shouting loudly

Hollywood letting Veoh “get away with” infringement?

Veoh, a new online video service, is being accused of getting away with copyright infringement due to its big-money corporate backing.

The servcies is a hybrid that uses peer-to-peer technologies to support video uploads but still allows users to watch video streams inside a browser window ala YouTube.

Because their investors include the likes of Time Warner and former Disney boss Michael Eisner, some think they’re getting away with infringement that didn’t fly at YouTube. You can find entire episodes of South Park, a full Robin Williams HBO special, and tons more. Yankee Group analyst Josh Martin sounds appalled:

I can’t believe Hollywood is going to let (Veoh) get away with this. The environment is different now. The media companies know that it’s wrong now and I can’t imagine that they are going to sit still about entire episodes being posted.

The company insists that it’s doing everything it can to combat piracy. I think Title II of the DMCA, aka 17 USC § 512 might bail them out, but corporate backing or not, they will probably need their lawyers in the near future unless the makeup of their top-rated videos changes soon. I wish it were otherwise, but there are too many copyright holders who won’t settle for the presumed-guilty notice-and-takedown process.

Legal concerns aside, the service is a good combination of tools. The browser-based streams look good. If you download and install the Veoh Player, you can even download videos as AVI or MPG (however they were uploaded, I assume), watch them full screen, and stream them to your TV. You need the player to manage the downloads, but you can watch them in the video app of your choosing.

I’ve downloaded and installed the player (Mac version). Downloads are quicker than I expected; I’ve pulled down an entire 22 minute video (147 MB) at what was probably my DSL provider’s top speed. The video quality is good, and it has your basic functions, including (mercifully) a scrub bar. It’s not as snappy as Quicktime Player; the start-stop response is a tad slower, for instance. It does, however, have two features that QT lacks.

First, it goes into and out of full-screen without a special plugin and without upgrading to pro. That QT doesn’t is downright repulsive; I’ve long relied on the Quicktime full screen widget, which is pretty good.

Second, it provides file management, which is a huge feature for some people. I have video files scattered all over my hard drive, and I might actually import them all into the Veoh player so that they’re all in one place.

We’ll have to wait and see how the copyright problems shake out. Some think that, with corporate backing, they’re on firm ground. Of course, one might have thought the same thing about DJ Drama…