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Viacom Claims Copyright On Irrlicht Video

Posted by kdawson on from the some-kinda-nerve dept.

stinkytoe writes in with the news that Nikolaus Gebhardt, developer of the cross-platform game engine library Irrlicht, recently had one of his video tutorials taken off of YouTube. A thread on Irrlicht's forum contains a copy of the takedown notice. From Gebhardt's blog: "Viacom, the corporation behind MTV, DreamWorks and Paramount is now claiming they own the copyright on a video of an Irrlicht tutorial. Which is completely ridiculous, of course: The whole thing has been written by me and the Irrlicht team, even textures and skins and logos have been created by me, and an Irrlicht Engine user... simply filmed and published it on YouTube.com. Here is a screenshot of the tutorial, it's really just a 2D GUI rendered using the 3D engine, nothing special at all."

6 of 258 comments (clear)

  1. Anti-competitive and suppresses free speech... by Karzz1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you elect to send us a counter notice, to be effective it must be a written communication provided to our designated agent...

    So this means that the media companies can falsely claim copyright to *any* material and the publisher is provided an email by youtube. However, in order to counter, you (the publisher) have to send a snailmail to them and wait how long before something is done about it? Are you even guarenteed a response?

    This is complete and utter bullshit. As we have seen in other articles this only provides the media companies with the means to takedown *anything* posted on youtube or any other similar site for that matter for any reason whatsoever. Talk about Freedom of Speech and anti-trust* issues.

    * -- If I don't like something that is said about my product online... I can simply have it taken down with the DMCA.

    --
    Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
  2. That's not all... by ack154 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Apparently Viacom owns the rights to a few people eating dinner as well.

  3. Possible Reason by indigest · · Score: 5, Informative

    There happens to be a 1972 album by Klaus Schulze that is also called Irrlicht which was originally released in 1972 and then re-released in 2006. Perhaps Viacom owns the rights to this album and their search bot mistakenly flagged the video as a copyrighted work.

    1. Re:Possible Reason by profplump · · Score: 5, Funny

      Since the legal staff hired a perl programmer, circa 1998.

  4. Re:Woops... by kaizenfury7 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Thankfully my wedding video and personal amateur porn is the same video.

    ...

    ...

    Goddamnit, use the INSIDE voice...the INSIDE voice!

  5. Re:if you want to bake a cake by gstoddart · · Score: 5, Interesting

    they don't care if there is a little collateral damage in this war against 'piracy'
    Well, I'm hoping that some of this "scatter shot" technique being used by the media companies in their so called war on piracy starts backfiring. I'd like to see them become some of the collateral damage, and for the lawmakers to reign them in and make them have a higher evidentiary burden.

    As it is, they basically get to threaten anyone without any justification or consequence. It's getting absurd, really.

    Cheers
    --
    Lost at C:>. Found at C.