Hey deli on 14th and 8th, it might be time to refresh the posters in your window.
Now MSN is getting into the thievery game! They currently have the Star Wars Subway Car video featured on their front page (which gets a ridiculous amount of traffic.) They’re linking to their own internal MSN comedy site “The Bubble” where they’re embedding a stolen version of the video from StupidVideos.com
Does anyone know someone who works for MSN front page editorial, The Bubble, or Stupid Videos?
How hard is it to link to the people who made the thing that you like? You know, the people that actually went out and did something?
UPDATE: After sending a personal email to someone I was in touch with from Stupid Videos in 2006, he fixed the problem for me (and it turns out he is now working for the Bubble.) Still, I shouldn’t have to go around asking giant media companies to not steal my content after the fact. Lame! Also lame that Keith Olbermann played the video on Oddball tonight but didn’t bother to say who made it or where he got it from. No “courtesy ImprovEverywhere.com” or even “courtesy YouTube.com.” I mean, cool to be featured on Keith Fucking Olbermann, but why can MSNBC just take someone’s creative work and report on it without saying who made it? Just because you “found it” on the Internet doesn’t mean someone didn’t “work hard on it.” Keith, don’t you remember that we are old friends?
I promise to stop ranting about people ripping off this video from this point forward.
So Gawker.tv posted about my Star Wars Subway Car video today, but instead of embedding my video from YouTube like the rest of the Internet does, they ripped it from YouTube and uploaded it to their own site without permission. So I get no credit for any of the views of the video on their site. How nice! Also, by uploading their own ripped version of the video, they can prevent me from seeing any AdSense revenue and focus on making their own money from the ads surrounding the post. Awesome! And they link to Buzzfeed at the end of the post rather than, you know, linking to the group that made the video they ripped off. Cool! Oh, and to top it off, they throw in a little snarky comment about this being an upgrade from our previous antics. Sweet!
Thanks Gawker.tv! It’s such an honor to have you take my content in full and use it for your own benefit!
UPDATE: Gawker.tv fixed this at my request.
See the original video here: Star Wars Subway Car
Gary Coleman on the train station in Cannes, France. RIP.