Information Law Possum (discontinued)

An update to the resume story

The Russian Yale student decided to end his fifteen minutes of fame:

First, he sent a cease and desist letter to IvyGate, the Ivy League gossip blog that posted his video on Youtube and on the blog itself.

Second, he made a DMCA complaint with Youtube:

From: DMCA Complaints
To: ivygate
Date: Oct 10, 2006 9:06 PM
Subject: Video Rejected: Copyright Infringement

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 [...] claiming that this material is infringing:

IvyGate: Worst Resume Ever: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjRZgmc3RyQ

[...]

Sincerely,
YouTube, Inc. 

As a consequence, IvyGate decided to host the video directly on its server, making a fair use claim with respect to the video.  They also might want to report the letter to chillingeffects.org.

Intermediate result: 1-1. The video and the resume are still online, but less easy to retrieve than before. As many cases before, the story tells us that it’s impossible to contain the dissemination of unwanted information over the www. This may be a good thing or not, depending on from whose perspective the information is unwanted (the Russian student, President Mugabe, me).

What is sad from a policy perspective is the fact that copyright law seems to be a more effective privacy enforcement tool that the law of privacy itself.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 11th, 2006 at 4:10 am and is filed under Uncategorized.