Spike,
Firstly, we did actually give you a warning period. We put a contextual notice on the account and sent a warning email at least two weeks before taking action.
Because I didn't see it, and nothing red flashed up on my account to say Take Action Now Before We Delete All Your Work! - I would have remembered that.
Rules are fine so long as they as consistent - I use my account for time-shifting viewing for material I find interesting, and if you look at my stats, you will see that is true, since most of that stuff is marked Private anyway.
If it was from a human being, I would have seen it and responded to it - if it was from a machine, and autogenerated it would have been filtered out by my junk mail filter, along with four thousand overly cheery Your Video is Now Available! emails I get four dozen of per week.
But if you say you did, I don't dispute that.
Well, you did say that, because you just said "There are exceptions for PRO members to upload material they did not create as long as they own the necessary rights and permissions", and you haven't asserted or produced any evidence alleging or suggesting that I don't have the right to do so.
Secondly, we never said that you weren’t in violation of our Community Guidelines (https://vimeo.com/help/guidelines). We have consistently maintained that you are, in fact, violating our Guidelines. That is the main point of this conversation.
You haven't said "We have reason to believe you don't have the necessary rights or permissions to upload this, please can you provide proof of it or take it down", and provided its for personal use and time-shifted viewing, the law says I DO - that's why VCR's and TIVOs aren't illegal.
You just deleted all of my work then sent me an email asking me to submit to you four and a half thousand pieces of paperwork.
To you. In writing.
On another continent.
And - most insultingly of all - actually expected me to do it.
Because you insist that I'm being unreasonable.
Firstly, "rip" is a pejorative term - it has no legal meaning, basis or grounding.
While we want to support filmmakers, we do not allow rips of third party material.
This is why Vimeo guidelines use internal POLICY as the standard, not Copyright Law, as YouTube does.
If you want to use your own rules, you have to define what words MEAN when you use them, otherwise you are just speaking at crossed purposes - and all the Hipster-talk DOESN'T help.
Say what you mean.
A piece of DV video is a rip of the physical universe, but you allow that.
I don't use "rips" in my film-making. I use found footage.
Say what you like about YouTube, but at least they have a system in place based on law and due process.
Your system isn't - so again, let's not pretend that this has anything to do with the Guidelines, because it doesn't.
And that's fine - but when you want to portray yourselves as creator-orientated and appeal to artists and be crazy, temperamental random and unpredictable, then you have to accept that people are people and not corporate entities or naughty children and treat them as such.
Especially when they pay your salaries. And bad publicity of abusing your customers can adversely affect your relationship with say - Apple Inc....?
There are exceptions for PRO members to upload material they did not create as long as they own the necessary rights and permissions but this does not extend to straight rips of episodes of Frontline or films like “Barbarians at the Gate” (as non-exhaustive examples). It is not relevant whether the videos are public or private, the same rules apply from our end.
I completely understand, and you are right - all you had to do was ask, and say "Please".
I am perfectly happy to take that stuff down tonight. Right now.
If there is anything else (specifically) that you take issue you, please let me know, and I will be happy to make my life, and your life easier, and sing your praises to the Gods of the Internet.
I'm storing content for personal use and time shifted viewing, not distributing it to other people.
Every law in the world says I can do that, and there is nothing in your guidelines that specifically says that I can't do that. If you don't want people to do that, when they pay their money to to be able to do that, you should specifically and explicitly say you can't do that - but that would tend to drive away business, I would think.
If you look at the stats for my account, you will see that that is true - the vast majority of the content on there is marked as private, and the only person accessing that stuff (for my personal reference, as. Research tool) is me.
Quite true. I am a good customer.
There hasn't been a conversation (or any issue, so far as I was aware) in over a year - I talk to my mother more often than I do you guys.
Thirdly, it is true that when we have taken action against you in the past you have taken steps to comply.
However, the fact that these are conversations that we keep needing to have actually counts against you.
Fine, now this is a conversation - that's good. Doing Better.
I'm a reasonable human being and we're all adults here and I comply with reasonable requests - I have a 100% track record of doing precisely what you ask me to do, when you ask me to do it (and all these nice conversations all get recorded faithfully on my blog to reflect that fact).
In this instance, I wasn't asked to do anything - I am happy to be proved wrong if that is incorrect.
