June 24, 2010
Just when you think you’ve seen it all when it comes to the craziest of bikes, a guy like Wouter van den Bosch, Dutch art student and former mechanical engineer from Arnhem comes up with a monster bike, made from a tractor tyre and some metal parts that took three months to build.
Watch this YouTube sensation now:
(Tip @sshanx (Twitter), Link: dailymail.co.uk)
Tags: YouTube
December 27, 2009
BUMA/Stemra has decided not to pursue its blogger’s tax of 160 euro per 6 embedded songs for 2010. At the same time, the collecting society for composers and performing artists has closed a deal with Youtube, allowing the Google daughter to serve videos containing music to a Dutch audience.
After a storm of protest, BUMA/Stemra cancelled its tariffs for non-commercial users earlier, leaving blogs like 24 Oranges in the cold, because we run Google ads. Now Webwereld reports that commercial users will also be exempt for one year, while BUMA/Stemra tries to iron out any legal glitches. I guess that is a step forward from past practices, where the society would start lawsuits against pretty much anyone and use the resulting jurisprudence as either law, or as a springboard for further lawsuits.
Music Week reports that the new licensing agreement covers “professional or user-generated video hosted on and streamed via YouTube in the Netherlands.”
Odd, then, that I still come across notices now and again that music has been removed from a clip after complaints by somebody pretending to be a rights holder (typically one of the Big Four). Let’s see how this will pan out in 2010. My guess though: Google will be paying lots of money for nothing in return.
Meanwhile the union for musicians, Nederlandse Toonkunstenaarsbond, has urgently requested that BUMA/Stemra apologize over the heavy-handed manner in which it introduced its tax for embedded videos. Chairman Erwin Angad-Gaur fears the society’s tactics have damaged the reputations of musicians. He told VPRO’s 3 Voor 12: “Musicians are not against copyright fees, to the contrary. But we do want more flexibility.” For instance the flexibility to decide they want money for certain songs only.
(Still of a video by Orangemaster.)
June 18, 2008
The united Dutch public broadcasters are considering introducing a YouTube like system for posting videos of shows according to Webwereld (Dutch), and have a test version of the system online.
The current version of Uitzending Gemist (Missed a programme?) uses WMV clips, which aren’t as accessible as Flash Video. Apart from introducing Flash video, the new system will allow you to embed Dutch shows in your blog and elsewhere on the Web, and will let visitors comment on shows. Pretty much the things Youtube allows you to do.
Webwereld quotes NPO (part of NOS) manager William Valkenburg as saying: “For now we’ll be testing the player with a limited number of shows to see what people will do with it and what functions they will use. After that we will consider the nature of further deployment.”
The Dutch public broadcasting system was originally set up for radio in the early 20th century in a way that allowed the Catholics, Protestants, socialists, and so on to set up their own broadcasting corporations. Fees were collected directly from citizens and distributed among the broadcasters depending on membership ratios. An umbrella corporation called NOS was founded to share costs and to broadcast programmes of a general nature. As recent as the late 1980s, commercial stations started pirate broadcasts from Luxembourg, and in 1992 these were legalised, making it possible for commercial entities to broadcast from within the Netherlands itself.
This week minister Plasterk was asked questions in parliament why NOS uses a proprietary Microsoft system for broadcasting EURO2008 over the Internet, locking out GNU/Linux users in the process.
Tags: public domain, television, TV, YouTube
April 13, 2008
So many expressions in English about the Dutch are negative: ‘Dutch uncle’ (finger pointing criticism), ‘going Dutch’ (splitting the bill when you go out) and ‘Dutch courage’ (alcohol induced courage), but now the Italians have come up with a new one, ripe for the Internet age: The Amsterdam Syndrome.
The Amsterdam Syndrome is known by Italian sexologists as ‘Sindrome di Amsterdam’, according to Italian newspaper La Stampa yesterday. Vice-president of the European Federation of Sexologists Chiara Simonelli explains: “Thanks to YouTube (sarcastically speaking) and an amateur video camera or mobile phone, men film their wives and lovers cheating on them and place it on the Internet. Notice the opposite is not mentioned.
“Everbody can see her, in fact everyone has to see her, but nobody can touch her.” A form of revenge for some, but also (trying to understand how Italians think here) a form of exhibitionism that is sometimes consentual. And here I thought that the cliché was that some 30% of Italian men fantasize about their mothers when gettin’ busy.
Why does Amsterdam ‘get the shaft’ linguistically speaking? Bearing all is apparently what they do in Amsterdam’s Red Light District (now I’m being sarcastic), which is not true. They all wear underwear tops and bottoms when you go by so you can use your imagination.
(Link: telegraaf.nl, lastampa.it)
Tags: Amsterdam Syndrome, sexology, YouTube
