Viacom Dings Man For Copying His Own Video

That DMCA never gives up, does she? In one of the most bizarre stories I've seen this week, Viacom issued a cease and desist order to YouTube over a video clip from a VH1 show called Web Junk 2.0. (It sounds fantastic!!!) You can see the punchline coming, maybe: Viacom had lifted the video in question from the web (which is all the show includes), without permission. The guy it was sending a C&D order to was the original creator of the video that Viacom itself had stolen!

The video was a kitschy political ad for Christopher Knight, who was running for a seat on his local school board. (He lost the election, alas. He sounds like a good guy.) It's cute; I mean, the guy has a light saber in a political ad. VH1 eventually saw it and included on their clip show. Knight heard it was on VH1, so he snagged a copy of the show and added a snippet of their version to YouTube, as well. The only difference between the two clips is that VH1 added in some interstitial graphics and a commentator (seen in the screenshot above) to offer some insightful dialogue on how funny this clip really is. Knight's original video is still up, but Viacom's copy has been axed.

Knight has become a minor cause celebre in the blogosphere today, the kind of clear-cut "good guy" for which "fair use" provisions were made. The irony is of course pretty thick. Viacom is perhaps the most notorious of the companies abusing the takedown privisions of the DMCA, suing YouTube (and Google) for $1 billion over unauthorized clips, and here it is stealing other people's content and trying to pass itself off as the owner. In an effort to make nice (and ostensibly hoping to keep its billion dollars), Google has bent over backwards to delete anything that Viacom (and others) ask to be gotten rid of. It's doubtful the company checks the veracity of any of the claims, but it does send threatening letters to those who post such videos on the web.

The good news is that there is a "counter notice" procedure, but it doesn't look like Knight has availed himself of it yet. Here's hoping he does, and that he prevails.

Read Knight's entire tale here, and give it some thought next time you post something on YouTube or another video service.