Monday, March 29, 2010

Viddler changes it video policy and will NUKE source files after 30 days. I've got a lot to download now

Hello,
First, thanks for choosing Viddler. We’ve experienced amazing growth since we launched in Dec. 2006. Viddler provides three different levels of service: business, partners and personal. The business and partners services generate revenue for Viddler and cover the cost of their bandwidth and storage usage. The personal service, while generating some revenue from ads, does not cover the cost of bandwidth and storage for all the personal usage.

The Viddler team wants to continue to provide the personal use service, especially for the amazing community that has grown with us over the past 3 years. We’ve been monitoring our costs, and the way people view videos. Over the past three years, the amount of original source file storage has grown astronomically – with very few people ever accessing the original source file (the one you originally uploaded to Viddler that was then converted into another file to play in our player.) While we want to keep the original source files for everyone, in order to continue to grow, and remain in budget, we can’t continue to do it as part of the personal level service.

The Terms of Use are changing to state that personal level accounts’ original source file will be stored for 30 days from the date it was uploaded. Of course, the converted video file will be available as long as your account is active. And you will still be able to download the converted file.

This email is to make you aware of the change in policy – and to give you 30 days to download any original source files you may need. Original source files uploaded before this email (March 29, 2010) will be available until May 1, 2010. Original source files uploaded from today (March 29, 2010) on will be available for 30 days.

Thank you for your patience and understanding and thanks again for choosing Viddler.

Donna DeMarco & the Viddler Team
I have a few hundred videos on Viddler. I've tried to trust them with the source files -- until now. I've got a lot of DVDs and CD-Rs to ready to get those files.

Or, I need to find a sponsor to get me to the point where I can keep those on their servers as I've done in the past.

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