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Just An Online Minute... EFF Reaches Out To Viacom Victims
by Wendy Davis, Friday, February 16, 2007, 2:45 PM

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The civil liberties group Electronic Frontier Foundation appears to be mulling some sort of legal action against Viacom stemming from its recent demand that YouTube remove 100,000 clips -- including clips with no connection to Viacom -- from the site.

"Were You Caught in the Viacom Takedown?" the EFF asks in its own video, quietly uploaded to YouTube late last week. In the clip, the EFF says it wants to hear from any innocent parties caught in the recent dragnet. "If your video was taken down after complaints from Viacom, but contained either no viacom content at all, or fair use extracts, the Electronic Frontier Foundation would like to hear from you," the company wrote in comments posted with the clip -- viewed nearly 9,000 times as of Friday morning.

When Viacom served Google/YouTube with a list of videos to be expunged, Viacom included some clips that were entirely non-infringing. For instance, Viacom asked YouTube to take down a video of a group of friends having dinner at Redbones in Somerville, Mass.

Viacom says only a small number of clips were wrongly targeted and that they'll be reinstated.

Meantime, at least one uploader, Victor Rook, has indicated to the media that he might pursue a libel claim. When YouTube took down his clip, a trailer for a gay wrestler documentary, the site posted a note saying, "This video has been removed at the request of copyright owner Viacom International because its content was used without permission," according to CNET's News.com.

The message's wording has since been changed, but Rook remains unhappy that he was publicly accused of copyright infringement. "That note said to anyone looking for my trailer that I violated someone's copyright," Rook told News.com. "And that isn't true. That's where they defamed me."

3 comments on "Just An Online Minute... EFF Reaches Out To Viacom Victims"

  1. Tim Patterson from Interpretive Exhibits, Inc.
    commented on: February 19, 2007 at 7:07 PM
    Aaargh. Big Media = Bully.

    Yes, there's more to it than that, but unfortunately that's what most people see. To get their way (right or wrong) they're going to step on a lot of little toes and it appears they don't give a damn if that happens.

  2. Jason Alfred from Avenue A | Razorfish
    commented on: February 16, 2007 at 7:10 PM
    I guess I don't understand, it was Viacom that asked YouTube to take the videos down; they weren't actually taking the videos down themselves - right? I mean, it was a list of keywords for Viacom properties that they wanted removed but it was YouTube software that determined what to pull.

    As for Mr. Rook being defamed, it wasn't Viacom but again YouTube that posted the notice that content was removed for infringement. If he's going to sue (and if EFF is going to sue as well) they need to sue YouTube as they are the site that held the content and removed it by their software method that falsely targeted certain users.

  3. Brad Alexander from H
    commented on: February 16, 2007 at 3:44 PM
    It boggles my mind that some people are trying to make Viacom out to be the bad guys here.

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