Viacom Says User Infringed His Own Copyright

Chris Knight writes "I ran for school board where I live this past fall and created some TV commercials including this one with a 'Star Wars' theme. A few months ago VH1 grabbed the commercial from YouTube and featured it in a segment of its show 'Web Junk 2.0.' Neither VH1 or its parent company Viacom told me they were doing this or asked my permission to use it, but I didn't mind it if they did. I thought that Aries Spears's commentary about it was pretty hilarious, so I posted a clip of VH1's segment on YouTube so that I could put it on my blog. I just got an e-mail from YouTube saying that the video has been pulled because Viacom is claiming that I'm violating its copyright. Viacom used my video without permission on their commercial television show, and now says that I am infringing on their copyright for showing the clip of the work that Viacom made in violation of my own copyright!"

Comments

Re:Fair Use

[AusIV]

He then used Viacom's derivative work, but, it seems, didn't provide any commentary on the clip you uploaded to YouTube.

Here's an interesting caveat with YouTube and fair use. The submitter said he posted the video on YouTube so he could put it up on his own blog - making use of YouTube as a file host. Assuming the blogger did make (written) commentary on his own blog, but the video is also available on YouTube without commentary, where would fair use come down on the issue? (I'm also assuming it was not an entire work from Viacom, simply a section of a TV show that talked about his ad.)