YOUTUBE/VIACOM AFTERMATH - Part 1: The Media Exposure

It took quite awhile longer than I'd expected. This thing got around in a big way, what with The Wall Street Journal and Yahoo! and Slashdot and Ars Technica and seemingly a jillion more outlets that covered it. Lots of people wanted to weigh in on this and for sake of objectivity I've tried my best to include everyone that I could find that raised valid arguments about this issue, regardless of which side they took.

So here ya go: a (more or less) definitive reference to the published articles about the Christopher Knight/YouTube/Viacom incident.

SPECIAL MENTIONS

Kevin Nalty AKA "Nalts" himself provided commentary on the controversy early on with this nice video that I totally dug...

"Viacom's copyright cops get carried away" - by Nick Ferrell for THE INQUIRER also deserves special recognition because this is the first time ever that I've been referred to as a "bloke". Farrell also writes that I "stood for" school board (yes this is a British publication :-)

And The 12 Angry Men Blog bestowed me with the honor of "Hero of the Week" this past Friday :-)

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PERSONAL INTERVIEWS

"'Saber man', YouTube run afoul of copyright" - by Gerald Witt for the News & Record

"Viacom slaps YouTuber for behaving like Viacom" - by Cade Metz for The Register

"'Star Wars Man' Runs Into Trouble with Viacom for YouTube Video" - by Chad Tucker for Fox 8 WGHP (with video)

"Small Town Man: Victim or Copyright Infringer?" - by Abby Prince for WebProNews

Plus Ultra Podcast Episode 5 with Tracy R. Twyman (audio interview in MP3 format)

"Vindu's View: YouTube copyright fight shows fair and legal different" - by Vindu Goel for San Jose Mercury News

"A tale of two videos: what's mine is mine unless you change it enough to make it yours" - by Vindu Goel for San Jose Mercury news

"Followup: Chris Knight wins battle with Viacom over YouTube clip" - by Vindu Goel for San Jose Mercury News

"YouTube, Viacom bow to light-sabre wielding defender of online justice" - by Cade Metz for The Register

"YouTube video involving local candidate resurfaces" - by Gerald Witt for the News & Record

"Chris Knight's Copyright Infringement Case Resolved" - by Abby Prince for WebProNews

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PUBLISHED ARTICLES BEFORE REINSTATEMENT

"Viacom Says User Infringed His Own Copyright" - by Slashdot

"Punishing Corporate Copyright Abusers" - by Dan Gillmor for Center for Citzen Media

"YouTube yanks goofy 'Death Star' clip at Viacom's insistence" - by Russell Shaw for ZDNet.com

"So by Terms of Service, you mean like a bull services a cow" - by John Murrell for SiliconValley.com

"Viacom steals video, issues take down notice to the artist" - by Fair Use Day

"Here's Your 15 Minutes And Your DMCA Notice" - by Jason Lee Miller for WebProNews

Viacom: It's Not Copyright Infringement When We Do It" - by Kristen Nicole for Mashable

"Viacom is a Big, Mean Bully" - by Kevin Nalty for Will Video For Food

"Viacom Can Take Your Stuff and Copyright It" - by Evan for Uneasy Silence

"Viacom runs Web video, claims copyright" - by Owen Thomas for Valleywag

"Viacom says that local blogger infringed on his own copyright" - by Darkmoon for LUX.ET.UMBRA

"YouTube Complies with Viacom" - by Jordan McCollum for Marketing Pilgrim

"Christopher Knight's Crapolicious Copyright Case" - by roasty for Crapolicio.us

"This time Viacom is accused of violating copyright" - by Greg Sandoval for CNET News.com

"Chutzpah!" - by Mike Weiksner for Connected Conversations

"Viacom - pokaz hipokryzji" by Antyweb (IN POLISH!)

"Man posts on YouTube: Viacom steals video & then files takedown on Creator" - by Simon G Best for Groklaw

"Viacom Accuses Guy Of Copyright Infringement For Showing Video Of Viacom Infringing On His Copyright" - by Mike Masnick for Techdirt

"Viacom's 'bass-ackwards' screw-up: issues takedown for video it 'pirated'" - by Jacqui Cheng for Ars Technia

"Viacom breaks copyright time continuum" - by DiscoZome for Unknown Worlds Forum

"Viacom orders YouTube to remove a copy of their work they took from said YouTuber?" - by Sean P. Aune for TECHBLORGE.com

"Is plagiarism protected by copyright law?" - by Silicon Valley Sleuth

"Full-Circle Copyright Infringement" - by The J-Walk Blog

"Quand c’est Viacom ce n’est pas une infraction au copyright!" - by Aziz Haddad for Mashable (IN FRENCH!)

"Copyfight: Viacom runs Web video, claims copyright" - by Technology News Blog

"Viacom in a copyright doomloop" - by Adriana Lukas for Media Influencer

"Viacom's Chutzpah" - by Jeff for spin the cat

"Viacom Dings Man For Copying His Own Video" - by Yahoo! Tech

"Viacom Pulls Clip It Doesn't Necessarily Own" - by Jackson West for NewTeeVee

"Viacom Accuses Copyright Owner of Copyright Infringement!" - by Mike Abundo for Inside Online Video

"Misusing and Abusing Social Media and Trust" - by Laurel Papworth

"Viacom's Got Big Balls" - by Bubba for Fazed

"YouTube DMCA Chutzpah? Sorry, Viacom Also Entitled to Play Fair Use Game" - by Donna Bogatin for Inside Chatter

"Urheberrechtsposse: Viacom vs. Knight vs. Viacom" - by Felix Knoke for Spiegel Online (IN GERMAN!)

"Don't make Christopher Knight the posterboy for copyright oppression" - by Evan Brown for InternetCases.com

"Say What?" - by Bob Schwartz for A South Dakota Moderate

"Hypocrisy in the Copyright Infringement Debate" - by Of Zen and Computing

"Viacom slammed for pulling VH-1 YouTube clip" - by Matt Chapman for vnunet.com

"YouTube-Related Legal Disputes, Part I" - by Peter Lattman for The Wall Street Journal

"Viacom s 'bass ackwards' screw-up issues takedown for video it 'pirated'" - by Chad Smith

"Viacom: Fair Use Is What We Say It Is" - by Scott Gilbertson for Wired

"For Me and Not for Thee" - by Sleepcatz

"Audacity: Viacom copies YouTuber’s video w/o permission, then accuses YouTuber of infringement" - by The UTube Blog

"Viacom Once Again Abusing DMCA?" - by Andy Beal for Marketing Pilgrim

"The One with the double standard" - by in the key of :: T

"Viacom: Direitos de autor? O que é isso?" - by OrangeEye (IN PORTUGUESE! I think...)

"Indie Filmmaker in Copyright Spat With Viacom Over YouTube Clips" - by Mark Hefflinger for Digital Media Wire

"Viacom demonstrates the meaning of the word 'hypocrisy'" - by Less for Stupid Evil Bastard

"Can you copyright something you've nicked?" - by Dizzy for Dizzy Thinks

"How to Infringe Your Own Coyright - It Happened on YouTube" - by Bogdan Popa for Softpedia

"Christopher vs. Goliath" - by Tilly Gokbudak

"Full-Circle Copyright" - by Bernard Goldbach

"YouTube coypright conundrum" - by Software Online Guide

"Copyright Infringement Goes Meta" - by Erin Simon for Maximum PC

"Hvem eier en YouTube-video?" - by Electroworld (IN NORWEGIAN!)

