{"id":1623,"date":"2018-05-24T11:13:22","date_gmt":"2018-05-24T07:13:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/?p=1623"},"modified":"2018-05-24T11:16:02","modified_gmt":"2018-05-24T07:16:02","slug":"google-stole-my-videos-says-film-maker-philip-bloom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/2018\/05\/24\/google-stole-my-videos-says-film-maker-philip-bloom\/","title":{"rendered":"Google ‘stole my videos’, says film-maker Philip Bloom"},"content":{"rendered":"

Google has enraged a leading film-maker by using his footage in a corporate video that later leaked online.<\/p>\n

The technology company used material from more than half a dozen of Philip Bloom’s films to make a provocative presentation about ways it could exploit users’ data in the future.<\/p>\n

Mr Bloom makes a living from selling rights to his footage, among other activities.<\/p>\n

Google insisted that it took copyright law seriously.<\/p>\n

It said that the “thought-experiment” video had been intended to be seen by only a handful of people.<\/p>\n

It was made in 2016 by the head of design at X, Google’s research and development division.<\/p>\n

Google added that the executive had now been reminded about its strict copyright rules.<\/p>\n

However, despite being aware of Mr Bloom’s claim since last Friday, the technology company declined to say whether it now intended to make a payment.<\/p>\n

“My footage is represented online by two major stock-footage companies. And I license it for all sorts of projects and uses, from commercials to broadcast to corporate films,” said Mr Bloom.<\/p>\n

“A fair amount of my footage has been licensed for internal use only, so to hear Google not state that they will compensate me for its use is very surprising.<\/p>\n

“Google via their YouTube platform are pretty strict when it comes to copyright breaches, so this is rather hypocritical of them and most certainly does not set a good example.<\/p>\n

\"Philip<\/p>\n

Footage filmed at Northern Ireland’s Giant’s Causeway was also used in The Selfish Ledger<\/strong><\/p>\n

“They have used 73 seconds of my footage from seven different videos without permission and they know they are in the wrong… so therefore I expect to hear from them regarding compensation.”<\/p>\n

Google’s parent company, Alphabet,\u00a0reported a $12.6bn profit in its last financial year<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Slow-mo snow<\/h2>\n

The corporate video – titled the Selfish Ledger – had already provoked controversy\u00a0after The Verge news site<\/a>\u00a0published a copy of it last week. The website described it as showing an “unsettling vision of Silicon Valley social engineering”.<\/p>\n

This helped bring its existence to Mr Bloom’s attention.<\/p>\n

\"Google<\/p>\n

The X laboratory is the division behind Google’s Loon balloon trials and helped create its self-drive cars<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mr Bloom – a former camera operator for the BBC, Sky and CNN – has a high profile on social media, where he offers film-making tips.<\/p>\n

His\u00a0YouTube channel<\/a>\u00a0has more than 168,000 subscribers and may have been the source for at least some of the copied footage, which included\u00a0slow-motion video of a snowstorm in New York<\/a>.<\/p>\n

One US-based intellectual property expert said Google might find it hard to defend its behaviour, if the matter were to come to court.<\/p>\n

“It just looks bad from a PR perspective for a big company that deals with copyrighted material every second of every day not to respect someone else’s rights,” said Jennifer Van Doren, from the law firm Morning Star.<\/p>\n

“Even if the video was for internal use, the film-maker still has the right to stop its use or require payment to prevent it being copyright infringement.”<\/p>\n

US law does\u00a0allow a “fair use” defence<\/a>\u00a0to permit unlicensed use of video in some circumstances, but Ms Van Doren said it was typically limited to education, news reporting and criticism of the material itself.<\/p>\n

Common problem<\/h2>\n

It is not unusual for the media industry to avoid copyright payments where they are due.<\/p>\n

\"Philip<\/p>\n

Footage Mr Bloom filmed to promote the charity Shelter UK was also used<\/strong><\/p>\n

Film editors, for example, commonly use soundtracks lifted from other films without permission until their own scores are ready, and these can sometimes be played to test audiences.<\/p>\n

Mr Bloom has previously complained of his footage being “nicked all the time”, including one instance when an online reviewer had used his images in a title sequence used for multiple videos.<\/p>\n

But Google has long faced accusations of failing to do enough to respect others’ intellectual property –\u00a0whether it be scanning books<\/a>,\u00a0presenting others’ photos<\/a>or\u00a0“enabling piracy”<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And Mr Bloom has signalled he intends to chase the matter up in this instance.<\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Google has enraged a leading film-maker by using his footage in a corporate video that later leaked online. The technology company used material from more than half a dozen of Philip Bloom’s films to make a provocative presentation about ways it could exploit users’ data in the future. Mr Bloom makes a living from selling …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1624,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1623"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1623\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1628,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1623\/revisions\/1628"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}