The VH1/Viacom/YouTube Copyright Infringement Claim
The television program Web Junk 20 on VH1 aired a special presentation titled "Animals and Other Crap" in July 2007. The show, which highlights funny and unusual video clips found on the Internet, showed Knight's first school board commercial along with commentary by host Aries Spears. Knight later said that no one from the network had approached him about using his commercial for a for-profit broadcast, or had even told him that it would be aired by the network. However, Knight also said that he thought that the show was so good and Spears' commentary to be so witty, that he didn't mind that VH1 used it at all. As he had done with his original commercial, Knight uploaded the Web Junk 20 segment on YouTube so that he could share it with friends.
On August 29, 2007, YouTube notified Knight him that his video of the Web Junk 20 clip had been taken down at the insistence of VH1's parent company Viacom, claiming Knight's use of the clip was copyright infringement and violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Upon being presented with the claim, YouTube had no choice but to pull it per DMCA mandate. Knight objected, as Web Junk 20 had lifted his own material, and claimed that Viacom had violated his copyright first.
Knight contended that per the Copyright Act of 1976, his uploading of the Web Junk 20 clip featuring his own commercial satisfied the four criteria for fair use. and that VH1's segment was a derivative work of his own, since the Web Junk 20 clip was based on Knight's original commercial and could not have existed without it. Viacom countered that the Web Junk 20 clip was indeed its own copyrighted material, acknowledging that although it used the commercial that Knight had produced himself, that VH1 had added Aries Spears's image and commentary. Viacom asserted that this was enough to make the entire content of the Web Junk 20 clip, including use of Knight's commercial, their own material protected under copyright.
Following guidelines on YouTube's site, Knight filed a Digital Millennium Copyright Act counter-notification claim, and per DMCA provisions, Viacom was legally bound to take one of two options: to take Knight to court and file a lawsuit against him for copyright infringement, or to let the video be restored on YouTube. After the story gained some press coverage, Viacom relented, and YouTube reinstated Knight's clip of Web Junk 20 featuring his campaign commercial.
The incident has since been referenced in several other stories regarding YouTube and supposed cases of copyright infringement, including that of the Lenz family's lawsuit against Universal regarding a clip they had posted onto YouTube that included several seconds of a song by musical artist Prince.
Read more about this topic: Christopher Knight (filmmaker)
Famous quotes containing the words infringement and/or claim:
“Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.”
—William Pitt, The Younger (1759–1806)
“What I claim is to live to the full the contradiction of my time, which may well make sarcasm the condition of truth.”
—Roland Barthes (1915–1980)