"Copywrong" - by Rob for Unconventional Wisdom

"Viacom's flexible attitude toward fair use" - by Matthew Sag for Fairly Useful

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PUBLISHED ARTICLES AFTER REINSTATEMENT

" Viacom Yields to YouTuber Who DMCA Counterclaimed" - by Slashdot

"Return of the Jedi" - by Ed Cone

"Amateur's Counter-Notification on Viacom Results in Clip Returning" - by Kevin Nalty for Will Video For Food

"YouTube restores clip downed by Viacom" - by Nick Farrell for The Inquirer

"Viacom admits mistaken DMCA notice after EFF gets involved" - by The UTube Blog

"YouTube restores Viacom-banned VH-1 clip" - by Matt Chapman for vnunet.com

"YouTube Reverses Course on User’s Video: Reposts It" - by Dan Gillmor for Center for Citizen Media

"Don't Be Bullied By Big Business! Counter False Copyright Infringement Claims" - by Justin Hall for My PC Pros

"Viacom Copyright Infringement Lifted" - by The Judge for Media Morgue

"Remember that guy who got his video stolen by VH1 and Viacom had his clip taken down from Youtube? He filed a DMCA counterclaim, and won" - by reddit

"School Board Candidate Beats Viacom" - by Movieweb

"School Board Candidate Beats Viacom" - by contactmusic.com

"YouTube restores controversial clip protested by Viacom" - by Ruben Francia for TECH.BLORGE.com

"YouTube Honors Counter-Notification Versus Viacom" - by Mike Abundo for Inside Online Video

"Man defeats Viacom in DMCA takedown dispute" - by vurbal for afterdawn.com

"Look Before You Upload" - by John Naughton for The Observer

"Fallen Star Wars Clip on YouTube Has Been Restored" - by Kristen Nicole for Mashable

"School Board Candidate Beats Viacom" - by IMDB Studio Briefing

"I'm Back" - by Jeffrey Starr for Not Bad Films

"Campaigners who get told they don't own the rights to their own election ads" - by The Labour Humanist

"A banner week for music and copyright" - by chooch for Shuroki Online

"Update: good guy wins, Viacom loses" - by Mike Weiksner for Connected Conversations

If there's any more that are found, I'll be sure to post them here also.

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Google accuses Viacom of secretly uploading its own videos to YouTube (WOW!!!)

This is gonna be a helluva fun thing to watch. I'm getting the popcorn ready even now...

Media conglomermonster Viacom - which has tied up the video hosting service in litigation for the past three years over "copyright infringement" - is now said to have been secretly uploading its own videos to the Google-owned website!

From the statement on the official YouTube blog, pertaining to court documents made public earlier today...

Because content owners large and small use YouTube in so many different ways, determining a particular copyright holder’s preference or a particular uploader’s authority over a given video on YouTube is difficult at best. And in this case, it was made even harder by Viacom’s own practices.

For years, Viacom continuously and secretly uploaded its content to YouTube, even while publicly complaining about its presence there. It hired no fewer than 18 different marketing agencies to upload its content to the site. It deliberately "roughed up" the videos to make them look stolen or leaked. It opened YouTube accounts using phony email addresses. It even sent employees to Kinko's to upload clips from computers that couldn't be traced to Viacom. And in an effort to promote its own shows, as a matter of company policy Viacom routinely left up clips from shows that had been uploaded to YouTube by ordinary users. Executives as high up as the president of Comedy Central and the head of MTV Networks felt "very strongly" that clips from shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report should remain on YouTube.

Viacom's efforts to disguise its promotional use of YouTube worked so well that even its own employees could not keep track of everything it was posting or leaving up on the site. As a result, on countless occasions Viacom demanded the removal of clips that it had uploaded to YouTube, only to return later to sheepishly ask for their reinstatement. In fact, some of the very clips that Viacom is suing us over were actually uploaded by Viacom itself.

Given Viacom’s own actions, there is no way YouTube could ever have known which Viacom content was and was not authorized to be on the site. But Viacom thinks YouTube should somehow have figured it out. The legal rule that Viacom seeks would require YouTube -- and every Web platform -- to investigate and police all content users upload, and would subject those web sites to crushing liability if they get it wrong.

Good. Lord.

If true, Viacom's actions are about the most boneheaded legal maneuver pertaining to digital entertainment that I can think of since Universal tried to sue Nintendo for using Donkey Kong to infringe on King Kong when Universal didn't own King Kong to begin with. That case became a huge victory for Nintendo and helped propel it to being the corporate giant that it is today. Might this allegation - if found to be true - prove to be a similar boon for YouTube? Yeah, I think it's possible.

Click here for more about this story, and the learned minds that are Slashdot readers are already contributing their trademark colorful thoughts to the matter.

EDIT 6:48 p.m. EST: Do not think for one moment that I am NOT hysterically giggling about this turn of events, for reasons that should be more than obvious :-)

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The Knight Shift is standing up for The Sideshow Coalition

About three years ago, this blog's eclectic proprietor had to learn awful fast and hard about Viacom and its dispute with YouTube. If you recall, if you worked it out in your head then logically Viacom was accusing me of violating my own copyright after Viacom took my work without permission and used it for a show on VH1, and then accused ME of copyright infringement for posting the clip of that onto YouTube.

Well, I won that case as best I can imagine an individual could take on such a huge corporation and eke out a victory (again, thanks in no small measure to the good people at the Electronic Frontier Foundation). And I've been keeping an eye on Viacom ever since. One of the things that has galled me most is how Viacom and its mega-hypocrite of a CEO Sumner Redstone have shown such disdain toward independent content producers such as myself. And recently Viacom referred to people such as myself as a "sideshow": intimating that the original content we're coming up with isn't as "legitimate" as the bigtime corporate-produced material that's allegedly being uploaded to YouTube in violation of copyright.

I'll use the terminology that I used then: this is "bass-ackwards".

Well, an artist named Alan Lastufka has disclosed that he's been assisting YouTube in its defense against Viacom. Lastufka and several others have come together in what they are proudly calling "The Sideshow Coalition". I'll let Lastufka explain things in his own words...

We recently all wrote brief statements for the court to read on how we’ve used YouTube to not only reach an audience with our original work, but how we’ve made YouTube a home, a business, or a place for friends and family.

My piece focused on DFTBA Records, and how this little company Hank and I started, run out of my garage, promoted only on YouTube, is now supporting numerous musicians full-time, myself full-time, and making tens of thousands of listeners from every country in the world, happy.

And none of that would be possible were it not for YouTube.

If Viacom wins this lawsuit, YouTube may be forced to manually approve every video uploaded to the website, making it impossible but for a select few to post videos on the site. No longer would YouTube be a place for everyone, it would be a place for Partners who are legally bound not to upload copyrighted content. This is obviously not what YouTube, or any registered YouTube user, wants.

Our testimonials and personal stories will hopefully help the court decide in YouTube’s favor. Viacom doesn’t understand YouTube, or the community. And Viacom wants every registered user to have to pay for the actions of a very small portion of dishonest users...

You can help by bringing this case to the attention of others. You can simply tweet a link to this journal entry, or you can read the brief and write your own thoughts on your blogs.

If YouTube loses this case, we will all lose.

Here's the link to the amicus brief that the Sideshow Coalition has filed in support of YouTube. What I especially appreciate about this is that Alan Lastufka and his colleagues are rigorously defending productivity and originality, whereas if Viacom has its way this kind of home-grown industry will be greatly diminished if not outright quashed.

Needless to say, I am throwing whatever support and goodwill that I can muster behind the Sideshow Coalition. And I will gladly encourage everyone else reading this to do likewise.

(Thanks to Jenna St. Hilaire for passing along the info!)

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"Dear Sumner Redstone, from the guy you STOLE video from ..."

In spite of what I said about no hard feelings, there ain't no way that I'm gonna let this one slide...

Many of you no doubt remember what happened between me and Viacom several months ago, regarding the first TV commercial from my 2006 school board campaign.

To quickly recap: months after the election, Viacom's network VH1 chose to use my commercial for a segment of its show Web Junk 2.0, without bothering to ask me about it. I didn't mind, heck I thought it was pretty funny. So a few days after that episode runs I posted the clip of Web Junk 2.0 running MY commercial onto YouTube, so that I could share it on this blog.

A month and a half later, I was notified by YouTube that Viacom had demanded that the clip be removed, and YouTube was acquiescing with the order. Viacom actually claimed that I was violating its copyright... when it had violated my copyright to begin with!

Of course, I couldn't believe the rank hypocrisy of the situation. "Chutzpah" is the word I used to describe it. And it really wasn't a question of whether or not I wanted to fight it: the circumstance more or less obligated it. I filed a Digital Millennium Copyright Act counter-claim with YouTube, while the case engendered considerable media attention. Two weeks later Viacom yielded and the clip was restored to YouTube. I still gotta thank a lot of good people, especially the folks at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, for providing considerable support during that whole fiasco.

