fair use

Chris Knight's avatar

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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Chris Knight's avatar

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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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 ...

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