Mar 30, 2008
Vimeo pulls Engadget video with no notification
Apparently we jumped from the frying pan (YouTube) into the fire by hosting Engadget video on Vimeo. It was nice for a little while until they pulled our BlackBerry 9000 video down “as a result of a third-party notification by Research In Motion” without so much as emailing to let us know what’s up. (FYI, the video in question is of an unreleased cellphone, but not belonging to or copyrighted by RIM.) Of course, Vimeo was a lot more forthcoming once I emailed to find out why our first upload of the video was killed, and the second immediately dropped into private mode. Guess we’ll be taking our traffic and exposure elsewhere until we get the new version of our own embedded video player finished.
I'm an editor and technology critic in the midst of founding a new web startup: 
Did they give you any reason other than “RIM don’t like it”?
Possible TOS, but mostly just that RIM asked to have it taken down and Vimeo complied. Pretty weak.
Have you guys considered Viddler for your videos?
We certainly are now!
Massive. Epic. Fail. I’m sorry to hear about this, especially given that I gave you a glowing recommendation to use them over Viddler when you asked. I’m miffed on your behalf, if that helps.
This is frustrating for everyone involved, I’m sure. It does not reflect the usual Vimeo experience.
Dalas is the chap from Vimeo with whom I had contact with. Dalas, what’s the usual experience? That if a video violates TOS or needs to be taken down for whatever eason that the uploader be contacted?
I can’t comment any further due to the nature of the situation.
Weak! I like Vimeo for vids but it seems like they’ve just bent over and taken it. Engadget would have brought them a lot more exposure (good exposure). Maybe Vimeo are in cahoots with RIM on some sort of project?
No, this stuff is remarkably simple. Vimeo has a lot more to lose by fighting RIM on behalf of Engadget (with which it has no formal partnership or relationship) than by just taking down the video and risking a little negative exposure and the loss of a potentially big traffic-driver. I get it — my issue is that they didn’t ping while it was happening.
How incredibly lame.
Pretty lame. At least we all know where NOT to go for video hosting from now on.
Definitely check out Viddler. Great service and really great guys that run it. I’m sure they’d love to work with Engadget.
Ryan- I think you’re missing the *point* of Vimeo. I took a look at the Engadget profile there and you have no contacts, no comments, nothing. It doesn’t even look like Engadget has made an attempt to engage the Vimeo community. And the one thing that Vimeo is not is a place just to upload videos and embed them other places.
Given Vimeo’s focus on community and their interest in homemade videos that that tend to have an artful quality to them, it would seem to me that video’s of a Blackberry’s new UI would not fit in with Vimeo’s business plan.
Vimeo has in the past been openly hostile to “commercials” and other videos used to promote a business. While your video’s aren’t exactly commercials, I think you can see how that fall dangerously close to promoting another company’s business, in this case Engadget.
Sure, Vimeo might get a few thousand more vistors to their site from your patronage, but I’d wager that the majority of them will only ever see the embed player and the small Vimeo logo on it. Value exchange? Probably not even in my estimation, especially if Vimeo has RIM calling them all day. Why would they even want to be involved?
I’ve only recently used vimeo. While I did like the site design and felt that the video quality was exceptionally good, I also noticed that it was incredibly slow. I was on a corporate T1 that has very few users and yet the site still seemed to crawl. I do hope they get this worked out and find a way to make amends with engadget, but the speed will have to increase for it to be worthwhile.
“Pretty lame. At least we all know where NOT to go for video hosting from now on.”
Is it just me – or would *any* video hosting site decide to not fight RIM on this. Vimeo is, hands down, the best online video community I’ve found in years – so they pulled your video, they should have told you about it… but to go looking for the hosting service that fight your battles for you is kinda silly.
I second the motion that you should use VIddler as you’re video service.
They have some great tools and I love the fact that you can comment, tag and video respond to the video on the timeline.