You'd think that Viacom would have learned a lesson from all of this, right?

Jazz at All Thats Evil was the first to pass along some remarks made last week in South Korean by Sumner Redstone, the CEO of Viacom. Here's the link that Jazz sent from Inside Online Video, which cites John Dvorak's take on Redstone's remarks.

To wit...

[According to Redstone] When you post a clip of The Daily Show on YouTube, for example, that may indeed have a positive effect on the show and its ratings, but it’s not your decision to make. In the world of the media giants, a fan has no special privileges and is not part of the marketing department.

As a fan, your job is to watch a few ads (or buy a ticket), enjoy the show, tell your friends about it, and get out of the way.

And here's a quote directly from Redstone...

During a question-and-answer session after the speech, Redstone took a swipe at popular video-sharing site YouTube, which his company has sued.

"We cannot tolerate any form of piracy by anyone, including YouTube," he said.

Viacom sued YouTube and its parent Google Inc. in March last year, claiming that the Web site is rife with copyrighted video from Viacom shows and seeking more than US$1 billion in damages.

Mr. Redstone, I don't know if you realize this or if you even care, but I am a person that your own company not only STOLE video from, but chose to PROFIT from that theft!

And you have the audacity to tell the world that using the most miniscule segments of video, without asking the original copyright owners for permission or even caring enough to inform them that it's being used, is "theft" and "piracy"? When most people who post clips onto YouTube never make a cent for their efforts while you run a multi-billion dollar company that does the same thing for profit?

Sumner Redstone, shut the hell up, sir!

For all your talk of "cannot tolerate any form of piracy by anyone", you don't give a damn about YOUR OWN COMPANY committing piracy already!

Hell, Viacom never even offered me an apology for when it stole (I wouldn't ordinarily categorize using my video as "theft" by anyone else but Redstone's comments throws this into whole 'nother territory) my video.

Previously I regarded this whole thing as a misunderstanding, and that I was glad we were able to resolve this amiably and "go our separate ways".

But now, after reading Redstone's remarks in Seoul, I have to seriously wonder if I made a mistake in not pressing this further. Parse that as you will...

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VIACOM SITUATION UPDATE: YouTube has restored my clip

It will be two weeks ago tomorrow since YouTube notified me that it had pulled the clip I had uploaded from VH1's show Web Junk 2.0 featuring my first school board commercial. VH1's parent company Viacom had considered it an infringement of copyright and requested that YouTube to act accordingly. Later that same day I filed a counter-notification claim with YouTube, arguing that I should be entitled to use the clip because it was a derivative product built on material that I was the original creator of. The incident received quite a bit of publicity after I posted about it on this blog.

A little after 9 p.m. tonight I received the following e-mail from YouTube:

Dear Kwerky,

In accordance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we've completed
processing your counter-notification dated x/xx/xx regarding your video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddyVQwpByug

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

Sincerely,

Harry
The YouTube Team

And sure enough, the clip is back up.

Very special thanks to Fred von Lohmann and the Electronic Frontier Foundation for their terrific assistance in this matter! Folks, I cannot begin to describe how impressed I have become with the Electronic Frontier Foundation because of this. Theirs has been the kind of service that is so rare to witness nowadays that when you do see it, it practically comes as a shock. There's no telling how much grief and headache that Fred and his crew have prevented not just for me, but for a lot of other people also. And if you find that you are capable of doing so, I would really like to suggest making a contribution to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. This is one organization that really does merit a tremendous amount of respect for the work that it does.

There is more that I'm feeling led to say about this, but that'll have to wait to be appended to this post or on a new one tomorrow. But I wanted to go ahead and let it be known that the situation is now, apparently and very thankfully, resolved.

EDIT 9:33 a.m. EST:

There is something that I feel compelled to say now that this situation is apparently resolved for good. Something that I've been yearning to scream almost since this whole thing started...

At no point have I ever seen this, or even desired to see this, as a "get Viacom" thing. And I seriously regret that some people saw this incident as an opportunity to lash out at that company for sake of spite or profit or whatever.

Doubt it not: there's been a huge amount of frustration on this end for the past two weeks. But it's been such great irony that I've had to laugh about it too.

I've got nothing against Viacom. And I wish that nobody else would have anything against Viacom, either. Life's way too short to spend even a moment of it wanting to hurt others.

Believe me, I know from firsthand experience: bitterness will only reap regret.

Big companies are made up of people, too. Yeah, I know that a lot of big companies have screwed plenty of things up. But that's only because collective might magnifies the flaws that are already in every human being on the planet. And despite that apparent strength in numbers, you have to make yourself realize that it's not some corporate leviathan that you're in disagreement with, but the people within it... and it's altogether possible that you and they are more alike than you realize.

Ya see, we've made it all too easy to hate "them". It’s a hard thing to hate an individual person. But make that person a Viacom executive, or a Democrat or Republican, or a Protestant or Catholic, or a Muslim or Jew, or whatever, by de-humanizing them and sticking them behind some mass façade... and it becomes not just easy to hate them but it's practically expected that we try to destroy them!

I don't hate Viacom, no matter what's happened in the past few weeks. And I hope that nobody else does either, for this or for any other reason. So if you do, please stop.

Man has spent six thousand years struggling with law and how to comprehend it. We still haven't got it down pat. And then things like the Internet and digital media come and muck it up even more. I sincerely believe that's what happened here: Viacom and I converged on untrotted soil, in a way that to the best of my knowledge had never happened before. Fortunately, we got out (and once again I would like to thank Fred von Lohmann and the Electronic Frontier Foundation for their assistance with this situation).

In a way, I'm sort of glad that this happened. Just as I'm glad that I ran for school board even though I didn't win a seat. This Viacom/YouTube deal is something that I learned a lot from, and came out a better person for it. It's made me much more aware of things like copyright law and the DMCA (and the myriad of problems with that legislation). I think it's safe to say that from this incident I learned quite a lot about my personal strengths and weaknesses. It was a growth event.

And along the way, I got to meet and come to know a lot of good people.

Even the bad... or just the plain crazy... things that happen to you in life, you can find something good to take from them. If you want that.

It doesn't look like this is going to wind up in any kind of litigation, and for that I am thankful. If I can die someday without having sued or been sued, then I will die happy. This ends just as I had hoped it would: with the clip back up and, I like to think, with Viacom and me getting to shake hands and move on and wishing each other well. I'll certainly harbor no hard feelings toward Viacom for the past two weeks.

And I hope that Viacom doesn't think that this means that I want them to stop using my commercial on VH1. I just want to be able to let not only my friends see it but my children and grandchildren someday, which might be after the Web Junk 2.0 site has gone defunct.

Sometime in the next few days I'm going to "collect" the various news stories that appeared online about this thing and post them here, if nothing else than for my own convenience. But also for future reference in case anybody else wants to study what happened with this issue (including arguments that were made against my case... and there were plenty). Along with some other pertinent documentation, such as the DMCA counter-notification claim that I filed, which I would welcome others to study and scrutinize and if they feel so led, to criticize (hey, it was my first one :-).

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Viacom v. Knight at the Citizen Media Law Project

A few days ago was the one year anniversary of that very strange situation between multi-billion dollar multimedia conglomerate Viacom (owner of CBS, Paramount, Comedy Central and many other brands) and Yours Truly. If you're fairly new to this joint here's my first post about what happened and here's the list of all the news articles that I could find about it. Long story short: that wacky first TV commercial that I made for my 2006 school board campaign was broadcast on VH1's Web Junk 2.0, which even though neither VH1 or its parent company Viacom asked for permission I was still fine with it, 'cuz I thought it was pretty hilarious.

Anyway, I posted the short clip of my commercial on Web Junk 2.0 on YouTube, 'cuz I was so proud of it and that Rockingham County, North Carolina got such a shout-out. A month and a half later YouTube yanked the clip at the demand of Viacom 'cuz... get this... Viacom claimed that I was violating their copyright! Well, I filed a protest and the whole thing got some notice, and two weeks later Viacom acquiesced and the clip was restored. Here's the clip that caused so much trouble, including very many less-than-polite comments aimed at Viacom made by other YouTube users, which for reasons that shall be left to myself, I am not choosing to delete.

