What that means is that, at least for now, our YouTube channel is back (Back! BACK!), minus the 13 videos complained about by the BBC on copyright grounds. The situation is once again that Corporation has 14 business days to file a formal court challenge, and unless it does so the channel will be reinstated in full.
Before we were so rudely interrupted, we were about to write a little more about the issues around the BBC’s takedown of this site’s YouTube channel. Because while we got a very respectable five-and-a-half minutes on Good Morning Scotland earlier today, you never have the time on radio or TV to say everything you want to.
Incidentally, we get the impression – nothing more solid than that – from a number of sources that BBC Scotland are somewhat out of the loop over the whole affair, and the impetus to silence Wings has actually come from London, which is slightly scarier. But aside from that, there are a number of really rather disturbing aspects to the situation.
No explanation of any kind was offered for the decision – we can’t imagine what has led YouTube to conclude all by itself that we don’t have the “necessary rights” – and it appears to let the BBC entirely off the hook from having to decide whether to launch a court case or concede the fair use of the clips.
We’ll be investigating further to see what we can find out.
So this morning, four days after our entire YouTube channel was deleted at the behest of the BBC, and after days of wrestling with YouTube’s shambolic robot-staffed admin maze, we finally managed to get an email out of them with the full list of what the BBC had complained about.
(If you should ever find yourself in a similar situation, we can recommend contacting @TeamYouTube on Twitter, who appear to be actual human people and can eventually prod the robots into action.)
The signatory was a London-based BBC lawyer, who’d plucked 13 videos apparently at random from the hundreds on our channel and decided to whine about them (citing US copyright law, rather than UK) up to four and a half years later.
And that’s all fair enough – it’s a legitimate news story. But what’s really odd about it is that both of the articles leave out what you might imagine would be a rather crucial piece of information.
As we’re writing this, our YouTube channel remains dead. We’re still trying to navigate through YouTube’s awful maze of robotic guards to reach a human being, and while at least two newspapers – The National and the Scotsman – have asked the BBC for a comment, none has been forthcoming.
The mainstream media’s attacks on this site in the last couple of years have included getting our Twitter account shut down in 2016, getting me arrested, having all of Wings’ electronic equipment confiscated by the police and now killing our YouTube channel full of crucial documentary evidence, most of which isn’t available anywhere else. (On top of an endless catalogue of smear stories and hatchet jobs, of course.)
Now, we’re not planning on going anywhere, but in the face of such a concerted and increasingly sinister assault aimed at silencing us, we also can’t make any guarantees that Wings itself will continue to survive. WordPress may prove as fragile in the face of malice as Twitter and YouTube have.
So in case we fall victim to another unexpected technical/censorship catastrophe, or suddenly commit “suicide”, you might want to strengthen the rest of the team.
We happened to be looking at a couple of old articles this morning, and noticed that some of them had blank spaces where videos should be.
We didn’t think much of it at first, because people do sometimes delete old videos or shut down their accounts, but when we checked one of them we discovered it was hosted on the Wings Over Scotland channel.
An alert reader sent us a piece of interesting follow-up info to yesterday’s piece on NHS Scotland costs. Because comparable figures for NHS England are available too, and they make for surprising reading.
These are the Scottish figures for medicine costs at list price, ie before any negotiated discounts that the health service is able to obtain:
The population of England, at 55 million, is just over 10 times that of Scotland (5.4m). So one would imagine that its like-for-like costs would come in at around £12 billion.
The BBC front page headline for this is actually just the alarming-sounding “Scottish prescription costs rise by 25%”, without even the qualifier about the timespan.
willie on The Turning Point: “The reorganisation of local government is not pointless Peter. The cull of the 32 Scottish Councils into 5 is a…” Sep 29, 08:53
Hatey McHateface on The Turning Point: “What’s the chances you and the rest of the tribe don’t recall how you’ve voted, in election after election, eh,…” Sep 29, 08:40
Hatey McHateface on Cowering From Destiny: “Zat you hating there, James? Ye can hae a speshul dispensation tae tak yer maw doon intae the tunnel wi…” Sep 29, 08:34
Hatey McHateface on The Turning Point: “Aye, Bob. “We wus roabbed” Ye’ve learned the wirds aff by hert. If only ye’d haud some spark of ability,…” Sep 29, 08:30
factchecker on The Turning Point: “I understand your frustration. But that is why we have a Scottish parliament stuffed with (largely) incompetent SNP apparatchiks who…” Sep 29, 08:27
robertkknight on The Turning Point: “Just as well I had spent a penny a mere two minutes before reading this, else I may have had…” Sep 29, 08:21
Angus on The Turning Point: ““But she stalled and stalled until she ran out of time and the chance was gone.” Isn’t that exactly what…” Sep 29, 05:12
Peter McAvoy on The Turning Point: “Some may say that the SNP no longer support Scottish Independence,they could be easily convinced by many recent actions some…” Sep 29, 02:57
robertkknight on The Turning Point: “Time to play “Idiot Bingo” on October 1st… I’ll be placing an X in the box next to all 7…” Sep 29, 00:39
robertkknight on The Turning Point: ““Nationalists easily forget that the Scottish people stopped independence at the ballot. Not MI5.” Utter bollocks as usual… 53% of…” Sep 28, 23:50
Spartan 117 on The Turning Point: “Leftist political parties are inevitably of the destructive kind, following the Soviet model of “burn everything down and rebuild in…” Sep 28, 23:34
Ebok on The Turning Point: “Cuphook says: ‘The surge in the Green vote was due to Polanski’ Spartan 117 says: ‘The surge in Green voting…” Sep 28, 23:20
James on Cowering From Destiny: “And don’t forget; “Pricks” like you too, wee man.” Sep 28, 22:34
Hatey McHateface on Cowering From Destiny: ““I try not to hate anyone” Dinna hold yersel back, James. Nobody you hate will ever give a damn.” Sep 28, 21:50
Hatey McHateface on Cowering From Destiny: “All antisemites should dig themselves a tunnel, descend into it, and never come up again. If we’re talking kids, they…” Sep 28, 21:41
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on The Turning Point: “Rev Stuart Campbell writes @ 5:54 pm: “Swinney has closed down all routes for the membership to do anything except…” Sep 28, 20:15
Cuphook on The Turning Point: “They’re not at odds with each other. They describe different attributes. A party in favour of workers’ rights and free…” Sep 28, 20:10
Confused on Cowering From Destiny: “Anyone who gives a shit about U is suspect – if you care enough then fuck off over there and…” Sep 28, 19:47
Spartan 117 on The Turning Point: “Not bollocks, largely the truth. Especially the last two points.” Sep 28, 19:32
Spartan 117 on The Turning Point: “The terms “left wing” and “conservative” are at odds with each other and quite frankly the absolute last thing we…” Sep 28, 19:29
Aidan on Cowering From Destiny: “lol – what has R done; – invaded its neighbours in an aggressive territorial expansion campaign. The latest one, which…” Sep 28, 19:24
Rev. Stuart Campbell on The Turning Point: “Swinney has closed down all routes for the membership to do anything except leave.” Sep 28, 17:54
Cuphook on The Turning Point: “The surge in the Green vote was due to Polanski in England. Look where the Green vote did well and…” Sep 28, 17:34
willie on The Turning Point: “It is utterly no surprise that so many of independence supporters distrust the SNP and will not vote for them.…” Sep 28, 17:20
