Many people are still digesting the crazy dystopian internal video from Google called The Selfish Ledger. The Verge was the first to reveal The Selfish Ledger and called it “a troubling, near-future concept.” It is indeed a huge amount of weirdness crammed into just under 9-minutes. We’re not going to go into the details of the video, you can head over to The Verge to read their exclusive on that.
Now, The Verge is reporting that Google happened to use video footage in The Selfish Ledger that they did not pay for. Filmmaker Philip Bloom says the search giant used 73-seconds of his footage. Bloom says he reached out to Google to discuss payment for the use of his footage but they offered nothing.
“A fair amount of my footage has been licensed for internal use only, so to hear Google not state that they will compensate me for its use is very surprising. Google via their YouTube platform are pretty strict when it comes to copyright breaches, so this is rather hypocritical of them and most certainly does not set a good example.” -Philip Bloom-
Bloom is correct. The Selfish Ledger film may have been intended only for internal consumption within Google, but that doesn’t excuse the company from properly licensing the parts of it that are someone else’s creative work. Google should know this. Having painted itself as a staunch defender of creators’ copyright on YouTube, Google is now exposing its internal hypocrisy and disregard for that right. Copyright is a thing Google enforces against others, apparently, but not itself. -The Verge-
It is interesting to see a company who goes after copyright infringers on a daily basis is choosing not to compensate a creator. Bloom says he will be pursuing the matter further so it will be interesting to see where this goes.
Watch The Selfish Ledger here:
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