People are responsible for their actions. Stupidity doesn't exactly count as a valid defense.
I don't disagree with anything you've said, but on the point of the "facebook generation" putting potentially career-preempting photos and information about themselves online, I don't think it's stupidity. They just haven't been raised to expect or feel the need for privacy.
And I know I'm making a big generalization here, but it's like if you convince a generation that it's necessary to give up certain liberties in the name of national security, the next generation won't have any expectation of those liberties. Kids entering the workforce now have been photographed and videotaped at every moment of their lives, and their younger siblings have cameras in their cel phones. They've never suffered any negative consequences so it doesn't occur to them that they should be cautious about what they put online. Plus, they don't have to, cause all of their friends have cameras on thier cel phones, so one of them will post it on facebook and tag the photo with their name.
I really think we will quickly get to the point where it will be too much effort for employers to find someone who doesn't have something embarrassing or worse come up on the first page of a Google search.
And that's great, if the only people you are supporting are high-volume revenue-generating top performers. But if you are also supporting dozens of "entry level" type people for every one of those high-earners, it eats away at your margins pretty quickly.
And my point was that you need to identify where you are spending your IT resources, and determine if the benefits of giving someone more leeway outweigh the costs. I might be more tolerant of a top earner who just can't seem to stop losing cel phones, or putting dents in his Lexus, than I am of an entry-level clerk who will open any attachment or install any piece of rogue software just because he doesn't give a shit.
You might very well find that with some people it makes sense to keep fixing their fuck-ups, but if you are not actually tracking each incident and what it cost to correct it, you just don't know.
admin rights and alcotests in every company operated vehicle, so no one with a hint of alcohol can start the engine
In many companies, operating a company vehicle under the influence of drugs or alcohol is grounds for dismissal.
admin access only to knives, scissors, screwdrivers, lawnmowers, chainsaws, drills and hammers because otherwise they could be misused and cause injuries or death among the workers
It's not uncommon to require employees to be trained and certified before operating equipment or using tools.
locks on doors and windows so no employee can open them without admin rights and fall to their death
If there is a likelihood of the employee falling out of the door or window, it would be irresponsible to not take action to prevent that.
admin rights for bathroom door locks so employees can not spend too much time in unauthorized potty breaks
If the terms of your employment state that you get a fixed amount of time for breaks during the day to go potty, or have a smoke, or get a coffee or eat your lunch, it's really no different than your employer requiring you to start and end your day at a given time. It's his time; he's paying for it.
tight-fitting gas masks that cannot be removed without admin rights for workers in a chemical plant so no one can accidentally breathe in fumes
Naturally. Our staff often work on sites where air quality is an issue, and yes, they wear respirators when it's prescribed by the Safety Officer. Do you not have a Safety Committee where you work? Where I live, we could have a job site shut down for failing to comply with Occupation Health and Safety standards.
admin rights on company stationery, stamps, pens and ink so no employee can write unauthorized company letters that management cannot review nor censor
If I use the company's postage meter to mail a letter, I drop 52 cents in the jar just like anyone else. No different with other office supplies, they're not mine and I don't take them for personal use.
The computer I work on and the network it connects to are also not my property, so I abide by the policies my company has established, even when it would be more convenient for me to simply do as I please. Just like that engineer at the nuclear reactor wouldn't tolerate me poking around the controls at his work station, IT staff shouldn't tolerate people disregarding company policy with regard to more mundane parts of the infrastructure.
We are struggling with many of the same issues you raise where I work. One of the things I am looking at is having the costs associated with cleaning up the mess created by bad user behavior charged back to their department. Someone else pointed out earlier in this thread that IT staff are not generally revenue producers, and this is correct. But the revenue generated by your star producer won't mean much if he is a huge drain on resources.
