Viacom Shotguns YouTube - Indie Gets Caught In Crossfire
A couple of days ago, a training video for the indie 3D game engine Irrlicht was removed from YouTube after a complaint by Viacom that ... uh... they own the rights to the video, and it was in violation of the DMCA.

And exactly HOW does Viacom own a homemade tutorial video for working with the UI of some indie developer's own software, where all the art and resources were created by him or his user community? I can't wait to hear the explanation for this one...

In all likelihood, this was just a mistake. Somebody goofed. It had nothing to do with him being an indie game (engine) developer (but as a developer interested in Irrlicht from a few years back, this caught my notice).

This is apparently one of 100,000 complaints Viacom just filed demanding take-downs of DMCA-protected videos, so how can anyone expect them to make sure that this tactical nuke isn't causing some "collateral damage?" What, they should actually double-check all 100,000 of their computer-generated search results for accuracy to make sure no innocent people get accused of copyright violation?

In the grand scheme of things, I do not believe that this is a Big Deal. I'm sure there were many other innocent YouTube customers who were caught in the blast of 100 tons of spaghetti (man, am I full of metaphors tonight or WHAT?) that Viacom chucked at YouTube. This is simply a case of a major media company flexing it's muscles a bit, and simultaneously getting in a press release about how they were the victim of 100,000 counts of piracy. I doubt they'll reduce that number to account for after all the victims of THEIR neglegance - even the ones willing to jump through the several hoops YouTube forces you to go through when your video gets a copyright complaint. They'll just round up to the nearest 100,000.

Now, I'm pretty anti-piracy myself, and I believe Viacom has every legal right to order the take-down of media that belongs to them. But I'm also pro-consumer rights, and this indiscriminant attack strikes me as being pretty dang bad, especially if there are a bunch of stories just like Niko's. It seems to me that Viacom ought to be subject to some sort of liability over false accusations like this.

Otherwise, what's to stop some goofball like me claiming that I own the copyrights to EVERYTHING on YouTube, and get the entire site shut down?

Oh, wait, I don't have Viacom's money. Question answered. Nevermind.

Labels: Politics

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 1:02 AM (Permalink)