14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft’s search/decision engine is still offering users the chance to get a glimpse at the video featuring the luge crash of Nodar Kumaritashvili, even after the content was pulled from YouTube. The Georgian Olympic luger died on Friday 12, 2010, in a practice session ahead of the official kick off ceremony of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Canada. Footage of the fatal accident was presented by various news outlets around the world and inevitable made it onto online video websites, the most prominent of which being YouTube.
Google moved fast to kill access to the video, and pulled the content, citing copyright infringement issues. After being discontinued, YouTube only presents the following message to end users instead of the actual content: “The video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by International Olympic Committee.” Obviously the Committee doesn’t want the video of the fatal crash to make the rounds on YouTube, or any viral video sharing website for that matter.
Even NBCOlympics.com, the official website built by NBC and Microsoft to cover the 2010 Winter Olympic Games doesn’t return any video results when a query is performed for the “Kumaritashvili.” However, NBCOlympics.com does offer a slideshow with images of the accident, offering a complete and detailed perspective over the deadly crash.
Still, users of Bing.com are able to still take a look at the video with Kumaritashvili’s crash, although it is no longer available on YouTube. Microsoft’s search/decision engine offers a video preview feature for the video content that is returned to end users’ queries. Searching for Kumaritashvili and then filtering the results in accordance to display only videos delivers a number of items. Hovering the mouse cursor over the video results plays a preview of the content, and users are able to watch the fatal crash. However, when attempting to navigate to the actual video on YouTube, users will find that the content no longer exists, even if the preview offered by Bing works fine.