It's no different than a project manager who doesn't manage effectively, and whose job costs end up exceeding the revenue they produce. Or a salesperson whose margins don't cover all of the costs associated with generating his sales (including his expenses, car allowance and the overhead of the people needed to support him). Or, for that matter, someone who is stealing office supplies, or driving a company vehicle in to the ground. Costs associated with bad employee behavior need to be contained, whether that bad behavior is being wasteful and inefficient or violating the acceptable use policy for company-owned equipment.
If IT is treated as just another overhead like the lights and the heat, abuses will always occur because there is really no way of knowing what those abuses cost the company on a per-incident basis. If IT actually bills departments for the work they do, and that information ends up in the relevant employee's personnel file, these costs can be considered when evaluating that employee's performance for the purpose of determining raises, bonuses and promotions.
If you don't want people to find your website, don't register a domain. Once you do, it's public knowledge. Printing the URL of the city's website is no worse than printing the premiere's mugshot when he gets busted for DUI. (Sorry, OT political commentary, but it seemed a good example).
If you weren't an Anonymous Coward, I'd mod you up.
Why is his comment less worthy of being modded up just because he posted AC? Is his comment less insightful because he didn't log in to a user account that tells you nothing about who he is or how credible he is?
That I use strong language to describe someone who is so morally reprehensible to me is acceptable in acrimonious debate.
You didn't just "use strong language to describe someone who is so morally reprehensible" to you, you called him a "fat fuck." And there's nothing wrong with doing that if that's how you feel, but that becomes your point. You think Michael Moore is a "fat fuck."
If you had just said "No sir, what is reprehensible is Michael Moore appearing on MSNBC and saying basically that he hopes a hurricane hits the United States during the Republican Convention" your point would have been that Michael Moore is "reprehensible."
Strong language may be acceptable in a debate, but when you resort to name calling - whether it's Michael Moore or Rush Limbaugh whom you think is a "fat fuck" - it diminishes the rest of the points in your argument.
I'm usually pretty skeptical about these types of stories too, but then I remembered a story about a cat being sealed inside a wall during a bathroom renovation, so I went to Google. Apparently, it's happened more than once.
I used to bitch about the lack of the year in the date, until one day I was screwing around in the preferences and noticed I can choose how the date is displayed. Your post, for example, contains this dateline:
Re:Missing Dateline (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on 02:29 PM -- Wednesday September 10 2008 (#24952849)
Of course, you and the other poster posted anonymously, so you can not control how your date is displayed. You get the default which (apparently???) is missing the year.
Another point that no one seems to be picking up on is the problem of a lot of news sites neglecting to include a dateline on their stories. I've run in to this a number of times, and it makes it difficult to determine the relevance of a given story. It's a very simple thing to include the date the story was published, but a lot of sites don't seem to bother.
Good point indeed. I guess the best we can do in cases where abuse goes unpunished is to just keep hammering away. Use YouTube and Slashdot and Facebook and the comments section of news sites to draw attention to what's going on and shame them publicly. Talk to non-techie friends about these subjects. Most people may not care, but some will. It's a matter of finding some way it affects the average citizen.
I really hope these types of subjects come up during the debates in the upcoming Canadian and US elections. Copyright is badly in need of reform in both countries and - sadly - the types of reforms proposed have been worse than what we already have. It's time to get the general public engaged in these types of issues. People became interested recently in Canada when they learned proposed changes to copyright law would criminalize copying music you paid for to your portable media player (iPod, mp3 player etc), or time-shifting television shows. Any allowances made for personal copying were rendered useless by other parts of the legislation that outlawed defeating DRM under any circumstances, even to exercise fair use (known as "fair dealing" in Canada).
Speak to them in language they can understand about issues that affect them and they will make their displeasure known.
Certainly the DMCA - or other methods - can be used to prevent speech in time sensitive situations. Corralling protesters in to "Free Speech Zones" far away from where the party convention is being held until it's over is another example of doing this. So, sure, if you are willing to commit perjury and eventually face criminal sanctions for doing so, you could abuse the DMCA to achieve this.
