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YouTube Disables Embeds for Content Owners

Published November 24th, 2006 in Tech & VC

I was crusing around YouTube when I came across an Arctic Monkey’s video that disabled embedding into other pages at the request of the content owner: Domino Records. How lame!

The little embed box on the YouTube page for the video says: “Embedding disabled by request.” I tried to see if I could work around this limitation by taking the embed code from another video and swapping the video id in the appropriate places in the embed code. Here is the result of my attempted work-around:

I was unaware that YouTube is disabling embedding at a content owner’s request. Perhaps this option has been available to content owners for awhile, but if so, I’m out of the loop.

I have a couple opinions about disabling embeds on YouTube:

  • YouTube must be paying a rev share for this content. Content owners likely don’t want their videos to be played if they are not paid for the play, and YouTube can only do a rev share on videos played on their own site (until they develop ads embedded in the video). So, disabling embedding is a natural conclusion from these circumstances. This is greedy.
  • Another reason why content owners might want to disable embeds is they want to control the messaging around their video. Content owners like Domino Records want to stop users from presenting their videos along side offensive, insulting, or otherwise unacceptible material. This is less greedy, but still lame.
  • YouTube is turning off the feature that allowed them to become the 800 pound gorilla in online video. It was MySpace and blogosphere embeds that let YouTube rocket past previously established competitors like Veoh. YouTube has reached a critical mass, so I don’t think disabling embedding for a limited number of videos will effect their growth at this point. But, it’s pretty odd that YouTube would allow owners to disable the feature (more so than any other feature) that defines YouTube.

Anyone know how long content owners have been able to disable embedding?

8 Responses to “YouTube Disables Embeds for Content Owners”  

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  1. 1 Erik Schwartz Nov 24th, 2006 at 3:46 pm

    I have a theory that the reason Google bought YouTube was to be able to control the litigation surrounding online video. Clearly YT will be the lightning rod for online video litigation. It was not acceptable to Google to have a third party control what the position of the industry was before the court. Google feels the space is too important to let YT’s lawyers handle it.

    Napster screwed up online music and file sharing for everyone, not just for napster.

    http://foneshow.blogspot.com/2006/11/random-thought-on-gootube.html

  2. 2 craig chaucer Nov 24th, 2006 at 4:31 pm

    Naw - disabling embedding has been available on youtube for a while now.

    If they disabled it entirely then it would probably hurt sites like http://www.infectiousvideos.com that allow embedding of youtube clips (and other sites) - and give the users 50 percent of the revenue.

  3. 3 Andrew Parker Nov 24th, 2006 at 11:04 pm

    Thanks Craig. Guess this is old news.

    Erik. That’s not the first time I’ve heard that opinion, but I think it’s 100% right, couldn’t agree more!

  4. 4 Nick Jan 30th, 2007 at 2:24 am

    Napster only screwed up file sharing for services that used central database servers. Then Grokster screwed up file sharing for peer-to-peer, decentralized services if the software providers encourage copyright infringement. Now, file sharing thrives on services like Limewire, which is both decentralized and actively discourages copyright infringement (in order to use the service, you have to check a box saying that you won’t infringe copyrights).

    It makes more economic sense to watch the law develop, rather than buy the leading company and send in lawyers.

  5. 5 Surris Aug 18th, 2007 at 7:21 am

    I was unable to copy a youtube video in my usual way because of this “Embedding disabled by request”. I still located the video on my hard-drive though, it was in “C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Local Settings\Temp” and was called fla1B.tmp. But I was unable to copy this as an error message stated a “sharing violation”. Once I closed the youtube website with the video, fla1B.tmp disappeared so I was again out of luck. If the “sharing violation” could be overcome then I could copy it elsewhere and give it an .flv extension and i’d be laughing. Any ideas ??

  6. 6 hodesworthe Sep 4th, 2007 at 11:03 pm

    go to http://www.keepvid.com.

    copy url and select the site it is hosted on.

    take the video.

    keep it for yourself, or:

    upload to a different website (or the same one if you like)

    embed.

    enjoy.

  7. 7 dafodilkemmy Oct 30th, 2007 at 8:02 am

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  8. 8 Ras Nov 21st, 2007 at 10:18 pm

    Thanks hodesworthe!!!!!!

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