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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."
This is an abuse of the concept of copyright by the turkpike authority; they're simply trying to censor unpleasant material. That we even entertain this idea is insanity, and is a testament to this idea that everything needs to be fenced off and owned. The turnpike organization is a public authority, and even if it weren't, you can't claim copyright on an automated recording of a public place! There's no creative element, no promotion of the arts, nothing other than a senseless and greedy enclosure of what ought to be common.
That argument was used against cameras before, and it failed. It'll fail now. There might not be much creativity, but the threshold is so low for that, that I have no doubt that it would be found sufficient. I agree that it shouldn't be, partially because the threshold should be a touch higher than that (or at least more carefully analyzed than is usual), and that an additional requirement should be the intent of the author to make a creative work, as opposed to something else, e.g. a mere recording for other purposes (to catch toll evaders, to record accidents, to compile evidence against criminals as to their whereabouts, etc.). But that's not going to help much here.
-- 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.
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. I think once you have complied you can fight it if its not copyright or not. But I think the law actually states that you have to take it down imediatly.
But I'm no lawyer and I don't know the DMCA I just remember reading that here somewhere.
I agree, but the current federal statute only prohibits the federal government from getting copyrights on works it creates. It ought to do the same for all governments, at all levels, worldwide. Governments don't need the incentive of copyright to create works; either they have other reasons, or they shouldn't be doing it anyway. So right now it would be up to New Jersey to have a similar policy as the federal government has. AFAIK, they don't.
-- 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.
I did like a 2 minute search on Lexis and one case I found was where a county government sued for copyright infringement on tax maps and it was dismissed due to the state's FOIA. So even if they are able to get copyright, the FOIA may trump it.
Have another look at the video, more closely this time. It is quite obvious in the higher quality versions that the second car coming up to the toll gates after the crash is a police car with the lights on the roof flashing.
A grand total of 13 seconds passes between the initial impact by the crashed car and up until the police car comes to a complete stop. A fair amount of that time, about four seconds, shows the police car rolling slowly to a stop on camera. In other words it was giving chase to the crashed car, since there is only nine seconds worth of driving time between the crash victim and the police car. Some of those nine seconds was spent slowing down the chase car off camera, so unless you believe in extremely unlikely coincidences, then the police car was right on the tail of the crash victim a few moments before the crash.
Your speculations as to motives may commence below.
Correct. My girlfriend had a period of about a year in college where she would occasionally get minor seizures on the left side of her body. She could tell one was coming a few minutes before they occurred, and because they were on the left even if one had come on suddenly it didn't really affect her ability to operate the gas/brake or steer out of traffic to wait for them to end. She didn't report it precisely because she needed to drive to get to work and knew she'd lose her license, have to drop out of school, etc.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Except the SUV owner, who is probably late to get her kids to school while she talks to the secretary of the PTA on her cell phone, who actively changes lane to avoid SAID FUCKING FIREBALL that HAPPENED WITHIN EYESIGHT, and cruises on past.
Sure, it can be done. There's no reason why the government cannot condition acceptance of public funds on having any work that is wholly or partially funded with that money be in the public domain. It is of course up to the author as to whether or not to accept the money and the strings that accompany it. If the copyright is terribly important to them, they'll secure funding elsewhere.
such as whether police filming police actions (ie. producing wholly state-funded content) is privately-owned or public-domain material. That could touch on evidence laws too, perhaps?
Films made by police in the course of their official duties would fall under the government. The individual policeman is doing it as a policeman, not as a private person. As far as production of copies in evidence, courts routinely ignore copyright law for these sorts of things. The needs of the overall judicial system come first, and even if you wanted to argue it (which would be unbelievably foolish; litigants are guaranteed discovery and this would be guaranteed to piss off a judge) I cannot think of many stronger fair use arguments.
(I have heard of at least one lawyer who tried to interfere significantly in discovery with copyright arguments. I only heard of it long after the fact, but had it happened to me, I'd've pressed for sanctions from the court and the bar in a heartbeat.)
-- 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.
Sure, there is the problem that it's pretty easy to send a frivolous take-down notice and most site operators will comply rather than risk a lawsuit, but with the proliferation of so many video sites, the content will just pop up somewhere else, and the copyright owners are destined to lose this game of whack-a-mole.
The saddest poem