Viacom orders YouTube to remove a copy of their work they took from said YouTuber?
By Sean P. Aune
Viacom ordered YouTube to remove a video for copyright infringement, when they had used the video-in-the-video without permission.
Chris Knight produced three commercials last fall when he was running for his County Board of Education. One of them featured him using a lightsaber from Star Wars to punctuate a point about fighting for education. He had posted it on YouTube and it got about 66,000 views.
Along the way, the cable channel VH-1 decided to show the video on their program Web Junk 2.0. Mind you this was aired on the show without any contact from Viacom or VH-1 asking for Mr. Knight’s consent. It really didn’t matter as, of course, Mr. Knight was flattered, he clipped it from the episode and posted it on YouTube for people to see the attention he got.
This morning, Mr. Knight received the following from YouTube:
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=ddyVQwpByugPlease Note: Repeat incidents of copyright infringement will result in the deletion of your account and all videos uploaded to that account. In order to avoid future strikes against your account, please delete any videos to which you do not own the rights, and refrain from uploading additional videos that infringe on the copyrights of others. For more information about YouTube’s copyright policy, please read the Copyright Tips guide.
If you elect to send us a counter notice, please go to our Help Center to access the instructions.
Please note that under Section 512(f) of the Copyright Act, any person who knowingly materially misrepresents that material or activity was removed or disabled by mistake or misidentification may be subject to liability.
Sincerely,
YouTube, Inc.
So, Viacom had decided that Mr. Knight had violated their copyright by posting a video that featured them… showing his video.
Mr. Knight contacted YouTube explaining the situation to them, but as of this writing, he has not heard back from them.
The number of questions this raises about the state of copyright enforcement in this day and age of the Internet is startling to say the least. When you factor in that VH-1 used his work in a commercial forum, without asking his prior permission, and he in turn displayed that work in a non-commercial forum, you’re not really sure if the cart is before the horse, or perhaps the cart is in a separate county.
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