Dodgey DMCA Use May Lead To 'YouTube Veto Power'

BillGatesLoveChild writes "Bob Cringely reports that an interview potentially embarrassing to Steve Jobs was taken off YouTube. The interview was from Cringely's 1990s show Triumph of the Nerds. YouTube said it responded to a DMCA complaint made by NBD Television Ltd in London. Trouble is, NBD is not the copyright holder. They have nothing at all to do with the show and don't even sell it. PBS, who made and holds the copyright said they knew nothing of the complaint. Cringely tried to contact NBD Television Ltd who wouldn't respond. Neither would Youtube, who only speaks by form letter. 'Why did NBD Television make the complaint? Why did YouTube blindly enforce it? Is Steve Jobs behind this, or is it just another media company misusing the DMCA, at that, not even with their own copyrighted material? Why should a London-based company be able to issue DMCA takedowns, yet not be liable when they abuse the law?'"

Comments

Spam them

[Alioth]

You know what... perhaps we should get a DMCA takedown spamming campaign against YouTube - send out lots of legitimate looking DMCA takedown notices for video that's obviously someone's home movie, and do it over a period of months so the rate's high enough to notice, but not so high that they can obviously spot the erroneous notices without actually viewing the video being complained about. The resulting embarrassment to YouTube when they take down thousands of obviously legitimate videos might make them actually examine the validity of the takedown notices.