digital millennium copyright act

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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 ...

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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

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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

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Coshocton, Ohio is a town without free Internet. Thank the Motion Picture Association of America, which successfully turned off Coshocton’s Wi-Fi connection to the world because, allegedly, one person used the wireless access to download a copyrighted movie.

In addition to being of great benefit to out-of-town tourists and business people, the Coshocton County Sheriff’s Department personnel have found the Wi-Fi service to be a tremendous convenience by letting then file an accident or incident report without having to leave their vehicles. That’s no more, because the MPAA somehow mustered up enough power to violate the Geneva Convention and subject everyone in town to collective punishment.

(Just one more reason why the Digital Millennium Copyright Act needs to be mutilated beyond all possible recognition.)...

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The Electronic Frontier Foundation – which many of y’all will remember came to the aid of Yours Truly two years ago during that very bizarre situation with Viacom – is now setting out to document “the worst of the worst” of bogus copyright complaints. Hit here for the Takedown Hall of Shame, featuring outrageous acts of DMCA abuse by Warner Brothers, the Nation Organization for Marriage and many more!

(By the way, in my opinion there are few finer organizations out there than the Electronic Frontier Foundation: those guys really go all-out to defend the rights of content creators. If you’re feeling so led, ya might wanna consider making a contribution to ’em ‘cuz they definitely more than earn it 🙂...

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Oh geez…

Many of you remember a little over a year ago when YouTube yanked the clip I had posted of VH1’s Web Junk 2.0 that made use of my my first school board commercial.

Well, this morning I got another “Video Disabled” e-mail from YouTube.

This time, it’s about Forcery, the parody of Misery – about George Lucas being held captive by an overly-obsessed Star Wars fan – that we shot in 2004. Forcery was released in 2005 and I posted it on YouTube the following year, so it’s already been on YouTube for about three years now.

If you’ve seen Forcery, then you know that when Lucas (played by lifelong friend Chad Austin) is driving back to California after writing the script for Star Wars Episode III, he turns on the radio and finds himself listening to the classic song “A Horse with No ...

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During the past few days American Rights Counsel LLC has forced YouTube to pull more than four thousand videos that are critical of the Church of Scientology. At this time it’s unclear whether American Rights Counsel are representing the cult and did so at the behest of Scientologists. What is known is that a butt-load of Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown notices went out from the firm over a period of twelve hours this past Thursday and Friday, and YouTube had no legal alternative but to immediately yank the contested clips.

The affected YouTube users have already begun responding with DMCA counter-claims (which might explain why this blog has been registering a ton of visits to how I filed my own counter-claim a year ago against Viacom). That is indeed a wise step to take in fighting back.

But YouTube users shouldn’t be forced to deal with this anyway. ...

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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 ...

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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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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 ...

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