A few months ago Jim Ernstmeyer wrote me. He's at Harvard Law School and is involved with the Citizen Media Law Project. It aims to be a very extensive database of law pertaining to ordinary folks who - willingly or no - find themselves on the front lines of copyright litigation. The centerpiece of the project is the Legal Threats Database. Ernstmeyer asked for some information about what happened between me and Viacom, which I was more than happy to oblige him with.

And now, Viacom v. Knight is an entry at the Citizen Media Law Project! Which kinda officially makes it legal history. The entire site is well worth checking out for anyone with an academic interest in digital copyright or (like me, unfortunately) comes under the gun of bigtime corporate legal action.

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Viacom hits me with copyright infringement for posting on YouTube a video that Viacom made by infringing on my own copyright!

UPDATE 09-12-2007 12:29 am EST: YouTube has restored the clip

"Chutzpah" is a Yiddish word meaning "unbelievable gall or audacity". An example of it would be the story of the kid who murders both of his parents, then throws himself on the mercy of the court on the grounds that he’s an orphan.

That's chutzpah. So is this: multimedia giant Viacom is claiming that I have violated their copyright by posting on YouTube a segment from it's VH1 show Web Junk 2.0... which VH1 produced – without permission – from a video that I had originally created.

Viacom used my video without permission on their commercial television show, and now says that I am infringing on THEIR copyright for showing the clip of the work that Viacom made in violation of my own copyright!

The clip in question was pulled by YouTube earlier this morning, at Viacom's insistence.

Last fall, as part of my campaign for Rockingham County Board of Education, I produced three commercials that ran on local television. The first of them – which I simply dubbed "Christopher Knight for School Board TV Commercial #1" – was hosted on YouTube the same evening that the ad started running on WGSR in Reidsville. You can watch it at http://youtube.com/watch?v=nLi5B0Iefsk.

Well, the concept of a candidate for Board of Education pitching himself by using the Death Star to blow up a little red schoolhouse is admittedly unusual. The YouTube clip got around quite a bit: as of this writing it's received over sixty-six thousand views. I put it and the other two ads on YouTube so that I could post them on this blog (because I was trying to chronicle everything that happened during the course of my campaign). And I'd always intended to keep them up after the election too, in case anyone else might find and enjoy watching them. Heck, I've always liked to think that maybe someday, others might see how I was a candidate and feel led to run for office themselves!

A month and a half ago some friends let me know that the cable network VH1 was spotlighting the commercial on their show Web Junk 2.0, in an edition titled "Animals & Other Crap".

VH1 took the video that I had created and hosted on YouTube, and made it into a segment of Web Junk 2.0. Without my originally-created content to work with, VH1 would not have had this segment at all. They based this segment of Web Junk 2.0 entirely on the fruit of my own labor.

I got to catch the episode and was laughing pretty hard not just at host Aries Spears's witty commentary about my commercial, but that VH1 had found the commercial worthy of sharing with such a vast audience.

Please bear in mind that at no time prior to the broadcast of this show was I contacted by VH1 or its parent company Viacom. At this time, I've received no communication from Viacom whatsoever about this.

I was quite aware that they were using my own not-for-profit work for commercial purposes and that they should have contacted me. But I didn't really care that they were doing that, either. It was just nice to see something that I had worked on getting seen and appreciated by a lot more people than what I had intended for a local audience. And I was glad that Melody Hallman Daniel, the voice-over actress in the spot, received some widespread notice of her considerable talent.

I was so proud that my commercial had been highlighted on Web Junk 2.0 that I posted the segment featuring it on YouTube so that I could put it on this blog, just like I'd posted the original commercial.

Did I think about the issue of copyright when I did that? Of course I did! But if this wasn't a matter of Fair Use, then I don't know how anything else would qualify it as such either. I made the original video, VH1 used it without my permission and I didn't particularly have a problem with that. I thought that they would have readily understood that were it not for my creativity and effort, that this edition of Web Junk 2.0 would have had to find some material elsewhere.

And then this morning the following e-mail arrives from YouTube:

Dear Member:
This is to notify you that we have removed or disabled access to the following material as a result of a third-party notification by Viacom International Inc. claiming that this material is infringing:

Web Junk 2.0 on VH1 features my school board commercial!:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddyVQwpByug

Please Note: Repeat incidents of copyright infringement will result in the deletion of your account and all videos uploaded to that account. In order to avoid future strikes against your account, please delete any videos to which you do not own the rights, and refrain from uploading additional videos that infringe on the copyrights of others. For more information about YouTube's copyright policy, please read the Copyright Tips guide.

If you elect to send us a counter notice, please go to our Help Center to access the instructions.

Please note that under Section 512(f) of the Copyright Act, any person who knowingly materially misrepresents that material or activity was removed or disabled by mistake or misidentification may be subject to liability.

Sincerely,
YouTube, Inc.

So Viacom took a video that I had made for non-profit purposes and without trying to acquire my permission, used it in a for-profit broadcast. And then when I made a YouTube clip of what they did with my material, they charged me with copyright infringement and had YouTube pull the clip.

Folks, this is, as we say down here in the south, "bass-ackwards".

I have written to YouTube's division of copyright enforcement, telling them that the VH1 clip is derived from my own work and that I should be entitled to use it as such. So far I haven't heard anything back from them. After reading that last part of the initial e-mail that they sent me, I'm wondering how apt they might be to use the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to wipe out the accounts of anyone who even raises such a fuss about something like this, no matter how well-grounded it is.

What does this mean for independent producers of content, if material they create can be co-opted by a giant corporation without permission or apology or compensation? When in fact, said corporations can take punitive action against you for using material that you created on your own?

That's what's happening to me right now, folks. Viacom is penalizing me for using my own original material, which they used without permission to begin with.

I would really like to fight this as hard as I can. Unfortunately at the moment I lack the time and resources to do this on my own. I am also, admittedly, not an attorney. There's a good bit of knowledge of copyright law floating around in my gray matter, but it's not nearly enough to mount the challenge that I would like to levy against Viacom for doing this.

I want to publicly declare this: that I am not out for any money. Not a single penny. All I want is for the clip to be restored to its original address on YouTube. And I want it to be established that other creators of content have a right under Fair Use to show how their works are being appreciated in the wider world. I just want the rest of us who aren't affiliated with corporate media to have as much right to use our own work as "the big boys" enjoy for theirs.

Any inquiries or suggestions or anything else pertaining to the matter can be directed to me at theknightshift@gmail.com.

EDIT 8:22 p.m. EST: Want to see the forbidden video clip of Web Junk 2.0 using my TV commercial? Mash down here, grasshoppah! Special thanks to Richard Moore for hosting it!

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YOUTUBE/VIACOM AFTERMATH - Part 2: The DMCA Counter-Notification Claim

Because a lot of people have expressed interest in this, and because I haven't been able to see any reason to withhold this info at this point, here is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act counter-notification claim that I submitted to YouTube.

(And in case you don't know what this is about, here's the original post about my situation with Viacom over a YouTube clip that I had uploaded and here's the post about its resolution.)

---

It all started with the following e-mail that I received from YouTube on the morning of August 29th, 2007:

Dear Member:

This is to notify you that we have removed or disabled access to the following material as a result of a third-party notification by Viacom International Inc. claiming that this material is infringing:

Web Junk 2.0 on VH1 features my school board commercial!:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddyVQwpByug

Please Note: Repeat incidents of copyright infringement will result in the deletion of your account and all videos uploaded to that account. In order to avoid future strikes against your account, please delete any videos to which you do not own the rights, and refrain from uploading additional videos that infringe on the copyrights of others. For more information about YouTube's copyright policy, please read the Copyright Tips guide.

If you elect to send us a counter notice, please go to our Help Center to access the instructions.

Please note that under Section 512(f) of the Copyright Act, any person who knowingly materially misrepresents that material or activity was removed or disabled by mistake or misidentification may be subject to liability.

Sincerely,
YouTube, Inc.

