school board election

Chris Knight's avatar

My friend Tilly Gokbudak posted a really nice comment on his blog recently, and I just had to share it here…

Lastly, my friend Christopher Knight of Reidsville, NC, has a quaint photo of himself visiting Natural Bridge near Lexington, Va. I was shocked by the stunning simplicity of this photo because Knight became a virtual overnight household name in the Triad for his great over-the-top tv spots which spoofed “Star Wars.” The ads were part of Knight’s campaign for the Rockingham County school board last year. They were even featured in an article in “The New York Times!”

Tilly is talking about the profile photo that is currently on my Facebook page. Here it is, taken in late August at Natural Bridge in Virginia…

Tilly also adds in this comment…

Alas, he did not win the election, but no one outside of the county knows who Ron Price**

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Search Engine hosted by Jesse Brown is a show on CBC Radio One (“CBC” being the Canadian Broadcasting Company). It’s about issues pertaining to the Internet and it’s heard by our good friends all across the Great White North. Last week Jesse phoned all the way down here to Reidsville, North Carolina and interviewed me about my recent situation with Viacom and the supposed “copyright infringement” on YouTube involving my first school board commercial. The segment is running on this week’s installment of Search Engine and you can listen to it as an MP3 podcast here....

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It was one year ago today – on October 6th, 2006 – that the now-(in)famous first commercial from my campaign for Rockingham County Board of Education started broadcasting on WGSR in Reidsville…

I had just finished it that morning, and while the video was doing the final render I ran out to find Debbie Moore so that I could give her the check for a month’s worth of airtime. Then I got home, burned it onto a CD and drove it over to WGSR and handed it to Matt Smith. Right after that I had to go to Greensboro for an errand, then got back home and after seeing Lisa I went back to the station to see if the commercial was running yet.

Ooh-boy…

Y’know, this commercial, I had to make it. If I didn’t produce it for my school board run, I would have regretted it for the ...

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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

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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

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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,

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A few days ago was when I first heard that Web Junk 2.0 on VH1, in an episode titled “Animals & Other Crap”, had a segment featuring my first school board commercial. Here’s the clip, which includes some pretty hilarious commentary by Web Junk 2.0 host Aries Spears (I was literally in the floor laughing while watching and listening to his witty remarks) …

Speaking of the school board ad, Tom Finnigan at The Heritage Foundation had some really nice things to say about it on the foundation’s blog two days ago…

The ad has been featured on VH1’s Web Junk 2.0 and in The New York Times, Raleigh News & Observer, and The Charlotte Observer. Knight deserves kudos for promoting a fiscally conservative message to a diverse audience in a novel and entertaining way. Judging by the almost 60,000 views and overwhelmingly positive comments, it’s possible that Knight

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A short while ago Wendy Inman – one of the members of the group opposing the school uniforms – told me that her daughter Rebekah (who’s been one of the most passionate and articulate speakers against the uniforms at the board meetings) woke her up in the middle of the night to tell her about something she saw on VH1. Seems that the VH1 show Web Junk 20 was running an episode called “Animals & Other Crap” and one of the videos they showed was my “Star Wars”-style school board campaign commercial! I haven’t seen it yet but it seems to be airing several times through most of the month. It’s coming on again in a short while at 10 a.m. EST.

So ummmm… I’m now being seen on VH1. Never, ever saw that one coming 😛 Thanks to Rebekah and Wendy Inman for the heads-up!

EDIT 9:37 ...

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