YouTube called: I beat Comcast

Okay, YouTube didn't really call me, but you know...

Last month I reported that Comcast was giving me grief about how I posted a clip from E!'s show The Soup where they used MY commercial from the school board campaign in 2006... without asking me, but I was fine with that. I just expected the same courtesy from E! and its ownership that I have given them. That's not too much to ask, in my mind.

And of course, this whole thing is too much like that crazy situation with Viacom a little over two years ago. And just as I did with Viacom then I filed a counterclaim with YouTube, per the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

A short while ago I received the following e-mail from YouTube:

Re: [#561937480] YouTube Support

Copyright Service to me

Hi there,
In accordance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we've completed
processing your counter-notification regarding your video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51FpFrMVWOo

This content has been restored and your account will not be penalized.

Sincerely,
The YouTube Team

So for the third time now (first Viacom, then NBC which quickly acquiesced and retracted their claim against me for posting a clip of The Jay Leno Show that also used my commercial, and now with Comcast) my filing the DMCA counterclaim has been successful. And that's why I'm compelled again to discuss this. Because if an independent content producer like me can take on three multi-billion dollar corporations over DMCA abuse and win each time, then any small-time content producer can do likewise and come out on top.

None of us are without some pretty potent weapons. We just have to know how to use them... and use them properly.

So here it is again: E! Television's The Soup featuring my school board campaign commercial :-)

Glad that this got resolved. And I hope that it never has to happen again!

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AGAIN?! Looks like I'll be fighting Comcast now...

So I got back from a delightful day of various and sundry stuff (including finally seeing Avatar, review or something coming soon) and I started catching up on an inordinate amount of stuff that had piled up in my absence.

Well, there were two e-mails from YouTube in the e-mail account I use for KWerky Productions. And both of them said that the clip I had posted two years ago of E!'s The Soup had been yanked for "copyright infringement".

It's an exact repeat of the situation with Viacom in the summer of 2007.

Sigh...

You know, the first time this happened, I had to laugh. Couldn't help but giggle at the absurdity of it all. I mean, that was about, what... one minute of a television program and most of it consisting of MATERIAL THAT I HAD CREATED FOR MY SCHOOL BOARD CAMPAIGN!!

It was no different than quoting from a news article. But Viacom jumped flunky about it and had that pulled. I fought, it got reinstated (with more than a little help from the Electronic Frontier Foundation) and I thought that whole thing ended amiably enough.

This time however, I'm more than a little pissed-off.

But this is what it's like under the conditions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, dear readers. As things with the law stand now, ANYONE can have ANY material removed from YouTube or any other hosting service, for the most dubious of reasons... and without YouTube even being obligated to check the veracity of such a claim.

One of these days a political candidate who's campaign has been posting clips on YouTube like crazy is going to find all of his or her videos deleted by order of their opponent. And YouTube will be unable to stop it. The videos can be reinstated 'course, but that first video took me two weeks (and a lot of publicity) to be restored. And that's an eternity in politics, and many other things.

So guess I have no choice. Gonna have to fight all over again. But this time I'm gonna do my damndest to make something out of this that Lord willing will make it a lot harder for this crap to happen to anyone again.

Stay tuned.

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