You are correct, I mis-stated the law. I should have said if YouTube wants to be protected from the potentially illegal actions of it's users (just like Slashdot is) and remain viable as a business, they need to follow the procedures established in the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act.
If you are uploading legitimate material and someone is sending junk DMCA notices, YouTube could ignore the junk notices, could defend you, but legally it is powerfully against their interests to do so.
Do you really want YouTube or Google or whoever to take it upon themselves to decide whether or not you are the legitimate copyright holder? Shouldn't that be done by a judge? How long do you think it will take for Google to adjudicate all of these disputes? Less than 14 days? Can't I just flood YouTube will junk notices just the same, especially now that I am not lying to a judge but a bunch of suits from YouTube?
Does Youtube have to absorb the costs of holding all of these hearings? Do I have a right to appeal their decisions? To whom? If I'm not happy with the decision, can I sue or do I give up my right to do that when I enter in to the hearing process with Youtube?
I agree with you that there is room for abuse, and I am not a fan of the DMCA, but I think the notice/counter-notice system is the only thing ensuring that sites like Youtube, Slashdot or whatever can exist, despite the occasionally illegal actions of their users.
You just pointed out one of the serious flaws with the DMCA, that any company, or any person, can file a barrage of illegitimate takedown notices with little or no consequence
I am not a lawyer, but I am certain this is not the case. The lawyer filing the notice must include in his notice "a statement that he has a good faith belief that the material is not legal" and "a statement that, under penalty of perjury, he is authorized to act for the copyright holder."
A company firing off a barrage of notices to have material they do not hold the copyright for removed are going to run out of lawyers pretty quickly, and face law suits/terrible publicity themselves.
I don't see how such tactics can be employed for any length of time. The material will simply be reinstated when the legitimate copyright holder instructs YouTube to do so, and the party attempting to suppress speech or whatever will simply draw attention to what they are trying to hide.
This video of Adam Savage describing his experience is a good example of YouTube fulfilling its mandate. The Myth Busters wanted to do an "old media" show on problems with RFID in credit cards and the good 'ol boys got together to put a stop to it. Then Adam described the experience to a bunch of nerds, someone filmed it and used "new media" to get the message out. It has been viewed 128,713 times (nothing like MythBuster's ratings, I know but still). That video was uploaded to YouTube over a month ago, and it hasn't been removed yet, and now it's been on Slashdot's front page so the whole world will know about it (lolz). Okay, but you get my point.
if some kid in Australia can gin up a convincing DMCA takedown, how difficult will it be for a proper lawyer associated with Discovery or one of the CC companies to find a provision that conceivably supports their case and fire a barrage of takedown notices?
You are talking about two distinctly separate things - some 15-year-old's ability to create a convincing, fraudulent takedown notice (trivially easy for any smart kid with a computer and Internet connection, I'm sure half of Slashdot's user base could do it), and the ability of some crafty lawyer to figure out a way of achieving the permanent, legal removal of a piece of material from YouTube that his client does not hold the copyright for.
If you can offer some speculation on how that may be achieved I really would love to hear it. But if they don't hold the copyright on the material in question, (and they don't), I see no way the DMCA could play a roll.
Oh, and in the example you gave the kid was caught and "contaced" by ABC's lawyers and the videos could be put back up if the rightful owner cares to allow it. All the rightful owner - presumably ABC - has to do to ensure this is send a counter notice stating - under penalty of perjury - that they are the copyright holders and the videos were removed in error. (The people who uploaded those clips never had the right to do so, but apparently ABC doesn't mind).
Also, the kid committed perjury by claiming that he represented the copyright holder when he filed his notices. So he may face sanctions for that. At no time was YouTube in jeopardy of being held liable for the illegal actions of it's users or the 15-year-old (just like Slashdot isn't responsible for anything you or I say).
You gave an example of the system working as it should.
