One of the things that viewers may be perplexed about is the many different ways in which you can now find Channel 4 programmes online. We receive a steady stream of complaints from people after we remove the C4 programmes they’ve posted online, and there seems to be quite a lot of confusion as to what can and cannot be legally posted on sites such as YouTube.
Some people have told us they believe they should be able to post Channel 4 programmes or extracts online because it is “fair use” – defined in the US Copyright Act of 1976 as “the broadcast of copyrighted materials for the purposes of commentary, criticism and education” – but the uploading of copyright material onto YouTube does not count as use for commentary, or criticism, or education! Others believe they should be able to post our programmes online as long as Channel 4 is attributed as the copyright holder – but this is also in breach of copyright. On the other hand, when a viewer recently published a video of himself talking about one of our programmes on YouTube – a video that didn’t contain any copyright material – there was no legal problem.
Channel 4’s goal is to see our programmes given the widest possible distribution and we love the idea of you enjoying them so much that you want to share them with others. However, neither we nor you can publish material online unless we own the copyright. For Channel 4, as a publisher broadcaster without its own production base, that means agreeing with the independent production companies who owns what material and for how long. That agreement needs to be a sensible one that enables us to deliver programmes to you on the all platforms you want, and allows for the production company to be properly rewarded for their creativity.
The copyright situation is very straightforward – only the copyright owner or a licensed user is able to post material on the internet, which is a publication, just like any other. To find out more about this, I spoke to the man within C4 who manages the channel’s relationship with YouTube and others. He is charged with making money from the distribution of our content online, which we then use to put back into programme making. From his point of view, sites like YouTube, which attract very large numbers of people, are a great way to showcase our programmes, but he would prefer people to come to our commercial on-demand service, 4oD, where we can make money – either by charging per view, or by selling advertising space around the programmes as we do on-air.
We now have a Channel 4 area on YouTube where you can watch short extracts from our programmes and share your comments on them. If you want to watch whole programmes, you should go to either 4oD or Catch-Up. There are also Channel 4 programmes available through iTunes and Virgin Media.
We’ll soon be inviting you to upload your own Viewer Videos onto the TV Show site, enabling you to share your views about our programmes with us and with other viewers. But please don’t post clips from Channel 4 programmes on sites such as YouTube, because you don’t have the rights to do so. If you want to share a programme, please use 4oD or Catch-Up instead, and that way you and we can sleep easy at night!
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