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More DMCA Censorship at Yahoo!
Thomas Hawk writes "Once again a Yahoo! user has found themselves on the short end of the DMCA stick. Video blogger Loren Feldman recently found that his video mocking (read parody) the Village People and blogger Shel Israel was removed from the Yahoo! service after Scorpio Music served Yahoo! with a DMCA takedown notice. The video in question contained a very brief fair use parody snippet of the Village People song YMCA as performed by a puppet. What's more, Yahoo! threatened Feldman with the termination of all of his Yahoo! services including the revocation of his Yahoo ID."
Since Yahoo! is in the delicate stage of being bought out by Microsoft, they're trying to avoid any lawsuits that could cause the buying price to be pulled lower. This is probably the reason that they are acting like consummate assholes. Normally the yahoos couldn't care less about pissant grandstanding through dubious legal stunts, but...this is a delicate moment in the take-over process.
Maybe Microsoft is behind this in order to use a barrage of picayune lawsuits as a justification for lowering their bid offer. Goodness knows, Microsoft's staff of eager-beaver Ivy League lawyers do live for this kind of thing.
Unless the Village People own Scorpio Music, it's their handlers getting their panties in a twist and not the performers themselves.
File a counter notice. You've got rights. Exercise them.
They probably should since they could then bill the offending parties for the resources spent investigating their frequently bogus notices. Sure you'd have to do some manuvering to setup a MS technical support style system. But set up as a credit card hold that will be refunded should the apperatus involved find the content indeed infringing, Yahoo could probably make money on it. In the mean time jackasses like Prince, KISS, Madonna, and apparently the Village People would be diminished and in fact paying to improve everyone else's service experience. The beauty of a setup like this is that it's in Yahoo's interest to set an extremely high barrier, and maximize the number of credit card charges.
Then in the instances where they have to go to court, their countersuit remedy should ask that the supposedly infringed work in the public domain in the event they prevail. One company engaging in that sort of brinksmanship winning one time would make all the other paper people better corporate citizens.
Yahoo! threatened Feldman with the termination of all of his Yahoo! services including the revocation of his Yahoo ID
Isn't it great having everything integrated into one easy-to-use service? Pictures, searching, games, dating services, emai--oh fuck--they just canceled everything in my entire life.
Same goes for Google everything. If one company controls all the services you use, all it takes is one idiot at that company to make your life hell.
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