Patrick’s Aviation Videos: Our Own You Tube
By Robert Mark on May 6th, 2007Curiosity coupled to the Internet means a chance to uncover a few thousand nooks and crannies that often hide some impressive content.
You Tube been a favorite in our house for some time with my 12-year old being a devoted fan, even if I do have to keep an eye on what she watches. An artist friend – Ken Smith – has also been posting for ages and got me watching it way too much, I think.
Show me a site with a search engine though and like any good airplane junkie, I type in “airplanes” or “aviation” or some such thing just to see what pops up.
And there’s plenty to watch.
But I’m also one of these writers who really believes in the copyright laws. I’ve found people peddling parts of my books online and the work it took to get them to either pay me or pull it off wasn’t pretty.
You’ll find plenty of copyrighted material on You Tube, primarily because the company just can’t keep up with the number of video segments people post each day.
That’s why I was impressed with the way copyright issues were handled when I wandered in the front door at Patrick’s Aviation Videos. They make it pretty clear before you click the upload button … 
Copyright Policy
Per the Terms of Service, you must own all rights to videos you upload or have express permission from the copyright owner(s) to upload to Patrick’s Aviation.
By uploading this video you are representing that you agree to the Terms of Service.
I liked that and took the time to track down owner Patrick Konsor to talk about the just over two-year old site. But not too long. I wanted to go back and wander around some more. Put this place on your must see list and pass the address around. You’ll find it on the Jetwhine blogroll.
I asked Patrick why he’s possessed with aviation videos. “I personally have been interested in aviation since I saw the Thunderbirds at an airshow about 4 or 5 years ago,” he told me. “I had a server and was hosting several videos for a flight sim community so I decided to create a bit of a website for it. I added photos and various other sections as it grew in popularity. In July of last year I began offering streaming video and began to focus just on hosting videos and photos.”
Being a budding video blogger, I was actually a bit surprised at Patrick’s experiences with content. “I expected people to upload mostly their own videos from air shows, spotting, etc. This exists to some extent, but the majority of videos are taken from other sites (usually with permission). I didn’t expect this to happen as much as it does. I’ve had to remove many videos. Most often we remove videos because the person who uploaded them doesn’t have permission to post them.”
There is an aspect of a video site that I don’t understand and something that Patrick mentions as he’s wrestled with the copyright issue. “There are some videos from aircraft manufacturers such as Dassault and Boeing which I would’ve loved to have on the site, but they won’t give permission. Other manufacturers such as Gripen and Eurofighter have though.”
If I were the aircraft manufacturer, I certainly wouldn’t want any site running my videos without permission, simply because I’d want to have some idea of how they were using the material. But I’d give permission to use a chapter out of my book if someone asked for precisely that reason.
So if you were Boeing and you were approached by a video site like this that could possibly offer 100 times the exposure of your product than your company could alone, and you gave them some specifics about how they might use it after they’ve asked permission, why would you turn them down? Someone please tell me.
And Patrick’s site is growing too. “The biggest challenge is definitely dealing with the community though,” Konsor said. “We try to look at everything that is uploaded to check for inappropriate stuff, duplicate content, and copyright infringement. We also have to moderate discussions and comments on the forum. I have two moderators who volunteer to help me with this.”
Now that you’re through reading here at Jetwhine, head over to Patrick’s Video – Aviation’s You Tube – for some fun. And tell him I sent you.
Then watch for some of the videos I’m going to start posting before too many people get in front of me.
Technorati tags: Patrick’s Aviation Videos, video+blogging, Aircraft, Boeing, Dassault, Gripen, Thunderbirds, copyright, You Tube
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