Can you list them? I'm not trying being rude or insolent, I just don't recall any warnings since last June, my bipolar can make me rather excitable, and I like to be sure of my grasp of the facts.
That isn't the word I would use.
We have had several different warning about this, and it seems to be a recurring issue.
As you mentioned, the first time we had to have this conversation we did everything we could to clarify our position and help you comply with these rules.
And, at that time I did. I think I deleted about 200 videos in 10 minutes, which I had been meaning to do for a while, but you gave me the extra kick needed to spur me into action.
Again, I have a 100% track record of doing exactly as requested, when requested, and I understand what is expected of me.
Eventually, we need to stop giving chances and I am afraid that time has come.
Yes, but if I can change, then you can change - everybody can change.
[Rocky IV]
Lastly, although we can no longer provide hosting for your videos I recognize that you have amassed a wide body of work here and not everything was a rip.
Magnanimous of you, but still unfair - most of them weren't rips (as you call them), at least if those I made public via my channel, and never have been.
One thing I can do is to put your account in Temporary Access Mode.
See? All you had to do was ask.
That's exactly what I expected you to do in the first place.
This would force all your videos private and create a limited window for you to go in and archive them so that they are not lost when the account is shutdown.
That would be very helpful, thank you, since I do not have a single respoitory of back-ups.
I actually don't have a computer currently, but provided you can give me a few days, I should be able to sort out a portable HDD to rip everything onto and archive it (which seems more than a little ironic to me, and I am sure you).
I realize this is frustrating,
Only in the sense that Moby Dick was rather frustrating to Captain Ahab.
The word I would use probably only exists in Japanese, Old Norse and Klingon.
But you probably wouldn't like to hear it.
Well, I have elected to continue to be your customer. Whether you like it or not.
but we have elected to no longer provide hosting for your material.
Deal with it.
Please let me know if you would like me to put your account in temporary access mode.
I would like that very much indeed. That's all I expected to begin with.
Please let me know how much time I have to clean up my account/rescue my work.
Sean M - you are a gentleman and a scholar, sir.
Thank you.
TTFN,
Spike
[[e687af183b8474896ac7681bfe056ade0d94fe44-510541148]]Sincerely,
Sean M
Senior Manager, Trust & Safety
How am I doing? Please rate your Vimeo Support experience.
Stay in touch! Vimeo Staff Blog | Facebook | Twitter | TumblrPaulAUG 23, 2015 | 12:30PM EDTSean M, Milisa B, Logan O, et al,
Good morning, welcome back, I hope you all enjoyed your staff retreat. I shall make this brief :-
Now - I am (and have been) perfectly happy and willing to do any and all housekeeping to tidy up my account with regard to the videos I uploaded to it for my personal use only, with no intention of sharing - or indeed with any Public videos which may be in breach of the Golden Rule - I am the first to admit there may be some that slipped through the net of my due diligence, certainly not many, and I am perfectly willing to take down any you may legitimately have a grievance with or believe are in violation of either the spirit or the letter of your guidelines or terms of service - indeed, your own records will reflect the fact that in every instance when I have been asked to take remedial action on my account, I have done so.
I accept the fact that I am overdue in such housekeeping and there are perhaps a few things uploaded to my account which perhaps should not have been there - again, I was, and am perfectly prepared to be reasonable about this.
Now - I love being a customer of your company.
I wish to go on being a customer of your company.
We all know that though the final decision to terminate accounts is no-doubt discressionary to members of the Trust and Safety Team, you yourselves have rules and guidelines about when and where this action should be taken, and it's quite clear to me that you haven't followed those.
You have admitted that I am not in breach of Guidelines - so, though you may not admit it, this is a discretionary decision on your part, it has nothing to do with the rules.
You know that you are meant to notify me before terminating my account, give me enough (reasonable) time to take remedial action myself (which I am perfectly willing to do), and which you have not done.
I have a good idea myself of the precise parameters of the content you have concerns about, and I am fully confident myself that I can have the whole corpus cleaned up within 20 minutes, never mind 24hrs, which is what I propose as a reasonable amount of time to take remedial action (although, the last time this occurred, I believe you offered me One Week to take action, and the outcome was satisfactory to all concerned.
I am prepared to take remedial action. I want to take remedial action. I want to continue to be your customer.
The ball is currently in your court, because the decision lies with you as to whether or not to aallow me to do any of those things.
