UK Cabinet Office video farce
p2pnet.net News:- Transformational Government, a public service video made by England’s cabinet office, has been pulled from YouTube after COI Television said the flic infringed copyright.
To add to the ignomy, COI Television is part of the Cabinet Office, says silicon.com, going on:
“A spokesman for independent body Public Sector Forums, told silicon.com: ‘The COI is part of the Cabinet Office. So it looks like the Cabinet Office’s initiative has fallen at the first hurdle and ironically, it’s thanks to a lack of joined-upness between parts of its own ministry’.
“The embarrassing case of the missing video comes just a week after the Cabinet Office was praised for embracing modern means of communicating through the web.”
There comes, “a moment in the life of every sitcom where a desperately uncool father tries to act hip around his children’s friends,” says Ars Technica. “The results, disastrous as they always are, should have given the UK government pause as it contemplated its own attempt at hipness – putting some videos on YouTube.”
The clips were uploaded by the Central Office of Information, “under the username publicservice” and, “dealt with such YouTube-appropriate topics as ‘transformational government’ and ’sharing the leadership challenge’,” says the story.
But the UK Cabinet Office isn’t alone.
Microsoft was also angry at YouTube for having the temerity to allow two mock documentaries to be posted. YouTube pulled them but Google Video, where they also showed up, didn’t.
Meanwhile, a Cabinet Office spokeswoman told silicon.com, “We said that this is a small scale trial or experiment. Trials are meant to flush out a whole range of issues precisely such as these. Rights for online distribution are notoriously complex. We are in discussions to rectify the situation.”
Also See:
silicon.com – YouTube blunder: Egg on face for Cabinet Office, August 29, 2006
Ars Technica – YouTube embarrasses UK, US governments, August 30, 2006
also showed up – Microsoft in-house video leak, August 30, 2006
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