Yesterday afternoon, I got an email from a reader asking my opinion about a piece published in Inside Higher Ed earlier in the day: Whoa, Dude
In his article Paul D. Thacker illustrates the power of YouTube in particular and video sharing websites in general:
“Whoa… dude… Code of Hammurabi. I’ve seen this in … I’ve seen this in a British Museum.†If only these words came from someone goofing off in a high school class. Instead, they were uttered by a lecturer, John Hall, during a class he gave in September to more than 1,000 students taking a business course at the University of Florida.
Within weeks, highlights from the lecture were uploaded onto numerous Web sites, including Break.com, where the video is labeled “Stoned Professor,†and YouTube. And shortly after that, the university placed Hall on paid administrative leave.
This is at least the second time IHE runs a story based on a YouTube video. While your boss might not be watching YouTube during her free time, chances are she reads IHE.
So, how can you get ready to handle this type of situations?
- Make sure you monitor what’s popping up on YouTube about your institution.
- Define a plan listing your response depending on the type of videos.
- Know the terms of use of these websites — if a video is really offensive, you can invoke copyright infringement to have them removed from the websites, but you need to act as quickly as possible after it’s been uploaded.
Obviously, what happened at the University of Florida with this video isn’t a major crisis – although the lecturer was put on paid leave, so I guess the crisis lies in the eye of the beholder.
After my email exchange with my reader yesterday, I sent a quick note to Joe Hice, Associate Vice President for Public Relations & Marketing — with whom I presented at a CASE conference last month — asking for a brief comment about this mini-YouTube crisis.
Here’s the comment Joe sent me this morning:
“The professor involved was put on leave immediately after the incident occurred — right at the beginning of the fall semester, or about six weeks ago. The video popped up on boingboing only last week.
Regarding YouTube, we didn’t even think the material might be copyrighted so we did not contact them. In hindsight, that’s something we missed and will be more aware of in the future.
Our general policies in this area, however, are to err on the side of openness.”
What would YOU have done?
Brilliant suggestions!
I am disturbed by this: “if a video is really offensive, you can invoke copyright infringement to have them removed from the websites”
It’s one thing if the school or the professor in question owns the copyright to the video, but it appears that you are linking the relative offensiveness of the content with “copyright infringement.” This is not what copyright is for, and most especially not if the video is, for example, a valid critique of the institution.
Anonymous, you’re right.
I took a shortcut in this paragraph. And, I was wrong.
What I meant is that if there’s copyright infringement – which can be claimed if this is a video of a professor or anybody else without his/her consent – and the video is offensive, then it’s definitely a good idea to contact the website and claim copyright infringement. Obviously, if a very good video of one of your professors at Los Rios Community College District goes viral, you should try to get his consent to leave it up on the Internet.
Thanks for your insightful feedback.