January 3, 2014

Blip.tv Deletes Python Content

There's been some disturbance in the Python ecosphere because Blip.tv has removed a lot of Python content - for a long time, Next Day Video used Blip as their preferred hosting service (I don't know whether they still do or not, but after this I should hope not) and PyCon video was hosted there by default. According to their announcement
After many years of being an open platform, we’re now taking our mission to bring the best original web series to our audience more seriously.
So I wrote to them to ask if it would be possible to get copies of the content they had made unavailable:
I understand that many Python-related videos are no longer available on your service.
This is to ask whether you can make the original media available to us for re-hosting, since there is definite demand for some of the video content you have removed.
Their reply was unequivocal:
Unfortunately this content is no longer available on Blip and we are not able to provide it to you. The original content owner may re-upload their source files to another hosting provider as an alternative.
So if you were thinking about using Blip's services, you might want to think again. They have just deleted all this stuff, as far as I can see without giving much notice to the people who posted it in the first place. They have made no friends in the Python world as a result, and I can only imagine who else they have pissed off with their apparently heavy-handed actions.

17 comments:

Osvaldo Santana Neto said...

They also removed the videos of PythonBrasil without notice.

Unfortunately we no longer had the original videos to put on another place. We lost dozens of presentations of PythonBrazil that, as you know, is the largest Python conference in Latin America.

At the time they gave me the same answers they gave to you.

Osvaldo Santana Neto said...

They also removed the videos of PythonBrasil without notice.

Unfortunately we no longer had the original videos to put on another place. We lost dozens of presentations of PythonBrazil that, as you know, is the largest Python conference in Latin America.

At the time they gave me the same answers they gave to you.

Anonymous said...

They did the same last year with videos posted by the Clojure community last year...

https://twitter.com/richhickey/status/279210140425674754

David Boddie said...

It looks like the Python community may have got lucky this time, at least regarding the PyCon videos:

https://archive.org/details/PyconUsVideos200920102011

Stefane Fermigier said...

They played the same trick on a bunch of video recorded during the Nuxeo World conference 5 years ago.

We had some less than pleasant exchanges with them and I wrote them off as a bunch of crooks.

There is a life lesson in this, though: don't trust anyone with your documents, your videos or your data. Always keep a backup, and a backup's backup, in a safe place.

S.

Jonathan Ellis said...

They removed a couple years of Cassandra Summit videos too. I'm pretty sure we'll be able to restore the lost content but it's definitely no thanks to their bad faith.

Steve said...

Further communication from Blip.tv:

Blip Support Agent, Jan 03 04:37 PM:
Hello,

Can you tell us what Python related content is no longer available?

We're very supportive of the Python ( and all OSS ) communities and specifically left this account open as a service to the community:

http://blip.tv/pycon-us-videos-2009-2010-2011

If other community content was removed, we can look in to it further. We need to know the account name or video links, though.

Thanks,
Blip Support

kcunning said...

Steve,

If you've already got a dialogue with them going, ask about the Plone content they used to have. I know that my Plone Conference 2008 videos seem to be gone.

Unknown said...

O'Reilly Media got bit by this, too. From their TOS:

"Videos that are not part of a high quality, original episodic web series can be removed at Blip’s sole discretion. Examples of content considered inconsistent with Blip’s definition of high quality, original episodic web series can include but are not limited to sermons, speeches, slide shows, webinars, screencasts, gameplay footage, tutorials, walkthroughs, meetings (corporate, community or government), personal (home movies, weddings, parties, vacations, etc.), music videos and content produced for other mediums (television, film, radio). Each episode must consist of original content created by the account holder."

They're stepping back from being a generic video hosting service (a-la YouTube). I guess we all missed the notification of the warning period as mentioned in their announcement: "In most cases, accounts that don’t fit this description are given a warning period so that they might find a more suitable hosting solution."

Buggeration.

Unknown said...

O'Reilly Media got bit by this, too. From their TOS:

"Videos that are not part of a high quality, original episodic web series can be removed at Blip’s sole discretion. Examples of content considered inconsistent with Blip’s definition of high quality, original episodic web series can include but are not limited to sermons, speeches, slide shows, webinars, screencasts, gameplay footage, tutorials, walkthroughs, meetings (corporate, community or government), personal (home movies, weddings, parties, vacations, etc.), music videos and content produced for other mediums (television, film, radio). Each episode must consist of original content created by the account holder."

They're stepping back from being a generic video hosting service (a-la YouTube). I guess we all missed the notification of the warning period as mentioned in their announcement: "In most cases, accounts that don’t fit this description are given a warning period so that they might find a more suitable hosting solution."

Buggeration.

Anonymous said...

Hi, there's some other blip technical conferences here:
https://archive.org/details/PyconUsVideos200920102011

https://archive.org/details/MontrealPython

Hope those are some of the ones you're looking for.

Unknown said...

Write to the NSA to get the deleted videos back. they keep a backup ;-)

Matt Hamilton said...

They have also removed the Plone Conference 2010 videos as well :(

-Matt

Steve said...

I'm beginning to wonder. Maybe the content is still there somewhere. Perhaps we need a specific list of deleted content (which I certainly don't have). I am very glad to see that PyCon content appears to be intact. Maybe the other stuff is also available somewhere.

If you are looking for specific pieces of content, please make an inquiry at Blip Producer Support. They are claiming to value Python materials, so maybe it's just the indexing that's at fault?

skm said...

Hi, one of the pyvideo helpers here: If you have videos that were not on pyvideo, but you still have access to the material, you may want to comment here in issue 37.

Unknown said...

At least I kept the Plone Conference 2009 video originals on a hard drive. Who would have thought that they wouldn't be safe in the cloud, right?

We were even subscribers on blip.tv for a year or so. So this is a site where technical content is not welcome, even if you were a paying customer. Well...

Steve said...

@balasz - From the comments on here it seems like Blip are still Python-friendly, so it might be worth inquiring. Sorry your comment languished so long unpublished.