Friday 4 July 2014

Bloody Daily Mail


"Are you threatening us?"

"Of course not you moron." 

That's what he would have heard me say if I hadn't instead said "Of course not". Yet again I have had to ring up the Daily Mail's web pirates MailOnline to ask them to take down a YouTube video they ripped off from our channel. 

You have to hand it to them for their world domination of news. 56.1 million monthly uniques, according to their latest figures. That's about twenty times what we get. However, they are getting there by stealing and lying.

They used to get in touch and ask if they could use a clip from a YouTube video we put up, or even if they could embed the video. In 2013, they started sending a peremptory email to our associated Gmail account (which we don't use much) saying, basically, 'We want to use one of your films, hope that's OK' and then they would use it. Now I have to read MailOnline to make sure one of our videos isn't up there, earning them preroll advertising money they are not paying to us.

And then they get arsy when you hack into the MailOnline telephone system and find the right person to ask them to take down the video. "Are you threatening us?" - I mean, really.

Other YouTubers I talk to are equally fed up. What would be wonderful would be for YouTube to extend its Content ID service beyond YouTube, so it polices MailOnline and other pirate video sites. Yes LiveLeak, I'm talking to you. 

In the meantime, I console myself with the words of comedian Hugh Laurie: "I read the Daily Mail. I prefer it to a newspaper."

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