Worst. YouTube Rip. Ever.
Dear BBC, if you’re going to rip content off YouTube, at least do it properly.
I was reading an EU-expansion-inspired story on BBC News about popular culture in Romania and Bulgaria. Being the strange kind of fellow that I am, I decided to watch the Bulgarian rap video linked from there.
This is what it looked like (larger version):
Not only is there a YouTube logo in the corner of the video, you can even see the Windows title bar of the player window, in which you can just about make out a URL starting with ‘http://www.youtube.com/’!
It’s pathetic, really. In a ‘disgusted of Tunbridge Wells’ moment, I decided to write to BBC News:
I had quite a surprise when I followed one of the video links to ‘Watch Rumaneca and Enchev perform Shatrata’. The video included a lot of excess black space, a Windows title bar (containing a YouTube URL), and the top of the YouTube page from which the video had apparently been lifted. (I can supply you with a screenshot if you wish.)
If BBC News is going to copy content from YouTube, it could at least do it properly! Alternatively, perhaps BBC News could just link directly to YouTube, where the whole video can be viewed in better quality. The present effort doesn’t add any value, nor does it reflect well on the ethics and professional competence of BBC News.
I await their response…
2006-12-31 18:00 UTC. Comments: 2.
You Loser!
Wrote at 2007-01-28 23:08 UTC using Firefox 2.0.0.1 on Windows XP:
You are one sad man to worry about things like that, really… I hope they dont respond.Tom Sadowski
Wrote at 2007-02-14 05:04 UTC using Firefox 2.0.0.1 on Linux:
Personally I think you are right to call them on this. News organizations should be better than this! The really upsetting thing is that they are trying to be “web enabled” but have no clue how to do it. People really should make more of an effort to try and do a job right if they are going to do it at all.