How bizarre is this? Somehow an innocuous video taken by Jim Moore of myself, Adam, Mike and Juliette enjoying dinner in Boston has been adjudged by YouTube as infringing on Viacom copyright. I'm not taking it personally though because Jim notes that....
"It looks like what Viacom has done to YouTube is simply search every Viacom trademarked and copyrighted term against every Tube name, and then asked YouTube to pull down the videos, under the terms of the onerous and notorious DMCA. YouTube has now pulled the videos. Unfortunately, I suspect that tens of thousands of these videos are completely legitimate."
Jim also raises the question of a class action counter suit.Cnet has more on the fiasco. And here's a copy of the original harmless video - Sunday nite dinner at Redbones in Somerville, Mass,
UPDATE: John Palfrey says he loves Jim but the video was pretty bad! Randy Charles Morin thinks it might be that "Viacom was trying to save us from having to watch a bunch of geeks talk about RSS and OPML!" While David Weinberger wonders if "Viacom's spider saw "Redbone" in the title of Jim's video and thought that it was a clip of Leon Redbone. Does Viacom own Leon Redbone?"
THAT? Maybe Viacom have shares in the restaurant or are thinking on buying up the state of MA?
Posted by: Ken McGuire | February 03, 2007 at 10:41 AM
The EFF wants to hear from you: http://www.discourse.net/archives/2007/02/eff_wants_to_hear_from_innocent_youtube_takedown_victims.html
Posted by: Edward O'Connor | February 12, 2007 at 05:49 PM