We’ve seen in the past year that Hulu gets testy about their video content being used on other sites or platforms, with Boxee and TV.com both forced to remove Hulu content from their sites and applications. Now startup Rippol is facing the same fate.
Rippol just publicly launched their video discovery sites at yesterday’s Real-Time CrunchUp, which combines both complex algorithms with user suggestions to surface interesting video content.
Less than a few hours after Rippol launched, the startup’s co-founder Aaron Crayford received notice from Hulu that the video embeds on Rippol from Hulu were in violation of the terms of service which state that embeds are for personal, non-commercial use only. While Rippol says that they won’t place ads in the videos or around the videos, Hulu says that the simple fact that Rippol plans to make money from the entire content service violates the TOS. Instead, Hulu offered Rippol the ability to us its site map, which is a feed that links back to Hulu for video playback. Don’t embed, says Hulu. Link instead. Here’s the email notice:
We saw that you launched today. We want to notify you that you are using our embeds in violation of our terms of service which state specifically that embeds are for personal, non-commercial use only. As such we will plan to block embedding from your site by 12/4. Typically we disable embedding immediately but given that you just launched, we want to give you some time to transition.
In the place of the embeds, we can offer you is a site map feed that links back to Hulu for video playback and includes several useful pieces of metadata in a feed. It includes video titles, descriptions, thumbnails, video type, duration info, season number, episode number, air date, expiration date, in addition to the video link on Hulu.com.
It is updated every few hours: http://www.hulu.com/video_sitemap.index.xml
When Rippol responded that they will never put ads in or around Hulu content, Hulu responded:
Ad placement would be more relevant to the “non-commercial” part of the TOS vs. the “personal” part. While you may not plan to place ads near our content, Rippol is a commercial business in the sense that you plan to make money from the content service you create. Thus our content on your site is being used for commercial purposes, even if it is indirect (i.e. you attract users with Hulu content but only monetize other content).
Note we are not singling out Rippol as we have transitioned other premium video aggregators to our site map feed.
Rippol looks at your video watching activity on the site, as well as that of your friends and people in your demographic. It also looks at meta data from video content ingested from sites like YouTube and Hulu, and uses machine learning to identify videos it thinks you’ll like. Naturally, some of the TV shows and movies that surface on Rippol are from Hulu.
Boxee encountered a similar issue in February. Boxee’s software package converts computers, Apple TVs and other popular products into media centers, and integrated Hulu content. But this ended abruptly in February when Hulu’s studio content partners demanded that Boxee take down all videos pulled from from Hulu. TV.com suffered a similar fate when Hulu pulled the plug on content earlier this year, although CBS Interactive, which owns TV.com, vehemently argued that they were within their rights to stream Hulu content.
The thing is that Rippol, and perhaps other video sites like Boxee, may be willing to enter into a distribution agreement with Hulu with regard to embedding content. In Hulu’s note to Rippol, the representative stated that “the only way for a company to legitimately embed our videos the way you do is to enter into a structured distribution relationship with us. However, we are currently entering into these very selectively.”
When Hulu axed the Boxee integration, CEO Jason Kilar wrote in a blog post:
Our content providers requested that we turn off access to our content via the Boxee product, and we are respecting their wishes. While we stubbornly believe in this brave new world of media convergence — bumps and all — we are also steadfast in our belief that the best way to achieve our ambitious, never-ending mission of making media easier for users is to work hand in hand with content owners. Without their content, none of what Hulu does would be possible, including providing you content via Hulu.com and our many distribution partner websites.
Our mission to make media dramatically easier and more user-focused has not changed and will not change. We will not stop until we achieve it and we are sober in our assessment that we have such a long way to go.
The maddening part of writing this blog entry is that we realize that there is no immediate win here for users. Please know that we take very seriously our role of representing users such that we are able to provide more and more content in more and more ways over time. We embrace this activity in ways that respect content owners’ — and even the entire industry’s — challenges to create great content that users love. Yes, it’s a complex matter. A tough mission, and a never-ending one, but one we are passionately committed to.
Even before Hulu launched the site had announced partnerships to embed content with AOL, MSN, MySpace and Yahoo. The site also has a partnership with Comcast’s Fancast . And the site also recently launched the ability to watch some video content its video content on its Facebook page.
It’s clear the Hulu is at the mercy of of studio content owners who are calling the shots on partnerships and who should be allowed to embed Hulu content. Kilar is correct in saying that Hulu’s strategy of limited partnerships is not a win for users. But the other party left out here are the developers and startups, like Rippol and Boxee, which are crating innovative and useful products that provide a creative way to watch their videos and even drive traffic to Hulu.