I read this and a short while later fired off a reply to YouTube's copyright address (copyright@youtube.com):

This is in regards to the video "Web Junk 2.0 on VH1 features my school board commercial!" that has been hosted on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddyVQwpByug

This morning I received the following notice:

"This is to notify you that we have removed or disabled access to the following material as a result of a third-party notification by Viacom International Inc. claiming that this material is infringing..."

The clip in question that I had posted was from a recent episode of VH1's "Web Junk 2.0" which spotlighted a video that I produced and have full rights to. It can be found on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLi5B0Iefsk

My clip was used by Viacom for commercial television purposes without attempting to contact me for permission. I did not mind this. I was in fact honored that they thought it worthy of featuring on their show. If anything *they* are violating *my* copyright because they used it in this way without seeking permission. And now they have caused it to be pulled... when in fact it's my own copyrighted material.

I sincerely request that you look into this matter further and you will find that I do have a most valid claim in this matter. Upon which, I would like to request that you restore the clip as soon as possible.

Sincerely,
Chris Knight

A minute later, I recieved the following automatic response from YouTube:

Thanks for contacting YouTube! You've reached the copyright and DMCA compliance team. Your message has been received and is now queued for review. Please note that general help inquiries won't be answered here. For help with other site-related issues, please visit our Help Center at http://www.google.com/support/youtube/.

If you're requesting removal of a video that is allegedly infringing your copyright, please make sure that you have provided us with all of the required information in order to process your complaint. Providing incomplete information may delay the processing of your claim. For the requirements of DMCA notification, or if you have questions about our DMCA policy, please see: http://www.youtube.com/t/dmca_policy

Did you know that YouTube offers copyright owners a tool for submitting notifications more easily? If there are many videos to be removed, or you expect to have an ongoing need to remove potentially infringing content from YouTube, we suggest that you sign up for our Content Verification Program, which electronically notifies us, removing any room for error, and significantly increases the speed at which we are able to remove any infringing content. To sign up for this tool please visit: http://www.youtube.com/t/copyright_program

Regards,
The YouTube Team

That e-mail correspondence all took place shortly after 11 a.m. EST. Five and a half hours later, at 5:47 p.m., another e-mail from YouTube arrived:

Dear Chris,

We received notification from Viacom International Inc. When we're notified that a particular video uploaded to our site infringes another's copyright, we remove the material as the law requires. If you feel a content owner has misidentified your content as infringing, you may file a DMCA counter-notification.

For more information, visit our Copyright Tips page,
http://youtube.com/t/dmca_policy.

Sincerely,

Harry
The YouTube Team

I went to the link that Harry at YouTube sent me. I'd already visited it earlier in the day when I was looking at my options, writing up the report for the blog on what had happened, etc. After this new mail from YouTube I looked over it once again, and immediately began writing my DMCA counterclaim.

I followed YouTube's directions precisely. It didn't take long at all to compose and submit it. I sent it to YouTube at 6:34 p.m., less than an hour after the last YouTube e-mail.

Here it is:

From: kwerkyproductions@gmail.com
to: copyright@youtube.com
Subject: DMCA counter-notification regarding ddyVQwpByug

Dear YouTube,
I wish to file a DMCA counter-notification in regards to the following video clip that was previously hosted on YouTube:

Web Junk 2.0 on VH1 features my school board commercial!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddyVQwpByug

I do hereby state under penalty of perjury that it is my good faith belief that the material was removed or disabled as a result of mistake or misidentification of the material to be removed or disabled.

The video clip in question is a segment of the "Animals & Other Crap" edition of the television series Web Junk 2.0 on the cable network VH1, which is owned by Viacom. I used the segment per Fair Use because it is a derivative work from original material of which I am the creator and the copyright owner. The original video can be found at http://youtube.com/watch?v=nLi5B0Iefsk

Viacom did not seek my permission to use this not-for-profit material of my own creation for purposes of commercial television. As such, Viacom infringed on my own copyright. I knew this but did not seek to pursue any legal measure against them. Under the law, I still maintain copyright over even such derivative work.

In pressing YouTube to remove this video clip, Viacom is legally declaring that I am practicing copyright infringement against my own copyrighted material: in effect Viacom is assuming that it owns full copyright of the material.

I am sure that YouTube will appreciate the peculiarity of the matter, and will understand that as the original creator of the material and being one who is not seeking monetary compensation for Viacom's use of it, that I merely wish to continue using the clip under Fair Use. And as such, that you will restore the clip to its original address as soon as possible.

Sincerely,
Christopher Knight

(STREET ADDRESS)
(CITY, STATE, ZIP)
(PHONE NUMBER)
kwerkyproductions@gmail.com

I hereby consent to the jurisdiction of Federal District Court for the judicial district in which this address is located, and that I will accept service of process from the person who provided notification under subsection (c)(1)(C) or an agent of such person.

Once again, this was met with an automatic reply from YouTube:

Thanks for contacting YouTube! You've reached the copyright and DMCA compliance team. Your message has been received and is now queued for review. Please note that general help inquiries won't be answered here. For help with other site-related issues, please visit our Help Center at http://www.google.com/support/youtube/.

If you're requesting removal of a video that is allegedly infringing your copyright, please make sure that you have provided us with all of the required information in order to process your complaint. Providing incomplete information may delay the processing of your claim. For the requirements of DMCA notification, or if you have questions about our DMCA policy, please see: http://www.youtube.com/t/dmca_policy

Did you know that YouTube offers copyright owners a tool for submitting notifications more easily? If there are many videos to be removed, or you expect to have an ongoing need to remove potentially infringing content from YouTube, we suggest that you sign up for our Content Verification Program, which electronically notifies us, removing any room for error, and significantly increases the speed at which we are able to remove any infringing content. To sign up for this tool please visit: http://www.youtube.com/t/copyright_program

Regards,
The YouTube Team

And this was all that I heard from YouTube for more than 48 hours. On August 31st at 8:45 p.m., the following e-mail arrived:

Dear Kwerky,

Thank you for your counter-notification. It has been forwarded to the
party that sent the takedown notification.

Sincerely,

Harry
The YouTube Team

There was no further correspondence from YouTube, until this e-mail arrived on September 11th at 8:57 p.m. (and I first read it about 20 minutes after it was sent):

Dear Kwerky,

In accordance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we've completed processing your counter-notification dated x/xx/xx regarding your video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddyVQwpByug

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

Sincerely,

Harry
The YouTube Team

Well, I checked to make sure the clip was really back and it was. So after waking up my wife to tell her that this was, apparently, finally over with and that the clip was restored, and then making some phone calls, about an hour after reading that e-mail I sent the following back to YouTube:

Dear YouTube,
Thank you for restoring this clip, and I greatly appreciate your assistance in resolving this matter.

sincerely,
Chris Knight

---

And that was basically it so far as official action from this end went. It almost seems to have been too easy, but in all honesty I have to once again thank Fred von Lohmann and the staff at the Electronic Frontier Foundation for helping me out with this. Von Lohmann also suggests referencing the Fair Use Network's site explaining how to respond to DMCA takedown notices.

But if you ever wind up in a similar situation with YouTube or a similar service, and if you believe you do have strong grounds to contest a removal of material that you've posted, you can fight it and the first step is to file that DMCA counter-notification. Indeed, if you don't do this, there is really not much that anyone could do on your behalf. You've got to agree to some pretty serious conditions in filing the claim, such as potentially being brought to court and that you file understanding that you could be held liable for perjury. But if you sincerely believe that you are in the right and if you are willing to fight for your material, then the conditions really aren't terribly unreasonable. I can see that those things are there mostly to dissuade those who might file frivolous counterclaims.

So if this ever happens to you, now you know what I went through in getting my own clip restored on YouTube and hopefully it will help you out, too :-)

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Meet "The Dude Who Took Down Viacom" at SPARKcon in Raleigh!

That commercial is going to haunt me for the rest of my life, isn't it? :-P

SPARKcon is a grassroots-organized four-day festival in Raleigh celebrating individual creativity around the Triangle area and throughout North Carolina. This will be the fourth annual event and this year SPARKcon will be held September 17-20. And I've been invited to speak that Friday night about the very crazy situation that happened between Yours Truly and Viacom two years ago.

