Press "Upload" on that Video: "Point Is Not To Bust People,'' Says NBC

The point is to actually make fair use  — fair and creative use — use of someone’s professionally produced content, if you’re going to post a video online.

The executive vice president and general counsel of NBC Universal, Rick Cotton, this afternoon said that 99 percent of all videos that it orders taken down from video sharing sites from YouTube, Veoh, DailyMotion or other video-sharing sites are not short clips where an amateur producer has tried to make some new video by using pieces of professional product, as part.

Nearly all — all but 1% — of the clips that get ordered taken down by NBC are “extended excerpts” of professionally produced shows. And, just as importantly, excerpts, Cotton says, that show “no effort to change” the original product.

“We’re talking about a tiny amount of material” being taken down or blocked with such “cues as electronic notices of infringement, said Cotton.

“The virtue of doing this by technology and by sending cues and by providing alternatives and moving the audience by virtue of a learning experience is that one doesn’t wind up having to deal with the issue of who gets busted,” he said.

“The main effort here is to create a broadband Internet which operates by the normal rules that we are collectively used to. Which is that in the case of professionally produced material, and it’s true in terms of physical product and it’s  true in terms of digital products,  that individuals who are interested in accessing those, access them from legitimate outlets, and either legitimate Web sites on a digital basis or stores on a physical basis. Those are the normal rules of behavior.”

Content producers want to move from a “total Wild West” to where the any and all comers can “take advantage of huge capabilities” of the broadband Internet, so that consumers can get whatever they want, whenever they want, wherever they are.

Policing videos has become much more automated and effective, as YouTube and other sites employ systems or services that let original content creators protect what they have produced. These systems compare videos uploaded by users against videos uploaded by the producers to see if there are matches. The content producers are notified and then they decide to order whether to order the uploads off the site.

NBC, for instance, issued 25,000 takedown notices to video-sharing sites when copies of sports events that it broadcast from the Olympics started appearing. Most of the notices came at the start of the competitions and, soon, online viewers learned they’d have to go to nbcolympics.com to watch the sport they were interested in. NBC, Cotton said, 99% of the viewership with only 1% going to illegitimate sites. Tracking systems, notices and other cues made that possible.

Similarly, more aggressive surveillance has kept illegitimate uses of NBC content off YouTube. Two years ago, a Saturday Night Live skit called “Lazy Sunday” got 7 million viewings on YouTube. This September, a wildly popular skit that featured the return of Tina Fey to SNL in the impersonation of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin at a podium with uncrowned Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton got an estimated 250,000 views on YouTube. The skit, though, was watched more than 15 million times on NBC.com and a site partly owned by NBC, called Hulu.com.

The video entertainment industry should not follow the lead of the music industry, in creating a legal fracas.

“The point is not to bust people. The point is not to wind up in a confrontation. The point is to wind up with a framework and an ecosystem in the same way we have with physical products, where people get what the rules are and they’re able to follow them.”

“Our experience with the Saturday Night Live skit recently and with the NBC Olympics demonstrates that the vast majority of today’s broadband Internet audience is perfectly willing to do that.”

Cotton’s comments came during a discussion of “ZDNet Undercover: The YouTube File,” which can be downloaded here.

A replay of the Webcast will be online.