When Hulu was announced in 2007, NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker said that Hulu would aim to have “ubiquitous distribution.” The press release issued at the time said that Hulu “will actively seek agreements with a variety of additional distribution partners.” The release also stated that each “distribution partner will feature the site’s content in an embedded player customized with a look and feel consistent with each site, making the offering organic to each destination.”
Clearly, when Hulu was announced, the ambitions were to have many more partnerships to distribute the site’s content. But all signs have pointed to the fact that Hulu and its content partners are simply not open to startups and smaller sites who have new innovations to video consumption. Frankly, it’s disappointing for the developer community as well as consumers.
In the meantime, Rippol’s Crayford says that most of Hulu’s content is available on the content owners sites, which means Rippol will point crawlers to a lot of different domains instead of Hulu, which is tedious (TV.com does this).
When we asked Hulu about the Rippol situation, they responded:
Thanks for the heads up. I’ve been told our folks are in communication with Rippol on how to possibly work together.
The basic policy on our embeds is that we do not allow sites to host the entire Hulu content library without a formal distribution agreement. These agreements are evaluated on a case by case basis with the involvement of content owners. Alternatively, we provide a video site map to allow publishers to link to our videos.
Hulu videos are often embedded on blogs including TC. Is TC not non-personal & commercial ?
Very good point. HuffPost uses them all day long.
“Don’t embed. Link instead.” is gonna get hotter.
At least it’s a cool slogan
I think they should start thinking about allowing embedding, though.
If you notice the last comment said that the basic policy is for people embedding the entire library need a distribution agreement. It sounds like they overlook one shot embeds like on TC and HuffPost.
Reminds me of image leeching from one site to the other back when geocities pages were the best way to slap together a website without having to understand what the internet was.
Give this time for a more favorable solution to come, but until now, don’t leech videos. Rehost (and deal with the complications of copyrights and ownership) or link to the page for now.
I think the issue is the quantity. If you link to a few occasionally they are calm but they don’t want you embedding their library.
Could definitely be worse.
“Personally, I think its about time for Hulu to…”
Eh.
I guess sites like http://www.cruxle.com faced the same issue and now they link back to Hulu.
Seems perfectly reasonable to me that Hulu should have a say in how their content is being used … it’s about time ‘3rd parties’ starting respecting other companies like Hulu with respect to how they interface with them.
“While we stubbornly believe in this brave new world of media convergence — bumps and all — we are also steadfast in our belief that the best way to achieve our ambitious, never-ending mission of making media easier for users is to work hand in hand with content owners. ” – what exactly does this mean?
Are they suggesting that Hulu doesn’t own the content? They are probably right (re ownership) but this doesn’t negate the fact that Hulu does own the method of distribution – regardless of ownership of the content – and are therefore perfectly within their rights to limit how that distribution network is ‘distributed’. Without this type of control over content they wouldn’t have a workable business model and therefore would simply fail in time – leaving both Hulu and the 3rd parties with nothing.
The quote you posted was from Hulu CEO in response to the Boxee debacle. It had nothing to do with the rippol situation.
“Without this type of control over content they wouldn’t have a workable business model and therefore would simply fail in time”
Disagreed: Hulu makes money by ads within the video. Even if the video is viewed off site, the ads are STILL seen and money is still made.
If Hulu encouraging distribution, they would certainly make more money and gain a larger audience. However, the content providers are scared of the innovation that may occur if this happens (especially in the case of boxee) so they decide to block embeddability altogether.
Old media network online strategy = fail.
I am 100% in support of allowing distributing and embedding content 24/7/anywhere. Having worked for a video-focused advertising company, I do see one problem with it.
this revolves around the idea of a ‘click through’ or ‘call to action’ which drives users to the advertiser’s site. Unlike a traditional TV ad, pre-roll is unique in that it is coupled with a way to ‘act’ on the ad (or show interest). Media agencies have grown to live and die by CTR’s, basing who they advertise with almost solely on this metric.
Hulu has stayed strong in refusing to place a clickable ad on TOP of video content (which I support 100%), so embedded vidoes have no call to action, thus a low CTR.
That may not be the only reason for their decision, but it definitely has to be a big part of the anti-embed push.
Either way, doesn’t Hulu make money from ads shown within the embedded videos? It seems like they would want as much exposure possible, provided the embedding site isn’t controversial.
It’s a good point you make. I’m not so sure Hulu isn’t trying to BE the the go-to brand for content though (the destination as it were) and not the syndicate. Too, they may make more revenue on the whole from on-site visitors than eyeballs seeing embeds elsewhere.
You miss the risk involved. Even if Hulu includes ads for embeds, they assume all the risk of selling those ads.
