I hate it when people steal from others

[23skidoo]

I just saw something that made my blood boil.

in the past we've talked about the great fan-made music videos that have turned up on YouTube paying tribute to Doctor Who.

A month ago, Babelcolour, a user who has made some fantastic videos such as a tribute to Lis Sladen, the incredible music video that showed clips from every Doctor Who story ever, and a great Ten Doctors fantasy trailer, did a tribute video to the song "What About Everything". It's fast become one of my favorites. It was even posted here a while back. Here is the link again in case you missed it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceoV-YLAs4E

Pretty good, eh? So I'm on YouTube tonight and I see someone else has apparently done a Doctor Who video to What About Everything. OK, that's fine - Babelcolour wasn't the first to use that tune either and the song seems to work really well with Doctor Who. So I click on it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc5gTURRAmg

Looks familiar, right? Damn right it's familiar - it's Babelcolour's video and some guy has gone and put his own name on it!

I see this plagiarism happen way too often. It's bad enough when I see people recycle the clips from Doctor Who Confidential's "Thanks for the Memories" video ad nauseum. But at least in that case they usually add in SOMETHING new. All this guy did was strip off Babelcolour's intro and put his name on it. Oh joy, what creativity.

Yeesh. What really pisses me off is this is the type of thing that might make Babelcolour or others like him say to hell with it. When it's the ones who seem to be only interested in taking credit for other people's work who should just ---- off.

(And yes, I know all these videos are technically "copying" since Babelcolour didn't make the song What About Everything, nor did he make Doctor Who. But if that question arises, the point has been missed.)

Alex

 

[Shatinator]

Well, I understand, however it is not uncommon at all for people to post other works, without necessarily trying to stake claim on the property or trying to miss lead.

After all, I might put some clips of Star Trek: The Motion Pictures up, and it would be absurd for someone to get irate with me that I am not Robert Wise, the director. I would be just a fan who likes the art and sharing it with others.

That said, it is completely something different if I presented this as my work or contribution in any way. So, in that light I went to those youtube links and on the "suspecious" one, I asked the Tuber if it was his work, I even gave him an easy out. So we'll see. And I let you know if I get a response.

Take care,

The
S H A T I N A T O R

 

[captcalhoun]

you did report it, right?

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Ah, Carbon Leaf's "What About Everything?" A great song from a great album.

For history's sake, Babelcolor wasn't the first person on the Doctor Who/"What About Everything?" bandwagon. The original video was by Calapine; however, it was pulled from YouTube for clip infringement. There have been other Who/"Everything?" videos, but they're not the same as the original. (I have an FLV of the original. No, I'm not sharing.)

And that video got a lot of people who had never heard of Carbon Leaf to discover the band. In my book, that's a good thing; more people should know Carbon Leaf. Carbon Leaf and I go back a long way, to a frat party at the University of Richmond in 1997.

As for the issue Alex brought up, yeah, not cool. Not cool at all.

 

[Psion]

It's curious, because digging through KingDan245's channel, you can see that he's commented on BabelColour's video, saying, "Loved it. You sir are a genius" ... how could he possibly expect to get away with this?

I've seen companies do this with open source software. The obvious incentive, since they're re-branding and charging for free software, is profit. But in this case, KingDan's got little or nothing to gain. So what motivated him -- did he hope to gather a following and lots of kudos? Did he post this to get a job as a video editor somewhere? That might just work if he posted it prior to an interview. Was his account hacked? Is he a sock-puppet for BabelColour? Or did he just see something beautiful and this was the only way he could think of to get his name attached?

It's a weird little thing I'd love to understand better, but haven't a hope of doing so.