In the absence of those options, the only course of action open to me is to complain, and complain publicly
Your company is one, we both know, which likes to pretend that they don't care about money and is entirely staffed by quirky creatives and starving artists.
And we both know that isn't true.
I am a film-maker and a documentarian who has had his work taken away from him - my experience (currently) of Vimeo in the last 7 Days is one of a company that steals my work, destroys my content, throws my money back into my face and patronises me whilst doing it.
This stands in stark contrast to my experience of the previous two years, where your company (to me) has been the best thing since sliced bread and oxygen and the one thing I would recommend to all my friends.
Film-making is my life. And I would like for film-making to continue to be my life.
Your company depends on its reputation with up-and-coming creatives, hipsters and starving artists.
If they start to get the idea that "Vimeo will steal your work, destroy your content, doesn't want your money and is incredibly patronising to starving artists and up-and-coming film-makers", that creates a PR nightmare that need not happen.
I am not asking for special treatment, I am only asking for fair treatment and consistent treatment, in line with that which I received when this problem last occurred and when you last prematurely terminated my account.
I am prepared to do whatever it takes to put this right and get my work restored, I just ask you to be fair, follow your own rules, tell me what I need to do and be reasonable, which is what all your previous communication have emphasised in making these decisions.
I will do what is required - in fact, as a hyper-manic bipolar documentarian with a blog, I might do just about anything.
Please be reasonable, and if you can't be reasonable, give me a reason - because I am NOT in breach of guidelines (as you yourself admit, Sean M) and this has nothing to do with the rules.
Give me 24 hrs to clean up my account, and after that, I am happy to pay again to have my PRO Mmbership restored (since Sean M has already initiated a refund without waiting to hear back from me).
I hope you can respond to my plea constructiveall,
SpikePaulAUG 20, 2015 | 05:38PM EDT>>> It is true that PRO members can upload videos they did not create as long as they hold the necessary rights and permissions
>>>
Then I would consider that fact very carefully, as it leaves you in an extremely actionable position - by your own admission, I am not in breech of Guidelines.PaulAUG 20, 2015 | 05:31PM EDTI am not in breach of Guidelines, and I am a paying customer - what gives you the right to destroy my work and destroy my business?AUG 20, 2015 | 04:32PM EDTPaul,
The golden rule of Vimeo is that you are only supposed to upload videos that you created yourself or had a hand in creating. Fair use and/or permission from the rights holder do not make an exception to this general rule.
It is true that PRO members can upload videos they did not create as long as they hold the necessary rights and permissions, but this is not a blanket permission to upload rips. We have actually gone over this before, and although there was some progress it has become a recurring problem and there are several rips uploaded to your account.
I am afraid that we can no longer provide hosting.
That said, I do see that your most recent PRO subscription was within the refund window so I have initiated a refund.
We wish you the best of luck in finding a hosting platform better suited to your needs.Sincerely,
Sean M
Senior Manager, Trust & Safety
Stay in touch! Vimeo Staff Blog | Facebook | Twitter | TumblrAUG 20, 2015 | 08:35PM EDTHi there,
I’m assigning your case to a member of our Trust & Safety team who can better assist you with this inquiry.
You’ll hear back from us again shortly. Thank you for your patience.Sincerely,
Zena H
Stay in touch! Vimeo Staff Blog | Facebook | Twitter | TumblrPaulAUG 19, 2015 | 07:44PM EDT
Original message> We sent an email notifying you that your videos may be in violation of our guidelines, and when you did not respond within the grace period specified, our content moderators took action on your account.
>
That is not true - I received no prior notification of possible violations at all, this happened completely without warning, and I was given no opportunity to take remedial action.
> Permission to use copyrighted material can come in a variety of forms, but the permission must be given in writing. You can acquire a formal license from the copyright holder, or receive permission via email.
>
There is no mention of this in the content guidelines or terms of service, and this is the first I have heard of this - and from memory, when I last checked, I had well over 4000 videos, primarily for personal use and access hosted on my account.
It's not reasonable or consistent with with either your own guidelines or terms of service to request or expect me to produce at this stage somewhere in the order of several thousand pieces of documentation in a formalised manner, particularly when with my account suspended, I cannot even myself see what content of mine you are currently hosting.
Sent from my iPadFor your reference this is Case #: 1177481
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