As everybody knows now, Viacom forced YouTube to take down 100,000 videos today, and to send out tens of thousands of DMCA Complaint notices. I received one for a genuine personal video that is certainly not infringing on Viacom. Here is the video, now hosted at Google Video. Let me know what you think!
John Palfrey of the Berkman Center blogged about my situation, and he received a very nice email from a man named Michael Fricklas of Viacom. Mr. Fricklas apologized for the mistake, and said that it had already been corrected. Hmmm. When I last checked, which was just a minute ago, the video was blocked. You can try it yourself by clicking here. If they’ve restored it, you will view my simple minded tube–if they’ve not, you will see
This video has been removed at the request of copyright owner Viacom International Inc. because its content was used without permission
From: “Fricklas, Michael”
Date: Fri, 2 Feb 2007 18:21:02
To:
Subject:
Saw your blog post about your video coming down (at least I think it was your post)
There’s a simple procedure for protesting a takedown – but when we saw your blog we corrected the error. We actually do view (supposedly) every video being taken down, but sometimes stuff gets through.
Sorry for any problem
Now I must ask: Do you realy really think they viewed every video? David Weinberger speculates that Viacom used spiders to search for “Leon Redbone” and found my video about “Sunday nite dinner at Redbones in Somerville, Mass.” Yup. LOL, as they say.
PS, David wondered what would happen if blogosphere folks uploaded geniune personal videos with the names of various Viacom stars–just to see what happens.