Look! Event announcement!

The Dude Who Took Down Viacom: One Filmmaker's StoryEVENT LOCATION
Artspace

EVENT DESCRIPTION
Meet North Carolina filmmaker Chris Knight, a.k.a. "The Dude Who Took Down Viacom". In 2006, Knight made a campaign advertisement to help promote his running for a seat on Rockingham County's Board of Education. Knight did not win a seat on the board, but he did win some internet and media fame as his commercial was featured in The New York Times, on the Fox News Channel, every major newspaper in the state, on National Public Radio, the Canadian Broadcasting Company, by the Heritage Foundation, VH1's show "Web Junk 2.0", and E! Entertainment Television's show "The Soup". The major attraction of Knight's commercial was his creative use of Star Wars as an allegory for his strong commitment to reforming education practice. Life was good for Knight, until he loaded a few clips of his infamous commercial's featurette on "Web Junk 2.0" onto Youtube and was slammed with a copyright infringement claim. Come here the details of Knight's battle tonight as the filmmaker recounts his battle with Youtube and VH1's parent company Viacom firsthand.

SPONSOR
Artspace

And look again! There's even a Facebook page for "The Dude Who Took Down Viacom"!

I'm really exciting about doing this, and I'm very much thankful to Nene Kalu, Kathy Justice and the rest of the good folks organizing the filmSPARK track for inviting me to take part in SPARKcon. Check out the SPARKcon website for more information and hey, if you're gonna be around that evening I'd love to meet ya! :-)

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I'm speaking at SPARKcon in Raleigh this evening!

Just a friendly reminder that if you want to meet the blogger/proprietor of The Knight Shift in person and you're going to be in the Raleigh/Durham today, that you're in luck!

I will be at Artspace, located at 201 East Davie St in Raleigh at 5:45 p.m. this afternoon during the filmSPARK track of SPARKcon: a grassroots-organized four-day festival celebrating individual creativity around the Triangle area and throughout North Carolina. This will be the fourth annual event and this year SPARKcon will be held September 17-20. I'll be speaking about the bizarre "copyright infringement" situation that happened between Yours Truly and Viacom on YouTube two years ago.

Look! Event announcement!

The Dude Who Took Down Viacom: One Filmmaker's StoryEVENT LOCATION
Artspace

EVENT DESCRIPTION
Meet North Carolina filmmaker Chris Knight, a.k.a. "The Dude Who Took Down Viacom". In 2006, Knight made a campaign advertisement to help promote his running for a seat on Rockingham County's Board of Education. Knight did not win a seat on the board, but he did win some internet and media fame as his commercial was featured in The New York Times, on the Fox News Channel, every major newspaper in the state, on National Public Radio, the Canadian Broadcasting Company, by the Heritage Foundation, VH1's show "Web Junk 2.0", and E! Entertainment Television's show "The Soup". The major attraction of Knight's commercial was his creative use of Star Wars as an allegory for his strong commitment to reforming education practice. Life was good for Knight, until he loaded a few clips of his infamous commercial's featurette on "Web Junk 2.0" onto Youtube and was slammed with a copyright infringement claim. Come here the details of Knight's battle tonight as the filmmaker recounts his battle with Youtube and VH1's parent company Viacom firsthand.

SPONSOR
Artspace

And look again! There's also a Facebook page for "The Dude Who Took Down Viacom"!

Once again, I am compelled to note that I am very thankful to Nene Kalu, Kathy Justice and the rest of the good folks organizing the filmSPARK track for inviting me to take part in SPARKcon. Check out the SPARKcon website for more information.

And I hope to see you there! :-)

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Judge orders YouTube to surrender ALL user history to Viacom

A judge has ordered YouTube to hand over ALL the history of its users - including videos watched and IP addresses - to Viacom, as part of Viacom's "infringement" lawsuit against YouTube and its owner Google.

I first found the story on Slashdot, which is reflecting a lot of outrage at the judge's ruling.

Since it's already been established that Viacom has STOLEN video from ME, perhaps I should sue and have a judge also give me YouTube's user history so that I can see how many times Viacom watched my own videos...?

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Photos from SPARKcon!

Yeah, it's been late coming ('cuz I've been alternately busy and lazy) but here's some of what went down at SPARKcon in Raleigh this past Friday!

My presentation, "The Dude Who Took Down Viacom: One Filmmaker's Story" was scheduled for 5:45 that afternoon at Artspace. About 15 people showed up to hear me discuss that very bizarre situation that happened two years ago between myself and Viacom. Just before I took to the "stage", SPARKcon's filmSPARK organizer Nene Kalu opened the show...

And then for the next hour or so I went into the tale about the run for Rockingham County Board of Education in 2006, that "Star Wars"-themed TV commercial that I made, how it went way out of control and wound up on VH1 and then the mess with Viacom after I put the clip of that on YouTube...

We had a question/answer session, and then things wrapped up around 7 o'clock. A few of us went to this restaurant down the street for dinner, and then checked out some of the SPARKcon fashion show...

And look! It's none other than fellow blogger Drew McOmber! He came to the presentation and we got to hang out for the rest of the evening at SPARKcon. This was the first time we had actually met in person. It's always awesome to hook up with friends from the 'net like that :-)

Yah, I know: I look horrible. Had been going on like 2 days without solid sleep prior to SPARKcon. Some friends are wondering if I've got Batman's metabolism :-P

Thanks to Nene Kalu and Kathy Justice and everyone at SPARKcon for a great time!

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Once again this blogger makes Cracked.com ("5 Famous Online Copyright Crusaders Who Are Total Hypocrites")

At this point I've lost count. It's at least the fourth or fifth time that my shenanigans have landed me on popular humor site Cracked.com.

This latest appearance comes courtesy of an article titled "5 Famous Online Copyright Crusaders Who Are Total Hypocrites".  With a title like that I just had to scan and tear it down and analyze it to see what I was doing that was so hypocritical... but I honestly can't find anything about my own part in that very strange episode from the fall of 2007.  In fact, the entire article is about corporations - as Viacom did in that incident - who cry and crow about copyright laws protecting their assets and then steal and violate the assets of everyone else without giving a damn!!

Anyhoo, my situation, "Viacom Lays Claim to a County Board of Education Campaign Video", made #2 on the list.  And if you wanna see the commercial that started it all, from my 2006 campaign for Rockingham County Board of Education, click here to watch "Christopher Knight for School Board TV Commercial #1".

(Personally, I'm still more proud of Commercial #2 and Commercial #3.  In fact, Commercial #3 has always been my favorite of that batch of ads.)

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Quick update on the Viacom situation

Well, this has certainly been an interesting past 48 hours.

There's been lots of activity happening on this end about the deal with Viacom and me: how they claimed I infringed on their copyright after posting a video on YouTube that Viacom made by infringing on my copyright.

It's evoked quite a bit more controversy than I had expected.

May be able to talk about this more in the next few days.

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Cover for TRANSFORMERS: THE SCORE album

The irony didn't sink in until a short while ago: all summer I've been championing the release of Steve Jablonsky's orchestral soundtrack from the movie Transformers. And Transformers was a Paramount production. Well, Paramount is owned by Viacom...

...and now Viacom is claiming that I infringed on its copyright because I uploaded onto YouTube a video that Viacom made by violating MY copyright!

No good deed goes unpunished, I suppose.

Okay, just had to get that out of the way for sake of the irony, 'cuz I do appreciate irony (even when it's not going my way). Anyhoo, I found this on Amazon.com's page for what is apparently now being called Transformers: The Score:

Looks beautiful! I soooo can't wait to have this in my CD collection.

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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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How in the world did I get associated with The Artist Formerly Known As The Artist Formerly Known As Prince?

Click here for "The Home Video Prince Doesn't Want You To See", a story on the ABC News website. It's about Prince, AKA The Artist Formerly Known As The Artist Formerly Known As Prince, scouring the Internet for "copyright infringement". The Lenzes, a family in Pennsylvania, had a video of their 18-month old son Holden on YouTube. The clip is only a few seconds long, but in the background you can hear Prince's song "Let's Go Crazy".

