2009 at 17:06
This is a dupe, but I’m going to leave it up just because it says more than I originally did.
Why aren’t they offering BY-SA? That’s absurd that people who use NC can have copyleft, but not people who don’t.
February 28th, 2009 at 22:03
All Creative Commons licenses prohibit the addition of DRM, so YouTube wouldn’t have been allowed to cripple CC-licensed content anyway.
March 1st, 2009 at 2:24
I was going to ask about BY-SA too. What gives? Why not offer all the standard licenses?