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I am a strong advocate of interoperability between various Cloud players. In
my opinion, it is very important for the very success of Cloud Computing, in
general, and SaaS, in particular. Cloud vendors are slowly opening up their
services through APIs so that other vendors and third party applications can
integrate with their services seamlessly. There are some SaaS vendors, like Zoho (disclaimer: Zoho is the sole sponsor of
this blog but this is my independent opinion), who also allow
access to the entire data on their service using their APIs. Such actions on
the part of the vendors has created an ecosystem where users can access their
data and apps from many different services easily without any kind of vendor
lock-in.
I am pretty happy with the way the concept of technological interoperability
is progressing within the SaaS ecosystem. Vendors have realized that being open
(data portability and interoperability) is the way forward for their business
success. But, they have to coordinate not just on the technological level but on
a more fundamental level. They have to make sure that the interoperability
philosophy extends to other areas like legal issues. Only then SaaS users can
have a complete experience in tune with the nature of the platform beneath it,
the web.
In my last week’s post on the Living in the Clouds
Series, I talked about a service called Animoto. It
is a pretty interesting service that takes our photos, adds music and remixes
them in such a way that we end up getting a pretty cool music video. We can
either upload our own music, in which case there could be copyright issues if
there is any misuse on the part of the users, or use music from the
collection Animoto offers, in which case it will be a perfectly legal use. The
music offered by Animoto is legitimate and, in fact, they also encourage artists
and bands to submit their music so that it is featured on Animoto videos.
In tune with the philosophy of technological interoperability, Animoto offers
an option to the users to upload the music video they created from their
photographs into Youtube. It is a good
option for users because
- their videos have a better chances of getting popular on YouTube
- backing up on a third party site will make sure that the videos created by
users doesn’t vanish if Animoto vanishes
Last week, I created a paid full length film on Animoto using my family
photographs and the music offered by them. It turned out to be a pretty good
music video. I, then, uploaded it to YouTube for backup purposes as a private
video (not shared with anyone). Next day, I received the following communication
from YouTube (username and video title changed to protect privacy)
Dear username,
Your video "your video title" has been identified by YouTube’s
Content Identification program as containing copyrighted content which
rumblefish claims is theirs.Your video "your video title" is still available because rumblefish does not
object to this content appearing on YouTube at this time. As long as rumblefish
has a claim on your video, they will receive public statistics about your video,
such as number of views. Viewers may also see advertising on your video’s
page.Claim Details:
Copyright owner:
rumblefishContent claimed:
Some or all of the audio contentPolicy:
Allow this content to remain on YouTube.
- Place advertisements on this video’s watch page.
Applies to these locations:
Everywhererumblefish claimed this content as a part of the YouTube Content
Identification program. YouTube allows partners to review YouTube videos for
content to which they own the rights. Partners may use our automated video /
audio matching system to identify their content, or they may manually review
videos.If you believe that this claim was made in error, or that you are otherwise
authorized to use the content at issue, you can dispute this claim with
rumblefish and view other options in the Video ID Matches section of
your YouTube account. Please note that YouTube does not mediate copyright
disputes between content owners. Learn
more about video identification disputes.Sincerely,
The YouTube Content Identification Team
This is a result of either a messed up copyright identification system on
YouTube’s side or the agreement Animoto had with the copyright owners limited
them to be used inside of Animoto. If it is former, YouTube should fix their
copyright identification engine and, if it is the latter, either Animoto
shouldn’t have allowed the video to be uploaded into YouTube’s site or they
should have worked out with the copyright holder about the issues associated
with the idea of interoperability. As an user, I shouldn’t be worrying about
such issues and I wouldn’t want my personal video (which I have kept private in
the YouTube to protect the privacy of my family members) to be viewed by someone
from the side of the copyright holder or any enforcement agency. My actions are
pretty legitimate and my privacy should be protected as long as it is
legitimate.
This incident brings into focus the complex nature of interoperability in
this SaaS era. It is important for different SaaS vendors to sit together and
work out such legal issues while opening up their services to be interoperable.
Interoperability doesn’t start and end with technological interoperability. It
is much more complex and extends to many areas. It is important for SaaS vendors
to work through all of them by collaborating much more closely with other
vendors. Only then, a truly interoperable SaaS ecosystem can be developed.