Seems to me like it’s still a risk for Vimeo to take this kind of action and that they potentially do have a lot to lose. Several of the mainstream technology/web-celebs are a close-knit bunch and it doesn’t take long to word to spread. Already, Veronica has entered the discussion and voiced concern. Add few more voices like Laporte, Wood, Macpherson, Calacanis, Rose, Devorak, Beale, etc, etc… and they could lose a lot of face and a lot of popular video content. That’s exactly why Dalas rushed in here for damage control.
Ryan is probably correct in his assumption (post # 10), and to be honest Vimeo having to choose sides between RIM or AOL had to be a difficult one. But the issue of not notifying Engadget still remains. Please keep us posted on this, Ryan. This situation has some very interesting implications.
:(
A notification of removal was sent.
Dalas, yes, you guys sent an email only well after taking down the video a second time. No one received an email the first time.
The email was sent.
It’s sent automatically on every deletion, so a special effort would have to be undertaken to *not* send the email.
Oh, so there was a notification sent out.
So… I totally agree with comment #10 and #14. If you have no contacts, no likes, no history of community and interaction on a site that is very, very geared towards that… then yea, they are not gonna fight it out with RIM for you.
Switch to Brightcove.
Dalas, no emails were sent our way until and only until I reached out to you, period. I’ve checked my email, backup, and spam filter — the last email Vimeo sent out before replying to my query about the takedown was on the 28th, an automatic notification email stating that the video in question finished encoding and was online. You guys simply did not notify.
In the unlikely event that the email was not sent, the same information is posted on the video’s former page:
http://vimeo.com/833249
*feels tension in the room*
Regardless of the action taken to notify by Vimeo, it still makes me question whether to continue hosting our material up there for Dear Toronto… hmm.
I love that this is the way Vimeo is handling the situation: continuously responding with “we can’t comment” and “no, you’re wrong, notification was sent,” etc.
Classic.
Regardless of anything, Vimeo has been the target of a LOT of negative discussion in both the blogosphere and Twitterverse today – and that can’t be a good thing.
great content…so lets remove it. great strategy.
hey viddler, got balls to handle some REAL content? step up.
As much as I hate reading that Vimeo did this, as Dalas states, I’m sure there is definitely more that none of us know about.
I will stand by my allegiance with Vimeo as the premiere place to host my videos… so much better than the other ones I’ve used.
I’m surprised to hear that the guys at Vimeo dropped the video so quickly. I know a few of the guys behind it and they’re a good bunch – I’m sure they wouldn’t have dropped it if they didn’t have to. Don’t be too harsh folks, it’s still (in my opinion) the best video sharing site around.
Not that it really matters, but I feel like the comment thread is more damning than the actual offense. Instead of being defensive, how bout replying to Ryan’s concern with some genuine sympathy rather than putting on the defense. “This is frustrating for everyone involved, I’m sure. It does not reflect the usual Vimeo experience.” Really? How ’bout, “Lets talk on the phone and try to fix this issue, instead of fighting on a comment thread.”
And regarding Vimeo’s alleged “community,” you know what’s a great way to generate community? Awareness. You know what’s a bad way to generate community? Pulling videos without a genuine dialog. A takedown notice, for me at least, doesn’t cut it.
Some random videoblogging site could really step up and say “we won’t pull your videos unless there is a blatent copyright infringement claim,” and win some points with the community.
As for alternatives, there’s always AOL Uncut! (/sarcasm)
[...] heard yesterday that Vimeo pulled an Engadget video with little or no notice –depending on who you believe, [...]
Someone needs a charm-school retraining session before being allowed to talk to customers.
given Randall’s sarcasm, I don’t see why you guys can’t use AOL uncut for hosting… of course you could get the site devs to give you a hosted uploader for the site itself (i think blogsmith could handle it)… it shouldn’t be to hard…
Vimeo also removed the channel “Redes” that is a non-profit scientific divulgation TV program.
Redes is a TV show that airs too late at night and the producers of the program wanted to share the contents on-line with their viewers so they can watch it anytime.
The online version of the program had no ads or commercials, but anyway vimeo taken down the channel and when the producers of Redes asked why they only received a harsh reply ending with “please don’t contact us again”.
It’s a shame. Vimeo has excellent quality and a very nice interface, but these kind of things make me want to use another service.