Youtube takes down anything whenever *anyone* sends something that vaguely (really) resembles a proper DMCA takedown notice.
YouTube is required by law to take down content when someone files a DMCA takedown notice, and put it back up after 14 days if the person who uploaded it files an uncontested counter notice. I believe that is what happened when the IOC mistakenly filed a notice against some video footage titled "Olympic Opening Ceremony" or something, which turned out to be footage of people protesting outside the Chinese embassy in New York.
They believed, due to the title, that it was their copyrighted material. When it turned out it was simply mislabeled, the footage was restored.
Safe legal ground, but they're starting to piss off a subset of their users who expect the creators of a community to put up a modicum of defense for said community.
Well, you said it yourself. If YouTube wants to remain within the safe harbour offered by the DMCA to online service providers, they pretty much have to follow that procedure. If they didn't, they wouldn't be in business very long.
Besides, it's the users who would create any kind of "community" that would exist around YouTube, by creating and uploading original content, as the person who uploaded the video we are discussing did. If all you are doing is uploading copyright material that doesn't belong to you, there's not much YouTube can do to defend you.
It's only a matter of time before this gets pulled off Youtube.
On what grounds would it be pulled off of YouTube? This is the very essence of what YouTube committed to deliver: a medium for user-produced video content. I don't see how Adam Savage could complain - he was speaking to a room full of people, any of whom could have a cel phone, or a video camera, recording him. Same with the venue and event producer - they let him in with a camera. Unless the clip was posted by someone other than the copyright holder, I don't see any way it could be "legitimately" removed.
As for illegitimate methods, is Visa, or any of the other cc companies, a big enough customer for Google that they would risk the possible backlash and negative publicity to pull it? Besides, it's been seen now by lot's of people. No way to undo that.
I loved it when the guy in the audience said "you do have about 3000 people in the room are aren't under any such legal arrangements." That's the point, right there.
Once again, the corporate culture uses lawyers to focus attention on themselves by trying to silence people who simply speak the truth. They make it so easy. It's like catching fish in a barrel.
and if it was done the other way would you feel the same about it?
The AC didn't say how he felt about it. He merely reported the fact that it happened.
Just because you thought it was funny...
I've read the comment several times, and I don't see how you got the impression he thought it was funny, or that he was making light of it. If you are taking issue with the remark "if you dont know what DAY you're supposed to go vote, you probably should stay home," I think you are off base. That comment is insightful, not funny.
You should direct your indignation at the radio station, not the person who reported on their actions.
Slashdot Mirror
The dumb asses at the CBC are looking for a new one. The rest of us will continue to enjoy it on CTV, TSN and Olympic Hockey broadcasts.
With glowing hearts.
In 2010.
I don't disagree with anything you've said, but on the point of the "facebook generation" putting potentially career-preempting photos and information about themselves online, I don't think it's stupidity. They just haven't been raised to expect or feel the need for privacy.
And I know I'm making a big generalization here, but it's like if you convince a generation that it's necessary to give up certain liberties in the name of national security, the next generation won't have any expectation of those liberties. Kids entering the workforce now have been photographed and videotaped at every moment of their lives, and their younger siblings have cameras in their cel phones. They've never suffered any negative consequences so it doesn't occur to them that they should be cautious about what they put online. Plus, they don't have to, cause all of their friends have cameras on thier cel phones, so one of them will post it on facebook and tag the photo with their name.
I really think we will quickly get to the point where it will be too much effort for employers to find someone who doesn't have something embarrassing or worse come up on the first page of a Google search.
And that's great, if the only people you are supporting are high-volume revenue-generating top performers. But if you are also supporting dozens of "entry level" type people for every one of those high-earners, it eats away at your margins pretty quickly.
And my point was that you need to identify where you are spending your IT resources, and determine if the benefits of giving someone more leeway outweigh the costs. I might be more tolerant of a top earner who just can't seem to stop losing cel phones, or putting dents in his Lexus, than I am of an entry-level clerk who will open any attachment or install any piece of rogue software just because he doesn't give a shit.
