Friday, May 22, 2009

The YouToo problem with YouTube

It never ceases to amaze me how high the quality of the original content can get on YouTube. Some of the short films /clips broadcast on the site are inspiring. And that’s the trouble isn’t it?

Recently Creative Review blogged about the YouTube dilemma which opened by saying YouTube provides a steady stream of inspiration to advertising creatives, but it also leaves young directors vulnerable to having ideas stolen and agencies open to accusations of plagiarism.

And posed the question, how can both directors and agencies protect themselves?

It then went into great lengths to report on some of the more high profile and recent examples of this, such as the new Sony Bravia ad featuring Brazilian footballer Kaka and a life-size zoe¬trope which is currently airing across the region.

It was deemed to be too similar to or at least based on a short film by Mark Simon Hewis.

I am not going to go through all the cases Creative Review highlighted (You can read the blog posting here) but it’s certainly worth a read and raises more than a few questions.

How advertising agencies / creatives protect themselves from being labeled as plagiatists because… everyone always assumes the agency are guilty. And how do young directors protect their ideas from being used without any commercial gain when some would say they shouldn’t be broadcasting their work on YouTube if they don’t want people to be influenced by it or re-interpret it.

One commentator on the Creative Review blog summarised by saying: “copying of ideas will and should always be punished (by law or reputation damage). But re-applying parts of others people's output in new context will and should not be punishable.”

Yasmin Ahmad who directed a TVC titled ‘Funeral’ for the MCYS in Singapore has already responded to The Pitch which blogged about how bloggers had slammed the TVC for “ripping-off” a scene from the movie Good Will Hunting. See the post here.

Over to you guys.

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