[UPDATE: 11/12/2009]
Got a call from Tom Richardson at the NEJM (who I saw play with the Bearded Pigs at MLA 2008!).
According to Tom, NEJM has no arrangement with Clinical Reader and did not license their content to Clinical Reader. So it appears that Clinical Reader is again violating copyright.
[/UPDATE]
So, Clinical Reader shows video content from the NEJM, including a video on chest tube insertion (yeah, the same one I blogged about a ways back).

I thought this was odd.
After all, if you go to the NEJM’s home for this video, it clearly says one needs a subscription to view the content.
Hmmm.
So I decided to look around for any notes from either organization that would indicate Clinical Reader is using this video content with permission. Didn’t find it. Also didn’t find any published terms under which NEJM offered to license it.
My curiosity piqued, I decided to poke around more to see if anyone else was showing NEJMs content. Sure enough, somebody with a subscription to NEJM downloaded a decent copy and posted it on Vimeo:

It has been viewed there over 1,600 times.
Note to Vimeo: This violates terms of service. The user who uploaded it did not own it (as should be fairly obvious by the title cards). As much as I enjoy free access to high quality video, this belongs to NEJM, not this user. The video should at least be taken down from your servers.
Anyway, Vimeo allows users to download videos in .flv format. I downloaded that .flv with no problem…so now Vimeo is serving as a distribution channel for others who would like unlicensed copies. I wonder if perhaps that is how Clinical Reader got a copy to show from their site.
I’d be interested to hear from the NEJM and Clinical Reader: Was this content licensed to Clinical Reader? If so, why is the video quality so much poorer than in the original at the NEJM’s site OR the Vimeo copy?
If not, why isn’t the NEJM interested that their content is being stolen?
I mean…if I didn’t sweat pesky things like copyright, I think I could build an AMAZING portal for health information…made of other people’s content.
Clinical Reader’s FAQ says:
Clinical Reader respects all copyrights and legal restrictions on content and access. Clinical Reader cannot give a user access to articles to which the user does not already have access to copyright-restricted content. For example, if a user does not have access to a research article in the BMJ (either through an individual subscription or through the user´s institution), Clinical Reader will not be able to show the item in full.
Huh. I don’t have access to NEJM from here at home. But I can still view its content in Clinical Reader.
[EDIT]
Veoh is showing this video, too.
…and medicalvideos.us
…and there’s a RapidShare link on this blog.
[/EDIT]
November 10th, 2009 | Category: E-Journals, For Medical Libraryfolk, Video | Comments (8)