copyright infringement

Chris Knight's avatar

Now that the Viacom/YouTube situation is behind me (I hope), I’m in the process of putting together a collection of the various published news stories/blog posts about it all: from the time it began to its resolution. And I’m also working on documenting the step-by-step process that I went through to contest it, including the full text of the counterclaim.

Suffice it to say, one of the things that has happened as a result of all this is that I’m now much more interested in digital copyright matters than I was before.

So this article on Slashdot caught my eye: a pro-atheist group called the Rational Response Squad has had its YouTube account terminated after an organization called Creation Science Evangelism Ministries allegedly flooded YouTube with “false DMCA copyright requests”. The termination apparently came after the Rational Response Squad tried to contest the copyright claims (I’m assuming this means that ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

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,

...
Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

“Look for the complete and factual account of the Viacom incident on this web page in the near future. The account has been delayed due to pending litigation.”

Yes, even now, I can’t resist having some fun with this situation 🙂

There is a massive update coming on this, and hopefully in the next few days. In the meantime, if you’re a reasonably long-term reader of this blog you’ll no doubt “get” the above joke....

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

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....

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

So I just got online for the day and guess what I saw at the top of the page on Slashdot:

It’s the story about how Viacom claims I’m infringing on their copyright after they infringed on MY copyright! I just took a look at the original post that I made about this and in the last little while it’s gone from 4 comments when I went to bed last night, to 20. I haven’t read those yet but I’m about to.

So to all of the good folks who are finding their way to this blog from Slashdot: welcome! Thanks for coming! Hope you’ll like what you find here 🙂...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

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 ...

Read more