You might very well find that with some people it makes sense to keep fixing their fuck-ups, but if you are not actually tracking each incident and what it cost to correct it, you just don't know.
In many companies, operating a company vehicle under the influence of drugs or alcohol is grounds for dismissal.
It's not uncommon to require employees to be trained and certified before operating equipment or using tools.
If there is a likelihood of the employee falling out of the door or window, it would be irresponsible to not take action to prevent that.
If the terms of your employment state that you get a fixed amount of time for breaks during the day to go potty, or have a smoke, or get a coffee or eat your lunch, it's really no different than your employer requiring you to start and end your day at a given time. It's his time; he's paying for it.
Naturally. Our staff often work on sites where air quality is an issue, and yes, they wear respirators when it's prescribed by the Safety Officer. Do you not have a Safety Committee where you work? Where I live, we could have a job site shut down for failing to comply with Occupation Health and Safety standards.
If I use the company's postage meter to mail a letter, I drop 52 cents in the jar just like anyone else. No different with other office supplies, they're not mine and I don't take them for personal use.
The computer I work on and the network it connects to are also not my property, so I abide by the policies my company has established, even when it would be more convenient for me to simply do as I please. Just like that engineer at the nuclear reactor wouldn't tolerate me poking around the controls at his work station, IT staff shouldn't tolerate people disregarding company policy with regard to more mundane parts of the infrastructure.
We are struggling with many of the same issues you raise where I work. One of the things I am looking at is having the costs associated with cleaning up the mess created by bad user behavior charged back to their department. Someone else pointed out earlier in this thread that IT staff are not generally revenue producers, and this is correct. But the revenue generated by your star producer won't mean much if he is a huge drain on resources.
It's no different than a project manager who doesn't manage effectively, and whose job costs end up exceeding the revenue they produce. Or a salesperson whose margins don't cover all of the costs associated with generating his sales (including his expenses, car allowance and the overhead of the people needed to support him). Or, for that matter, someone who is stealing office supplies, or driving a company vehicle in to the ground. Costs associated with bad employee behavior need to be contained, whether that bad behavior is being wasteful and inefficient or violating the acceptable use policy for company-owned equipment.
If IT is treated as just another overhead like the lights and the heat, abuses will always occur because there is really no way of knowing what those abuses cost the company on a per-incident basis. If IT actually bills departments for the work they do, and that information ends up in the relevant employee's personnel file, these costs can be considered when evaluating that employee's performance for the purpose of determining raises, bonuses and promotions.
I didn't bother to RTFA, but the council in question wouldn't be located in San Francisco, would they?
If you don't want people to find your website, don't register a domain. Once you do, it's public knowledge. Printing the URL of the city's website is no worse than printing the premiere's mugshot when he gets busted for DUI. (Sorry, OT political commentary, but it seemed a good example).
Why is his comment less worthy of being modded up just because he posted AC? Is his comment less insightful because he didn't log in to a user account that tells you nothing about who he is or how credible he is?
Judge the message, not the messenger.
You didn't just "use strong language to describe someone who is so morally reprehensible" to you, you called him a "fat fuck." And there's nothing wrong with doing that if that's how you feel, but that becomes your point. You think Michael Moore is a "fat fuck."
If you had just said "No sir, what is reprehensible is Michael Moore appearing on MSNBC and saying basically that he hopes a hurricane hits the United States during the Republican Convention" your point would have been that Michael Moore is "reprehensible."
Strong language may be acceptable in a debate, but when you resort to name calling - whether it's Michael Moore or Rush Limbaugh whom you think is a "fat fuck" - it diminishes the rest of the points in your argument.
But wtf do I know :-)
I'd rather see him have to admin an MS shop myself.
