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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."
It's an automated camera system. There's no creative input. Thus, no copyright.
The turnpike was funded by tax dollars.
So as far as im concerned its public not private
My 2 Watts
p.s. file under DMCA abuse
Copyright this
So...what was YouTube supposed to do? Seize control of the internet and delete all copies of the video?
Maurice Wilkes, debugging, 1949
"The NJTA also is suing unnamed corporations and individuals who may have helped distribute the stolen video. "
Exactly -- who stole the media to begin with, and why aren't they looking more thoroughly into their own security problems, rather than spit lawsuits? Why are they unnamed, but the video sites are put right out there publicly? Detract attention from the real problem? The above quote is the very last sentence from TFA, and the only mention of how the video was leaked...
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.
A more reasonable legal tool for knocking this off the internet might be for the estate of the dead guy to sue under an right of publicity/invasion of privacy theory.
Some stuff doesn't belong in public circulation... but copyright is not the only way to control that sort of thing.
Copyright this!
http://www.flicklife.com/81920c872c1787382f04/Driv er_slams_into_toll_booth_and_explodes.html
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.
This was a public, newsworthy event, captured by a public camera. Not only is there nothing wrong with viewing and posting it, there is something decidedly wrong with trying to hide it. In fact, that's the kind of behavior you'd expect if they are concerned about getting sued (say, over dangerous tool booth design or signage).
Whether or not they are concerned about liability in this particular case, setting a precedent that governments can take down public footage of public, newsworthy events through the DMCA would be bad. This kind of video needs to be open to public scrutiny.
The Slashdot article does not make it clear that the video was taken using NJTP property. On first reading, I thought that someone used their own camera to record this, and New Jersey was somehow claiming copyright on anything that happened on the turnpike.
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?
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.
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.
Really, he's not going to get upset about the video.
Anyway it's public record and even a news story.
I don't think anybody has a right to privacy about something that happens in public.
Why did the guy crash? According to this the driver had a "history of seizures". If so, then he shouldn't be driving at all, he was a danger to others. Or perhaps it was a suicide, or he could have been drunk or asleep, who knows. But anyway, he was the only one to blame on what happened. It was only luck that made him hit a toll booth and no one else was injured, he could have very easily killed innocent people.
Now, the reason why I think the highway agency is trying to kill this video is because it shows how insecure the toll booths are. It would be very easy and cheap to build a crash barrier so that any car that goes off the lanes would be stopped without exploding like the car in the video did. Just a few sand-filled plastic barrels in front of each booth would do it.
If anybody has a right to sue, I guess it would be the family of the driver that would have the right to sue the NJTA over the lack of such a protective barrier. I believe it should fall more or less in the same case of the people who successfully sued Ford because their relatives were killed in a Pinto that burst in flames in a crash. Even if Ford didn't cause those accidents, they should have provided better protection for the gas tank in the car.
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.
Those numbers also work if the trooper was on speed gun duty just before the toll. (ironically for the purpose of slowing drivers down as they approach)
I've seen troopers in several states take up positions both before and after toll areas.
Makes for lots of sudden braking.
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.
They "requested the footage be removed", thus guaranteeing that that this obscure video would be copied all over the internet and millions of people would get to see it.
Will they never learn?
No sig today...
That's what I would do, and I saw in the video that the police officer was the only one who stopped close to the wreck and then approached it. Other drivers either stopped at least 100-150 ft. away, or just drove through the EZ pass because their help was *obviously* not needed (unless one of them could bring back the dead - a crash at 90+ mph is deadly enough even without the fire.)
Word to the wise:
If you ever see a car accident just to the side of you, and are planning on stopping to assist, pull PAST the accident before pulling over (assuming you can do so safely). Don't just stop right where you are. Behind or right next to the accident, you're just going to be in the way of the firetrucks, ambulances, etc. that are going to need to get in, plus you'll be stuck there until the scene is clear and everyone else is out of the way, which is far longer than you'll be of any use.
If I'd been in the SUV, I would have pulled through the plaza, gotten over to the side, and then gone and seen if there was any place to assist. Not park my big freaking car right in the middle of everything, particularly when there's already police on the scene (and no need to use it to block traffic -- that would be the only valid reason to stop in front of things).
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Did they get the appropriate releases signed from all of the persons recorded?
Have gnu, will travel.
The saddest poem
Then I consider her a minor hero for having the clarity of mind to realize that there's not much she can do to help and for making an effort to swiftly continue on her way without holding up traffic behind her like all the idiots who are rubbernecking to get a vicarious thrill off of someone else's misfortune.
If more people were like her, we wouldn't have traffic jams after traffic accidents due to people indulging in their curiosity at the expense of others.
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