US Air Force Issues DMCA Takedown Notice

palegray.net writes "Threat Level brings us the story of the US Air Force's use of the DMCA to forcibly remove a 'Cyber Command' recruitment video that they had previously thanked Threat Level for running. The article notes that US government works are not even subject to copyright, but this fact didn't stop YouTube from caving and taking down the video."

Comments

Isn't this against the law?

[djcapelis]

Wouldn't the air force have to claim that they were in fact the copyright owner of this video to file a DMCA notice? Doesn't that mean YouTube or the person who posted it could actually just go ahead and file suit against the government since this is a false claim?

Is there someone who'd like to provide an insightful comment and then proclaim IANAL on this one?

Re:Isn't this against the law?

[jlarocco]

Read the Wikipedia entry the OP posted. It says: "The federal government can hold copyrights to works when they are transferred to it, as can happen with work produced by contractors."

The Air Force almost certainly paid a contractor to make the video. Thus (assuming Wikipedia is correct) they could legally own the copyright.

Re:Isn't this against the law?

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering that hiring a contractor is an outside case, it seems fair that the government prove that the only people ever involved in making the video were all contractors. Every single person involved in the video (I'm betting there's a nice long list of credits at the end of it) should be questioned, in court, to find if at the time they were employed by the government. I'm willing to bet in the case of something such as a video, while contractors would be involved, there would also be some government employees involved, as actors or otherwise, muddying the copyright waters. Those sections of the video involving anyone working for the government should be permitted to be stripped from the video and made public.

And, of course, this is why the DMCA is bad, since it's an act-first, ask-questions-later, law. Hopefully the affected individual will stand up for their right to a hearing by posting a counter notification, forcing the government's hand. It's not likely they will, though.

Fraud much?

[LiENUS]

This sounds like an instance of blatant fraud. The lawyer willfully committed perjury and didn't even go through the proper channels on her end. It sounds like she wanted to try and further her career by taking initiative and bringing down the hammer for her client. Except she did not do it with her clients permission and even went against what the client had previously indicated. At best she should be liable at worse disbarred.

Somewhat related

[symbolset]

Depictions of people are restricted by their rights of privacy and publicity. You may object to the unrestricted release of your picture or video into the public domain, even if you consented to be in a video released by the US government for a particular purpose.

This is not precisely on point because the notice was from the government and not the actors, but it's an issue for people who would republish US government works so I thought I'd point this gotcha out to everyone here.

The US government publishes an amazing quantity of content that enriches us all. I use some of it in web design. But not pictures of people without their permission.

Is the lawyer an intern?

[slashqwerty]

The DMCA takedown notice has amateur written all over it. From the notice:

I hereby certify under penalty of perjury that the information in this notice is accurate...

Nobody says that because the law doesn't require it. The law only requires the lawyer to state under penalty of perjury that they represent the person/organization they claim to represent. The rest of the notice only has to be made with a good-faith belief that it is accurate.

She also states:

I have a good faith belief that none of the materials or activities listed above has been authorized by the U.S. Air Force, its agents, or the law.

The Air Force actually asked Wired to publish the video. Their own website even claims it may be copied and distributed. The takedown notice was supposed to go through the Air Force marketing cheif's office but never did. I suspect Ms Pikser isn't the most qualified of lawyers.

Re:Overblown issue

[adona1]

It's becoming all too common that they remove videos without apparently needing verification though. I realise that under the DMCA a company has to act when notified that they're hosting infringing material, but ever since they were bought by Google they've become the most tread-lightly-offend-none company around. Surely with the huge resources available to Youtube they'd be able to actually double check these DMCA requests to make sure they actually have merit?

IANAL, if you hadn't guessed... ;)