“The Verge” Blatantly Violates Copyright Laws for Profit
Update: I got the Verge to remove my footage from their video.
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The Verge recently posted an article and video about electrified classic cars.
If you visit the site you are blasted with a HUGE ad for the Galaxy Note10:
This is important, because the purpose of “The Verge” is to make money. They are a commercial business, and create content that has ads. The article has a video on YouTube, and is monetized by The Verge so they can make money off of advertising. The video is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYrk5r4kiSM&t=222s
The copyright violation comes in at 3:42 where they use some of my video footage:
They ripped the footage from one of my YouTube videos! Ripping video is against the YouTube Terms of Service:
“4C: You agree not to access Content through any technology or means other than the video playback pages of the Service itself, the Embeddable Player, or other explicitly authorized means YouTube may designate.”
There is no way they got that footage by simply watching it through normal video playback. I didn’t license them the footage, or give them access to it, and it doesn’t exist anywhere else on the internet. So, it violates YouTubes terms.
It also blatantly violates my copyright ownership of the video. I took the video, and I would like to earn monetization advertising dollars from it. I no longer can, due to YouTube changing their monetization guidelines, but that is another story.
Worse, they use it as an example to defame conversions not done by EV West or zElectric, with the voice over saying:
“I had very low expectations because the electrified VWs I’d see online were just Frankenstein’s monsters. They [were] filled with golf cart batteries in the back seat and strange motors. They really were bad, so I assumed it was going to be like that.”
This is defamation against my conversion! The batteries they highlight are not lead acid golf cart batteries, but rather expensive lithium batteries. The conversion is also done well, and has more horsepower than the one it was compared to. I have the highest respect for EV West and zElectric; I don’t put any blame on them, and the problem here is with The Verge using my video footage without even asking me.
It’s unfair for a large media corporation to steal footage from an individual, use that footage out of context, and use it with the sole purpose of making money off of it via advertising.