If they dont sell enough ads to pay for the cost of the content and its distribution cost, they lose money while the commercial site doing the embedding continues to benefit from the content/
What will happen is that if their sell through cant cover costs, they will stop the embeds. When they have more ads than views (Assuming their bandwidth and distribution costs dont swamp their revenue), they will allow outside sites to embed.
Simple economics
perhaps the issue is with trying to communicate with websites.. how often when working with api’s you are left to interpret long, lawyer speak and you can’t afford to hire a lawyer to interpret it. I don’t know.. hulu don’t like canadians…
This is bogus. Very soon there will be cloud based solutions that enable people to embed Hulu in ways that Hulu can’t block.
Time for some new thinking.
It’s all too confusing for me. I just wanna watch some good shows online, is that too much to ask? lol
The problem for Hulu is likely that because they don’t own their content, that they can’t just jump into deals with anyone. The non-commercial and personal aspect of their TOS was clearly a stipulation of the existence of their own service.
The problem they face is the problem that the music business was facing until it basically collapsed: the interest of a single content creator is to exact as much profit as possible out of each individual purchaser which, ultimately, is contrary to the interest and survival of the overall market which demands a simple method of pricing and distribution for online video (clips and all) as it’s unrealistic to have that level of price discrimination en masse (at least right now).
I think its perfect for what Hulu is doing. Video streaming/downloading is a high bandwidth affair (including the CPU-costly transcoding infrastructure). YouTube continued free so long because of Google. And now YouTube also (sometimes) shows an ad ‘during’ a user generated content (the subpar quality video)? At least Hulu video is of higher quality & better content, with a reasonable ad-breaks. Now if they want to restrict the usage to better serve their advertisers, why not?
How does restricting usage better serve their advertisers? As an advertiser, I want as many eyeballs as I can get within the right demographic. I’m sure there’s a solution that would satisfy both embedding sites and advertisers.
Numbers alone aren’t what advertisers want. As an advertiser, I want to know where and how my content is being shown if I’m going to pay Hulu for advertising.
I think I summed it up pretty well: “As an advertiser, I want as many eyeballs as I can get within the right demographic.”
To know the demographic, you have to know where your ads are being shown. Like I said, there has to be a solution.
I believe demographic refers to the age and gender of the viewer, not what site he/she is viewing the content on or what his/her interests are.
Reaching a young male while he’s reading about video games vs. when he’s watching porn are two hugely different environments for your ads.
talk
a bit off topic with this thread but… talking about scam advertising, I see techcrunch show ads on the homepage about wholesale cellphones resellers from china
I dont think this is perfectly legal, since they sell unlocked iphones etc
I dont know if it happens only for italy or also in the US, but please Check the quality of your ads!
hi all,
just want to know, it’s HULU futures same like youtube?
I feel its good decision.
Dear Hulu,
Buzz me when you learn about the internet. Until then I’ll be on Youtube.
Off-topic comment here:
Don’t you guys want to take down the scientology advertisement on TC? I mean they are pretty much a big scam and destorying the lives of thousands of people…
This line needs editing:
“And the site also recently launched the ability to watch some video content its video content on its Facebook page.”
I am sure it is more the content providers than hulu. The way I read it was, that hulu is basically being told what they are allowed to do, and allowed to happen.
Hulu has really good content and I hope they work things out!
Sounds reasonable. Would you want somebody to make money of your content and you dont see a dime?
Did not think so.
Hulu rocks
They don’t see a dime??? Hulu plays the same ads within an embedded video as a non embedded video. An eyeball is an eyeball. They get paid the same by the advertiser either way.
“Hulu offered Rippol the ability to us its site map…”
Perhaps letting Rippol ‘use’ the site map would be a better alternative
thats very sad…poor hulu…
Steve
http://www.isopurewater.com/
ROCK ON Rippol! they have a great team and a great product. they only have one way to go and that is up!
Guys, like it or not, a business has IP rights to everything it creates. Hulu owns the distribution, it can forbid all mirroring, rehosting, embeds, anything it wants to do. Whether you want it or not is completely beside the point. If you’re arguing about what’s actually better for Hulu in the long run, you’re tackling the issue from the right angle. To suggest there’s an ethical responsibility to allow other sites to imbed when Hulu paid for the contracts (or, when hulu received from the contracts, I’m not sure which way the money flows) is ridiculously entitled. Just cuz you want it doesn’t mean you get it.
Hulu has to create somewhat of a walled garden around their content for the simple reason that once the content becomes aggregated, they leave their advertiser’s messages open to any side by side association with unsuitable partners (Red Cross ads with screen-side penis enlargement banners). YouTube’s contextual model doesn’t open their videos to this problem to the same extent. Outside of prohibiting embeds, I don’t think Hulu has a workable solution to this right now.