Participatory Culture Foundation
How can we help you today?
Video Hosting
1 Comment
Good remark, Will: strictly speaking, "video" in the text you quote should be replaced by "Amara video page", meaning the Amara page that gets created when you add the original video's URL in the relevant box of Subtitle Videos.
And in fact, deleting such an Amara video page does not affect the original, elsewhere-hosted video, as the Amara video page only streams the original.
However, the incorrect use of "Amara video" to indicate an Amara page that streams a video, has been going on for a long while as a kind of accepted shorthand. But maybe this should be reconsidered: in fact, the last wording of the
http://pculture.freshdesk.com/support/discussions/topics/8834 forum topic mentioned in your quotation says, in the "Copyright-motivated removal requests" part: "...please note that Amara.org does not host any videos, we simply list and embed them for subtitling purposes. "
There are different reasons why users may want such Amara video-streaming pages deleted, as the replies to the mentioned help topic show. For instance:
And in fact, deleting such an Amara video page does not affect the original, elsewhere-hosted video, as the Amara video page only streams the original.
However, the incorrect use of "Amara video" to indicate an Amara page that streams a video, has been going on for a long while as a kind of accepted shorthand. But maybe this should be reconsidered: in fact, the last wording of the
http://pculture.freshdesk.com/support/discussions/topics/8834 forum topic mentioned in your quotation says, in the "Copyright-motivated removal requests" part: "...please note that Amara.org does not host any videos, we simply list and embed them for subtitling purposes. "
There are different reasons why users may want such Amara video-streaming pages deleted, as the replies to the mentioned help topic show. For instance:
- An Amara page has been started from one online copy of a video, and abundantly subtitled. Then someone starts a second Amara page from a second, identical copy. Then the first original copy gets deleted or made private, so the subtitles made from/on the first Amara page can't run on anything. In such a case, deleting the second Amara page enables adding the original URL it streams to the first Amara page, and have its already made subtitles working again.
- Some users connected their YouTube account to Amara without accurately reading what this connection entails, i.e. that their unlisted YouTube videos would get streamed on Amara and thus be indexed by search engines.
- Some users started an Amara page for a video just to try the subtitling app, without realizing that they would be unable to delete the Amara page themselves.
And then:
- Some users wrongly identified a video's language and as the dialog box says that this identification cannot be changed, they want to start again from scratch. However, Amara staff can actually correct such misidentifications, so it's better to request this correction in a ticket.
Will Pines
Amara policy states:
Hosting Media
Amara doesn't host video or audio files. We use html, css, and javascript to overlay subtitles and interfaces on existing videos. You can also use our API to display subtitles on top of a custom video player (Flash or HTML5), app, or anywhere else!
it also states:
Normally users don't delete video entries, since this may destroy the results of other people's subtitling efforts.
However, if it doesn't affect other users, we could help you to take a video down - but we'll need you to give us some information. You should do so as a reply to this thread in the forum (http://pculture.freshdesk.com/categories/6573/forums/28027/topics/8834)
To request to delete a Video.
Label as Delete Video
URL for the video's location in Amara (It looks like this http://www.universalsubtitles.org/en/videos/NmkV5cbiCqUU/info/learn-about-universal-subtitles/)
Your Username
reason for taking down the video
My question is, if Amara does not host videos, and captions are strictly an overlay onto videos where they originally reside, why would there be a need to request video deletion from amara?
The user should just be able to delete th origingal source, say from a private hosted site.