I'm usually pretty skeptical about these types of stories too, but then I remembered a story about a cat being sealed inside a wall during a bathroom renovation, so I went to Google. Apparently, it's happened more than once.
I used to bitch about the lack of the year in the date, until one day I was screwing around in the preferences and noticed I can choose how the date is displayed. Your post, for example, contains this dateline:
Of course, you and the other poster posted anonymously, so you can not control how your date is displayed. You get the default which (apparently???) is missing the year.
Another point that no one seems to be picking up on is the problem of a lot of news sites neglecting to include a dateline on their stories. I've run in to this a number of times, and it makes it difficult to determine the relevance of a given story. It's a very simple thing to include the date the story was published, but a lot of sites don't seem to bother.
I think you mean Paul Harvey.
No big deal. It's not like you reported a six-year-old story as if it were a current event.
or k9copy?
I see what you mean. That's too bad, I enjoyed his comments but I can't say I blame him. That would get old pretty quick.
Yeah, speaking of which, it's been a while since we heard from ol' you-know-who. Wonder what he thinks about this, if he does at all.
Good point indeed. I guess the best we can do in cases where abuse goes unpunished is to just keep hammering away. Use YouTube and Slashdot and Facebook and the comments section of news sites to draw attention to what's going on and shame them publicly. Talk to non-techie friends about these subjects. Most people may not care, but some will. It's a matter of finding some way it affects the average citizen.
I really hope these types of subjects come up during the debates in the upcoming Canadian and US elections. Copyright is badly in need of reform in both countries and - sadly - the types of reforms proposed have been worse than what we already have. It's time to get the general public engaged in these types of issues. People became interested recently in Canada when they learned proposed changes to copyright law would criminalize copying music you paid for to your portable media player (iPod, mp3 player etc), or time-shifting television shows. Any allowances made for personal copying were rendered useless by other parts of the legislation that outlawed defeating DRM under any circumstances, even to exercise fair use (known as "fair dealing" in Canada).
Speak to them in language they can understand about issues that affect them and they will make their displeasure known.
Certainly the DMCA - or other methods - can be used to prevent speech in time sensitive situations. Corralling protesters in to "Free Speech Zones" far away from where the party convention is being held until it's over is another example of doing this. So, sure, if you are willing to commit perjury and eventually face criminal sanctions for doing so, you could abuse the DMCA to achieve this.
You are correct, I mis-stated the law. I should have said if YouTube wants to be protected from the potentially illegal actions of it's users (just like Slashdot is) and remain viable as a business, they need to follow the procedures established in the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act.
Do you really want YouTube or Google or whoever to take it upon themselves to decide whether or not you are the legitimate copyright holder? Shouldn't that be done by a judge? How long do you think it will take for Google to adjudicate all of these disputes? Less than 14 days? Can't I just flood YouTube will junk notices just the same, especially now that I am not lying to a judge but a bunch of suits from YouTube?
Does Youtube have to absorb the costs of holding all of these hearings? Do I have a right to appeal their decisions? To whom? If I'm not happy with the decision, can I sue or do I give up my right to do that when I enter in to the hearing process with Youtube?
I agree with you that there is room for abuse, and I am not a fan of the DMCA, but I think the notice/counter-notice system is the only thing ensuring that sites like Youtube, Slashdot or whatever can exist, despite the occasionally illegal actions of their users.
I am not a lawyer, but I am certain this is not the case. The lawyer filing the notice must include in his notice "a statement that he has a good faith belief that the material is not legal" and "a statement that, under penalty of perjury, he is authorized to act for the copyright holder."
A company firing off a barrage of notices to have material they do not hold the copyright for removed are going to run out of lawyers pretty quickly, and face law suits/terrible publicity themselves.
I don't see how such tactics can be employed for any length of time. The material will simply be reinstated when the legitimate copyright holder instructs YouTube to do so, and the party attempting to suppress speech or whatever will simply draw attention to what they are trying to hide.
