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New Jersey Sues YouTube Over Crash Video
eldavojohn writes "The New Jersey Turnpike Authority (NJTA) has sued YouTube and a number of other video sites for showing footage of a car crash that happened on the turnpike and was, therefore, property of the turnpike. The NJTA requested the footage be removed under the DMCA — which YouTube complied with — unfortunately, the video was copied to several other sites. The NJTA still seems to be targeting YouTube since YouTube 'did not try to prevent the very same video from being uploaded again by users immediately after it was purportedly removed.' We'll have to watch this closely and see if, even after you take down material violating the DMCA, you are at fault to any extent for people who already copied said material."
Copyright this
Video is visible as part of a news report here : http://wcbstv.com/video?id=99739@wcbs.dayport.com& cid=2 (Flash required).
Found through Yahoo! video.
Copyright this!
http://www.flicklife.com/81920c872c1787382f04/Driv er_slams_into_toll_booth_and_explodes.html
Not if it's the obvious way of doing something. See Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service, which held that no, Virginia, you don't obtain copyright protection just because you put some effort into something.
From the summary:
Showing footage of a car crash that happened on the turnpike and was, therefore, property of the turnpike.
No. They don't claim they own the footage because it happened on the turnpike, they claim it is their footage because it was an NJTA camera that recorded it. The summary's incorrect statement leads people to believe that the NJTA claims everything recorded by anyone on the turnpike is their property. Reading the first paragraph of the actual article dispelled that.
Why do people submit stories and summaries before even understanding the target article?
Why stick up for big business?
This just goes to show that the whole copyright system is absurdly broken.
This has little or nothing to do with the copyright system. Just because somebody claims to hold copyright on a video and somebody else jumps to remove it doesn't mean they actually do hold that copyright.
As has been suggested above, there's a very good argument that this is actually a copyright-free video (no creative input was put into making it; it is a straightforward reproduction of what actually occurred), and google is reacting to a request they don't actually need to react to. If anything, it suggest's google's lawyers are broken.
> I don't know the DMCA and how it relates to take down notices, but I recall from anouther /. post on a different topic that you have to proceed with the take down no matter if it
>
> is copyright material or not.
This is not true. Nothing obligates you to obey a takedown notice. If you _do_ comply then you are immune to suit for copyright infringment but if you do not the putative copyright owner must still sue you and prove infringment. A takedown notice is just a letter from a lawyer. It isn't any sort of an official document.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
FYI: It's called the "sweat of the brow" doctrine, which allows you to get a copyright in something that is not creative just by putting a certain amount of work/money into it.. Other countries have it for copyright but the U.S. does not.
Correction: depictions of currency are not copyrighted, and postage stamps are copyrighted if released after 1978, at least according to Wikipedia. The distinctions are probably important, however, IANAL.
This could be interesting if YouTube fights it. It's an open question under US law whether security camera images are copyrightable. See this legal article, note 153. The Supreme Court ruled in Feist vs. Rural Telephone that the data in phone books are not copyrightable; "The standard of originality is low, but it exists". So anybody can scan in a phone book and put the info into a database.
That's a famous decision - whole industries are based on it. The Court ruled that originality is a constitutional requirement: "Original, as the term is used in copyright, means only that the work was independently created by the author (as opposed to copied from other works), and that it possesses at least some minimal degree of creativity. 1 M. Nimmer & D. Nimmer, Copyright 2.01[A], [B] (1990) (hereinafter Nimmer)."
The output of a security camera has no author. That's the key here. Copyright must start with an author.
"Killed in the crash last week was Bernard King, 52, of Lower Township, Cape May County... King, a dealer at the Atlantic City Hilton Casino Resort, was traveling south on the parkway when he crashed into the Great Egg Harbor toll plaza in Somers Point around 8:30 a.m. on May 10... King's mother, Edna King, said her son had a seizure about three hours before the accident... King's car was traveling an estimated 65 mph when it hit the toll booth." Parkway officials investigate leaked video of fiery crash
Evil sig is livE.
you have to proceed with the take down no matter if it is copyright material or not
No. First, the 17 USC 512 take-down system only covers copyrighted material, to the extent that it is copyrighted. So if you post public domain material, for example, then you can safely ignore a take-down notice. Second, ISPs aren't obligated to comply with the notice, although doing so will help to protect them in the event that the material really was put up in an infringing manner. Third, the person who put the material up can file a counter-take-down notice with the ISP, which requires them to put it back up again, or else lose protections against that person. Of course, this should only be done if that person believes that they acted lawfully and is willing to see things escalate.
Of course, if there's a court order, as opposed to a mere takedown notice or other cease and desist letter from an attorney, then the ISP had better comply with it. But that doesn't seem to have happened here, nor does it happen in most cases.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
If you look closely, there's a large curb in front of the toll booth. The car can be seen leaving the ground as its front end hits the curb, so it's very likely that the gas tank (which is almost always mounted below the trunk) hit the curb also. At 80 or 90 MPH (given the speed of the other cars), I don't think many gas tanks would hold up to a direct impact like that. With the forward momentum, all the gasoline ends up in the engine compartment next to the exhaust system which is more than hot enough to ignite it.
Gasoline is not explosive. A fuel/air mixture of gasoline is explosive, but gasoline itself is not, and no such mixture would exist in the seconds following a crash. There is absolutely zero chance of a burning car exploding (though it certainly can become quickly engulfed in flame).