That was plenty enough for Prince to have YouTube yank the family's video.

Well, little Holden's mom Stephanie Lenz fought back and filed a DMCA counter-notification claim through YouTube against Universal Music Publishing Group - which is Prince's label - and their claim of copyright infringement. A few weeks later the video was back up.

And somehow, my similar recent situation with Viacom was brought into the discussion...

Caught to some extent in the middle of the takedown notice wars, (YouTube spokesman Ricardo) Reyes declined to address the Prince controversy directly, but said YouTube had been down this road before.

He cited the case of a North Carolina school board council candidate, Christopher Knight, who produced a daffy commercial in which he donned a "Star Wars"-like light saber and promised to protect the school district's students from a metaphorical Death Star.

The VH1 cable television show "Best Week Ever," which highlights amusing online content, featured a clip of the video on their show.

Knight "thought that was so cool he put up the VH1 clip up on his channel on YouTube,'' Reyes said. "And VH1 sent us a take down notice." (To view Knight's video, go to YouTube and search "Christopher Knight.")

If you go to this link on ABC News' website you can watch the televised news report about the Lenz's situation, and about halfway through they play the clip of my school board commercial on VH1!

Okay, that's... kinda... strange to be brought up in an article about Prince (never thought that would ever happen). But seriously folks: after what I went through with Viacom, and now what the Lenzes have had to put up with because of Prince's over-zealousness about his image (anyone else remember the thing about his bodyguards back in the 80s?), this is extremely frustrating to read about, to say nothing of how ridiculous this entire situation with DMCA abuse has become.

Do you realize that per the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, that every video on YouTube could be simultaneously claimed as "infringing copyright" and YouTube would have no legal choice but to pull all of them, without considering the facts of the matter in any individual case of infringement claim?

What if one political candidate did not like the YouTube-hosted videos that are favorable toward an opposing candidate, and filed DMCA claims forcing YouTube to remove all of those videos? YouTube would legally be forced to comply. And the candidate who had his videos removed, or his supporters, would have to spend weeks filing DMCA counter-notifications back with YouTube to have the clips restored.

In my mind, it's not a matter of "if" this is going to eventually happen, under the DMCA, but "when".

If this ever does happen to you, and you want to know how I was able to contest Viacom's taking-down of my own video, here's the full text of my DMCA counter-notification claim, along with all the associated correspondence that happened between YouTube and myself. This is absolutely the biggest arrow you will have in your quiver, if you ever get hit with a DMCA removal.

By the way, Stephanie Lenz - with help from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (a very good bunch of folks they are and I still cannot thank E.F.F. enough for how they helped me out) - is currently taking Universal to court over this. So I suppose it's possible that we might see some legal re-interpretation of this nonsense at some point. Let us hope so.

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More Viacom "infringement" insanity: Now lip-syncing to Prince is out

The story about my issue with Viacom and how they made YouTube take down a clip that I'd posted of a VH1 show which was already made with my own material is starting to get around. Now comes word of another crazy clip takedown on Viacom's orders...

Kenya Allmond received notification from YouTube yesterday that one of her videos had been pulled for "copyright infringement". The offending material? A clip of her boyfriend lip-syncing to "Kiss" by Prince!

At the rate things are going, it wouldn't surprise me if every single mash-up video using Star Trek on YouTube wound up getting zapped down the memory hole by the end of this weekend.

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Looking back on 2007

I don't really feel like doing this right now. We got back from a trip out of state a short while ago and I'm way tired, among other things.

But, these are the last few hours of 2007, before a whole new year rings in. So I'm going to try to do my traditional wrap-up of the preceding year.

I'm not going to sugarcoat things: 2007 was a very, very rough year. In fact, of the "year-end reviews" that I've done so far on this blog, 2007 has been by far the one that I wince most at thinking about. For no other reason than because I'm really not where I wanted to be this evening, when last December 31st I thought about where I wanted to be a year from now.

What happened? Well, 2007, more than any other year of my life, was a year of struggles. Many of which I didn't chronicle here. Some of them were. And some even wound up making international headlines.

But in spite of all that happened in 2007, for all the regrets that I admit having about the past 12 months, I can't help but believe that there was a lot of good that came out of this year, too. And quite a lot of surprises.

2007 began innocuously enough. Everything was quiet for the first few weeks. I started out 2007 hoping to move forward with my life on several fronts, including making a full-length film and getting a new business going. I dabbled a bit with YouTube "personal commentary" videos, but didn't make much headway there (I might pick it up again soon though).

The first big project of 2007 started on the night of the American Idol season premiere. Lisa and I saw a promo for the first (and subsequently only) season of the new Fox show On The Lot: the one that asked filmmakers to submit short films for a competition somewhat like American Idol. Lisa told me that I should give it a shot. So with just a month left to write, cast, shoot, and edit it together... that's what I did. Schrodinger's Bedroom didn't get past the first round of tryouts, but during the whirlwind experience I came to meet some wonderful new people, and it was a heckuva lot of fun to pull it off. And I personally think that considering the time I had to work with, that Schrodinger's Bedroom turned out to be pretty clever and funny. I just wish that I'd had more opportunity for filmmaking like that during the rest of this past year.

That brought things toward March, and things began picking up in earnest. One of the highlights of this year was when I got to host Monday Night Live for an entire hour along with Ken Echols. My April Fools Day gag wound up convincing a lot of people that I had run off to join the Amish (I don't know how I'll be able to top that... but I'll try :-).

And then a few weeks later, the rest of the year started going full-tilt wacko. At the April meeeting of the Rockingham County Board of Education, the board voted to implement uniforms at two Reidsville schools. A lot of parents and students at the schools protested, and banding together to form P.O.T.S.M.O.D. (People Opposed To Standard Mode Of Dress) they took to the warpath. I didn't believe in the uniforms either, and was asked to help out. I told 'em that anything I could possibly do to defeat this, I'd do it. We spoke out against the uniforms at every meeting for the next three months, and even took to the airwaves on the local television station WGSR. It all came to a head at the July 9th meeting, when some of us came in costume - including Yours Truly dressed as a Jedi Knight - with most of the area's major news media present to chronicle the mayhem. By the end of the evening the board rescinded their earlier vote, and the students at the two schools didn't have to put "civil disobedience" into practice (which I've no doubt they would have done). And I'm glad they rescinded the policy too 'cuz if the Jedi costume stunt didn't work, I had something else in mind to heat things up a bit.

Later on in April came something else that, in retrospect I do wonder if I'm beating a dead horse too much... but then I remember that there is still such a thing as honor, and that has to be defended with whatever is in my arsenal. At the end of April word got out that admitted sign thief and disgraced school board member Ron Price had filed a lawsuit against local publisher Richard Moore and Moore's wife Debbie, for their attempts to make Price accountable for his misdeeds. Which led toward all kinds of spoofing of Ron Price on this blog: Ron Price as Leon Trotsky, Ron Price as Rambo (yeah I made that one, and as they say "so sue me"...), Ron Price as The Godfather, Ron Price as Lord Voldemort, Ron Price as the Gravemind from Halo, Ron Price as L. Ron Hubbard, and then the piece de resistance: the Ron Price Jack-O'-Lantern! Probably little wonder then that I wound up getting deposed by Price's lawyer to answer questions under oath as part of this lawsuit, even though when the day of the deposition came Price's attorney Doug Hux could only show me a photograph of last year's Reidsville Christmas Parade and ask silly questions about it. The case is supposed to come to trial in the next few months but it could be dismissed sometime in January (and it probably will be). I've little doubt that I'll be next to get hit with a lawsuit from Price... but hey, if that happens, it's all the more fodder for parody for me to work with :-)

I didn't get much of my own filmmaking done this past year, but I could help out (a bit) Jae Solina with his short film, and he did a slam-bango job on it, too!

June was a good, productive, fun month. I produced my first pro-Ron Paul video (while Lisa was away at a 2-week music seminar in Georgia, and she's told me many times since that if she'd been here that she'd never have let me do that!). Not only did my Ron Paul video become a YouTube hit, but that same weekend my first school board commercial was screened at the Pixelodeon Video Festival at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles! Which was just one of many things that happened in association with that commercial over this past year, but we'll touch more on that in a minute.

