Video delays

I had been planning a series of posts about recent TDS and TCR episodes, which would have included clips from the episodes embedded in the blog posts discussing them, through the hosting services of Google Video. I had gone ahead and uploaded the first two clips I had wanted to use, but had waited to post here, because I wanted to have the video embedded at the time of posting.

Unfortunately, the clips that I had uploaded were denied by the Google Video team, as they felt that they violated their Program Policies. Their first e-mail is posted below:

Hi,

Your video "The Daily Show - July 10, 2006 - Putin clip" was rejected
because it didn't comply with our Program Policies.

Videos submitted to our program are subject to an initial review to
ensure that they comply with our guidelines. When videos do not meet
our standards, we disapprove them. You can review our guidelines at:

http://video.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=27737&topic=1490.

Please make sure that you have all legal rights to use the content you
wish to submit to Google. For more information about intellectual
property rights and the program, please visit:
http://video.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?topic=1490

Thank you for your cooperation.

Sincerely,

The Google Video Team
http://video.google.com/

(Their second e-mail said the same thing, but referred to the second clip I had uploaded.)

I e-mailed them back, as I felt that other clips, similar to mine, were being hosted on their Video service, while mine were not being allowed. In particular, I cited this example, which is a segment from The Daily Show that was even longer than the one I had uploaded (and, I would assume, would be the same infringement of copyright as mine had been perceived to be), and yet had been hosted nonetheless.

We exchanged a few e-mails, and while they were pleasant in their responses, they were firm in their decision to not allow my clips to be hosted. While I disagree with their decision, as I strongly feel that my embedding these clips in this blog is covered by Fair Use law, I respect that they are trying to abide by copyright-holders' wishes (though I still don't understand why they are allowing this clip, and not mine), which is a philosophy with which I agree overall.

I still want to be able to show you the video clips that will be discussed, and so I am continuing to work on finding an alternative solution. It's a shame that Google Video won't host the clips, as their service integrates very nicely with the Blogger service, which hosts this site. Hopefully, I will have them up soon, and posting can continue uninterrupted. I'm sorry that things have been slow here in the meantime, however, and I wanted to explain now why there haven't been as many posts over the past week as I would have liked.