This video of Adam Savage describing his experience is a good example of YouTube fulfilling its mandate. The Myth Busters wanted to do an "old media" show on problems with RFID in credit cards and the good 'ol boys got together to put a stop to it. Then Adam described the experience to a bunch of nerds, someone filmed it and used "new media" to get the message out. It has been viewed 128,713 times (nothing like MythBuster's ratings, I know but still). That video was uploaded to YouTube over a month ago, and it hasn't been removed yet, and now it's been on Slashdot's front page so the whole world will know about it (lolz). Okay, but you get my point.
You are talking about two distinctly separate things - some 15-year-old's ability to create a convincing, fraudulent takedown notice (trivially easy for any smart kid with a computer and Internet connection, I'm sure half of Slashdot's user base could do it), and the ability of some crafty lawyer to figure out a way of achieving the permanent, legal removal of a piece of material from YouTube that his client does not hold the copyright for.
If you can offer some speculation on how that may be achieved I really would love to hear it. But if they don't hold the copyright on the material in question, (and they don't), I see no way the DMCA could play a roll.
Oh, and in the example you gave the kid was caught and "contaced" by ABC's lawyers and the videos could be put back up if the rightful owner cares to allow it. All the rightful owner - presumably ABC - has to do to ensure this is send a counter notice stating - under penalty of perjury - that they are the copyright holders and the videos were removed in error. (The people who uploaded those clips never had the right to do so, but apparently ABC doesn't mind).
Also, the kid committed perjury by claiming that he represented the copyright holder when he filed his notices. So he may face sanctions for that. At no time was YouTube in jeopardy of being held liable for the illegal actions of it's users or the 15-year-old (just like Slashdot isn't responsible for anything you or I say).
You gave an example of the system working as it should.
YouTube is required by law to take down content when someone files a DMCA takedown notice, and put it back up after 14 days if the person who uploaded it files an uncontested counter notice. I believe that is what happened when the IOC mistakenly filed a notice against some video footage titled "Olympic Opening Ceremony" or something, which turned out to be footage of people protesting outside the Chinese embassy in New York.
They believed, due to the title, that it was their copyrighted material. When it turned out it was simply mislabeled, the footage was restored.
Well, you said it yourself. If YouTube wants to remain within the safe harbour offered by the DMCA to online service providers, they pretty much have to follow that procedure. If they didn't, they wouldn't be in business very long.
Besides, it's the users who would create any kind of "community" that would exist around YouTube, by creating and uploading original content, as the person who uploaded the video we are discussing did. If all you are doing is uploading copyright material that doesn't belong to you, there's not much YouTube can do to defend you.
On what grounds would it be pulled off of YouTube? This is the very essence of what YouTube committed to deliver: a medium for user-produced video content. I don't see how Adam Savage could complain - he was speaking to a room full of people, any of whom could have a cel phone, or a video camera, recording him. Same with the venue and event producer - they let him in with a camera. Unless the clip was posted by someone other than the copyright holder, I don't see any way it could be "legitimately" removed.
As for illegitimate methods, is Visa, or any of the other cc companies, a big enough customer for Google that they would risk the possible backlash and negative publicity to pull it? Besides, it's been seen now by lot's of people. No way to undo that.
I loved it when the guy in the audience said "you do have about 3000 people in the room are aren't under any such legal arrangements." That's the point, right there.
Once again, the corporate culture uses lawyers to focus attention on themselves by trying to silence people who simply speak the truth. They make it so easy. It's like catching fish in a barrel.
Not to mention it would sound better in Dubly.
The AC didn't say how he felt about it. He merely reported the fact that it happened.
I've read the comment several times, and I don't see how you got the impression he thought it was funny, or that he was making light of it. If you are taking issue with the remark "if you dont know what DAY you're supposed to go vote, you probably should stay home," I think you are off base. That comment is insightful, not funny.
You should direct your indignation at the radio station, not the person who reported on their actions.