And that same weekend, I took the Praxis II test in Raleigh... and pretty much aced the thing! Yes, I'm still very excited about that :-)

July of 2007 would see the publication of the final Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. So in the lead-up to that I resolved to read every book in the Harry Potter series leading up to that last installment, within a month. Within three weeks I'd finished them all, and went right into Deathly Hallows (here's my review of it). What an absolutely amazing, wonderful series of books. I can't wait to share it with my children someday.

If June was wild, it couldn't hold a candle to July. In addition to the "Jedi at school board meeting" hijinks and the Harry Potter mania, there was also my school board commercial getting featured on VH1's Web Junk 2.0 show. Which I've always thought was hilarious and I didn't hesitate to post it on YouTube. Ooh-boy... who'da thunk that would have caused so much controversy a month and a half later?

But in the meantime, there was one thing, even more than the uniforms controversy, that dominated this blog not just in July but for many of the months that followed: the fight for the Transformers score CD.

It all started when I saw Transformers on July 4th. I loved everything (okay almost everything about that movie. Especially the amazing orchestral score by Steve Jablonsky. I went looking for the CD of it in stores. It wasn't to be found 'cuz nobody had released it. I lamented about that on this blog. Lots of people started coming here as a result because they were looking for info about a Transformers score CD too. To reflect the heavy demand for this CD, I set up an online petition calling for the score's release. Thousands signed it. Apparently, it attracted attention of the suits at Warner Bros. Records (though how much real impact the petition had, is still debatable because as I understand it the score was going to be released eventually anyway). Some news agencies even picked up the story about the demand for the CD. In the end, on October 9th Transformers: The Score by Steve Jablonsky was published and sold out all over the place (as of this writing it's still doing very well on Amazon). And lo and behold, Steve Jablonsky himself sent some autographed copies of the score (including one that we later auctioned on eBay with all the proceeds going toward the purchase of new music instruments for schools here in Rockingham County) this way! I still haven't done with mine what I've planned to do with it: frame it in a shadowbox, along with a copy of the petition (including all of the signatures) and a little plaque that says "NO SACRIFICE, NO VICTORY!" Probably will do that soon though :-)

August was fairly quiet in comparison to the previous two months. All the way until the final few days, when... that Viacom thing... happened. The incident that brought attention to this blog from a lot of bigtime news outlets. On August 29th I was hit with a takedown notice from YouTube over my posting of the Web Junk 2.0 clip featuring my own school board campaign commercial. And if you wanna read up on just about all the various perspectives and opinions on this bit of copyright wackiness, here's most of the links that I was able to find. Folks, this was a huge thing for me to have gone through on this end. Never in my life did I think that I'd have to wind up taking on Viacom, a multi-billion dollar media conglomerate. And it just happened to have come at a really lousy period in time, too. Fortunately (and with a little help from the Electronic Frontier Foundation), two weeks later the situation was resolved, when Viacom dropped their contest and allowed the clip to be restored. Here's what I had to do, in order for that to happen, in case this ever happens to anyone else. When comparing all of the things that happened in 2007, Knight v. Viacom definitely comes in at the top of the list so far as "major" things go (especially regarding this blog).

A few days after "the Viacom incident" wrapped up, I got to post something much more fun here: my wife Lisa's "Star Wars"-motifed music classroom. Months later and the kids are still amazed by it all. Lisa says that every class, the children race to see who can sit closest to Yoda :-)

October brought a lot of weddings to our family (dunno why I didn't chronicle most of them) and some other things that kept me busy, that for some reason I didn't chronicle much about here. But also a bit of whimsy: in addition to the Ron Price Jack-O'-Lantern that I mentioned earlier, I also did this Ron Paul Jack-O'-Lantern, which was much more fun to make :-)

As the year started winding down, there were indications that 2007, far from ending quietly (which I had kinda hoped) might be going out with a bang. On the first weekend of November, while we were en route to another wedding, my beloved 2001 Toyota Corolla was totaled in a rear-end collision. I've got a new car now - a Toyota Camry, which I've already come to like a lot - but my Corolla had quite a lot of crazy history attached to it.

A week after the crash, I made it into the national spotlight again (how many times is that in one year??) when E! Entertainment Television's hit show The Soup ran my school board commercial. I got tons of e-mails and phone calls about that one, and one friend from high school later said that he was on his honeymoon when he saw me on The Soup. Heh-heh... that's gotta be a scary thought: "Chris Knight crashed my honeymoon!" Fortunately the clip I posted of that on YouTube hasn't been struck-down (yet). Hopefully it won't either, 'cuz it's an awfully funny segment.

Thanksgiving 2007 saw me deep-frying my first turkey in two years. I did two more for Christmas (hope to have the pics of them up soon) and consensus is that my culinary skill is getting better with age :-)

Also in November came... folks, I was seriously, seriously considering doing this: the whole "run for Congress" thing. And I'm very thrilled that a lot of people wanted me to do this. And I know that I said that I would, at one point. But after some thinking about it (which in retrospect, I should have considered a few things that I didn't at the time) I'm still not going to run this time. Maybe in a few more years. The past few weeks have proven all the more to me, that I need some more "personal projects" time in the near future. And I'm not ready for something like this right now. I do hope to run sometime though. And it will absolutely be a terrific, positive, and fun campaign. I came up with 5 or 6 ideas for commercials, if I had run this time. For now, those are going in the trunk to be used later.

In the month leading up to early December, I could barely contain my excitement for finally, after all these years, being chosen to attend this year's Butt-Numb-A-Thon film festival in Austin, Texas. Not only did I get to be there for 24 hours of movie magic (and other stuff), but it was my first trip to Texas and I got to hook up with some great friends and my brother-in-law. Plus, I got to visit the Alamo! Definitely a great event to go out of 2007 with.

And then, there was Christmas. Which was really good and I'm gonna try to get pics up of that soon, including some of the stuff that we got (including a certain toy for Lisa, that I had to camp out overnight in the freezing rain to get for her :-).

Okay well... that was 2007, I guess.

Was it a good year? Depends. I got to meet many wonderful people over the past 12 months, and got to do some things that I'd always wanted to do and a few things that I never thought I'd get to do. Going by that measure, 2007 was one rollickin' adventure after another.

But all the same: I don't feel like I actually accomplished anything personally, or at least anything that I feel much - right now anyway - that I grew from. A lot of what happened in 2007 was carry-over from events of 2006, which in many ways was a much more fascinating, rigorous, terrific year for personal growth and advancement. Looking back over 2007 with that same eye, I feel... a lot of regret. A lot of wishing that some things had been different.

At the end of 2006, I felt like I could do anything. At the end of 2007, I'm wondering: what can I do? Is there anything left for me to do? Is this it: a life of fighting a lot of never-ending battles? Yes, I suppose that most people would say that I did win the vast majority of those battles. And that I should feel proud for that.

But I can't do it. I know what I did. I'm thankful that, in my understanding at least, the right thing did prevail more often than not.

But I'm still not feeling any more satisfied with 2007 though.

Maybe I'm just being pessimistic about what's gone on in the past 12 months. It could be that it was all such a severe roller-coaster of a ride, that I'm now left wondering "okay, how can I possibly top all of this?". And with nothing that big (let's face it: taking on Viacom in a copyright dispute and coming out on top isn't something terribly small we're talking about here) on the horizon right now, well... what is there?

Mostly though, I do wish that I could have done the projects that I'd started 2007 out with in mind. But maybe that's okay too: there's always 2008. And in some ways, the end of 2007 made me more prepared to take on those things than I would have been if I had attempted them a year ago. So maybe there is something of God's will at work here after all.

Speaking of which: I hope that 2008 brings me closer to God. And I don't mind admitting that, either. Lately, I've realized how much I have failed and fallen as a follower of Christ. The past few months have taught me that while I was so busy fighting everything else out there, I neglected to confront some things in here. And I'm going to need to work on those things for awhile. Probably a long while. I might really have to give up blogging while I'm doing that, too.

So in short, about 2007: a lot of regrets. But I won't deny that this was a very, very interesting year.

Here's praying that 2008 will be a far better one. Please Lord, I hope so.

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