First off, thank you very much for your comment and explaining how things work behind the scenes at Revver. It is very enlightening and very reassuring to know that you have such a proactive policy on keeping infringing material off of Revver in the first place.

I honestly think the human review is a great idea and, if I had to wager, I’d bet it eliminates the vast majority of DMCA notices to your company. Since you don’t have to worry about Viacom or NBC clips appearing on your site, you don’t have to worry about organizations such as Bay TSP blasting you with DMCA notices day in and day out.

However, as great as that is, I know that no human review is perfect and, sadly, anyone that does have a need to file a notice will be a layperson. With the Viacom’s out of the equation, the most likely person to have their work slip through the crack is your average YouTuber that doesn’t want their video to appear on other video sharing services (for whatever reason).

My intent behind these series is to approach the sites as a layperson. Having sent hundreds of DMCA notices myself for my own work (expecting that Bay TSP recruitment letter any day now) that requires I break things down into parts and imagine how I would feel if I had never done it before.

As great as I think your policy is, I think the second line of defense (or at least it is the second line in your case) needs a little bit of work. It’s not bad, as I tried to point out, but could definitely be better. If I were unfamiliar with the DMCA and did find some of my work had fallen through the cracks, I would be very intimidated with filing a DMCA notice at Revver.

I say all of this though but I was having a conversation with my wife last night. She read the article and asked me where I was going to host my videos when I start work on that. My answer was, well, Revver.

After reading and reporting on (in my podcast) how other video sites were taking far more rights than needed from their users, I was pleased to see Revver’s policy on the matter and, even though I have quibbles with your DMCA policy, it’s by far the best balance that I can see.

I admit, this is a bright focus on the public aspect of one narrow part of your policy. But that’s what it is designed to do. I work with many people and guide them, as much as I can, to file DMCA notices with a variety of companies. I know how much a well-written policy can mean.

That being said, I’ve never had to help anyone with or heard of anyone filing a notice with Revver. I guess now I know why…

So please, keep up the good work and don’t take the criticism too harshly. It is just a small piece of the puzzle, especially with video sites.

Thanks for the great feedback – I have to admit, nobody’s ever brought this up to us before and it’s not an issue that’s ever even crossed my mind because our strict review of all uploaded content.

Revver goes above and beyond all other video sharing sites out there, filtering out copyrighted material as it is uploaded to Revver. We are the only video hosting site that has a human review process to ensure that no infringing content ever makes it on to the site or our syndication network.

Our review process has been instrumental in giving large API partners such as VH1 the confidence to accept user generated content without having to worry about the potential of copyrighted material making it to their site.

We’ve taken this stance on copyrights since our inception, even as SNL skits propelled Youtube to fame. Our primary goal has always been to help creators earn a living by doing the thing they love doing most; that goal has informed our respect for creators’ copyrights. I think you’ll find that no other video sharing company comes close to the policy we’ve instituted.

While it is extremely unlikely that copyrighted material could get past our human review process, the possibility for human error does exist, so I’ve added your feedback to our product roadmap so that in the unlikely event that something does get by our reviewers, creators will have an easy way to request its removal.

Please let me know if I can answer any questions you may have; I’d love for you to get to know the real Revver and see how there’s no company more deserving of an “A” for its copyright policies than we are.

Asi Behar
VP, Software Engineering – Revver
asi {at} revver_com