web junk 20

Chris Knight's avatar

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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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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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 🙂...

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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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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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