Slashdot Mirror
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?
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.