Removing Embedded Youtube Videos From The People History

Our Original Status on embedding Youtube Videos and why?

We always believed that a video is worth a thousand words when it shows video from a specific period in history, so we embedded Youtube Videos On The People History hoping to offer an additional window into the specific period of time in history. We chose embedding because on some videos which could be considered controversial or even not controversial, the policy of no moderation of comments on many YouTube Videos left me with a bad taste in my mouth because of crudeness, outright racism and other stupid and ignorant comments.

So Why Are We Changing Policy and No Longer Embedding YouTube Videos
Currently There is a Lawsuit Pending which could well be the first of many
Viacom vs Youtube lawsuit:

Ars Technica Article

Now as many know some if not all Lawsuits are undertaken to gain publicity, but this lawsuit if successful or unsuccessful will have a big impact on the use of Video on the Internet.

If Viacom are successful ( My Own view after spending a lot of time researching the case is Viacom will win )
there are many other companies from the music industry, Movie Industry and Television Industry lined up behind waiting to see the outcome, and it is possible over 80% of the content is copyright material in which case most of the embedded videos on the People History will not work and Youtube will be a shell of what it is today.

If Google are successful in defending the lawsuit.
It is possible Viacom and many others will go after webmasters ( The People History Does Not run advertising on 90% of pages on the site, but that does not guarantee immunity although less likely than many other sites ) who do not have a vast array of lawyers to back them up in a similar way to the music industry did and still go after joe bloggs who downloaded a few songs.

The People History Solution
Over the next 2 months all embedded videos will be changed to links taking our visitors to the You Tube site and following the outcome of the Lawsuit we will remove all links to videos taken down due to copyright violation.


I have created this blog post for two reasons

1. To let our visitors know why our embedded videos are changing to force visitors to an external website.

2. To let other webmasters and bloggers know that this is possibly one of the most important cases over the last few years which will affect many many websites and webmasters.

My own personal view on this issue, as a webmaster who spent 3 yrs and nearly 10,000 man hours on research and creating the pages you find on The People History , I understand how frustrating it is to see others steal your hard work without acknowledging who spent the time in research and creation, from purely a visitors viewpoint it is important to have the additional resource of watching a video to enhance the experience of learning about a specific period in history . ( if the comments were not so obnoxious I would have gone the route of using a linked image in the beginning.

Personally I would like to see some organisations offer some of these videos for primarily education websites to ensure they are seen by widest audience and the younger generation as a way of enhancing education, but it becomes difficult in todays internet world to define true education websites which are not run for financial gain

I would be interested to read other webmasters and our readers comments to this important change in both The People History and to the internet in general