copyright infringement

Chris Knight's avatar

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.

Cracked.com, Christopher Knight, Rockingham County, Board of Education, Star Wars, school board, commercial, campaign, Viacom, DMCA, Digital Millennium Copyright Act, copyright infringement, hypocrisy, hypocrites

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 ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

Been a might busy on numerous fronts lately so I haven’t had much of a chance to get in a game of Warhammer 40,000 in awhile (though that also owes to the fact that I’ve been building up my army of Orks, muhahahahahaha!!!)

Anyhoo, it’s from the world of 40K which this next item comes from. Seems that Swedish torrent-trackin’ site/political party/new religious denomination The Pirate Bay, which has already made a name for itself letting users search for songs, movies, video games and books, has now added 3-D models to its database.

Which means that through the ever-improving technology of 3-D printing, it is now possible to download physical objects via the Internet.

Here’s how it works: you download the model and using a 3-D printer, the computer lays down layer upon layer of plastic or resinous material, gradually building-up a physical object. Right now the technology is ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

It’s a bit of a long read, but Corey Doctorow has published an exceptionally well-written piece at Boing Boing about the direction that general-purpose computers are going in regard to SOPA (the “Stop Online Piracy Act”) and other dubious legislation. Doctorow recounts the history of digital rights management measures, how they have all ultimately failed and will continue to fail, and how it is driving information as we know and enjoy it to become way too specialized.

Here’s a snippet…

…Ultimately, the question is whether every PC should be locked, so that their programs could be strictly regulated by central authorities.

Even this is a shadow of what is to come. After all, this was the year in which we saw the debut of open source shape files for converting AR-15 rifles to full-automatic. This was the year of crowd-funded open-sourced hardware for genetic sequencing. And while 3D printing will

...
Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

Now this could be a story about copyright issues that may wind up having a very happy ending…

It all starts with one Ryan Winzen, a 25-year old artist who claims to have no inclination toward video game programming but who has been creating custom maps for Blizzard’s Warcraft and StarCraft games since he was 13.

A few days ago Ryan sent shockwaves across the Intertubes when he went public with a lil’ project that he’s been working on…

Yup, “World of StarCraft”! Ryan is using the in-game editor and assets to create a StarCraft II mod that is… well, World of StarCraft. And it’s exactly what you’re thinking it is: a massively multiplayer online game that does for StarCraft what Blizzard’s mega-popular World of Warcraft has done for the company’s other well-known franchise.

Remember: Ryan used the StarCraft II editor and the game’s own assets to ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

If you’re going to attend the Mile High Music Festival this weekend in Denver, don’t even think about bootlegging the music. Merely considering the notion means you’ve already been sued by event producer AEG Live. The company has filed a trademark infringement lawsuit against “John Does 1-100, Jane Does 1-100, and XYZ Company” for illegal bootlegging… which hasn’t even been committed yet. Since nobody exists (yet) to contest the lawsuit, it moves ahead in court. It also means that AEG Live can get “law enforcement involved by using the lawsuit to ask the court to order US Marshalls, local and state police and even off-duty officers to go ahead and seize and impound the bootlegged material.”

Techdirt has more about this legally ridiculous situation, including the full text of the filed lawsuit.

(How soon will it be before we start seeing companies like Viacom using this sort of tactic ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

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 ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

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

...
Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

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

...
Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

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 ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

I caught on Slashdot this morning that Games Workshop, the publisher of Warhammer 40,000 (which I have gotten into this past year) has sent a very harsh cease & desist to BoardGameGeek, a website devoted to all things pertaining to tabletop gaming. The C&D from Games Workshop has ordered BoardGameGeek to “remove all fan-made players’ aids. This includes scenarios, rules summaries, inventory manifests, scans to help replace worn pieces — many of these created for long out of print, well-loved games. GW did this shortly after building a lot of good will by re-releasing their out of print game ‘Space Hulk’ to much hoopla.”

What the hell is Games Workshop thinking?

Ya know, I’m no stranger to the crazy world of alleged “copyright infringement”. And even though my situation was in the purview of the American legal system and Games Workshop is a company based in the United ...

Read more