Mystery Crackdown
February 5th, 2007
Spiff’s World of Warcraft video for Re: Your Brains has been removed from YouTube for copyright infringement. I don’t know what’s going on, but it sure wasn’t me who complained. If I get any more info I’ll let you know…
Well if it wasn’t you, then I’m guessing it was WOW…
When they came for the machinimaists, I did not speak up, because I could not pronounce “machinimaists”.
WoW hasn’t stopped this site, fwiw.
http://www.machinima.com/films.php?engine=5
Mystery solved!
Here is spiff’s WoW video, perhaps the other link was posted by someone other than spiff?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4Wy7gRGgeA
No, that’s my Code Monkey video. Only my “Re: Your Brains” video was banned for “copyright infringement”. None of the others have been touched (yet).
Neither JC nor I are too interested in suing or being sued over these lame fan videos, so I’m not planning on fighting The Man over them or anything. In the meantime, they’re all posted over at Metacafe (http://www.metacafe.com/tags/spiffworld/), so people can still get them there.
The WoW machinima community will no doubt be somewhat outraged, in any case.
Before I spread any more misinformation, did anyone receive notification that it was WoW that filed the DNCA complaint?
No, there’s no confirmation that it was Blizzard as far as I know. I’ve emailed YouTube explaining that from the perspective of the music used, there’s no copyright infringement and haven’t heard back yet. But I believe that the WoW terms of service state that nobody’s allowed to make derivative works without their permission, so I suppose it could have been them. I wouldn’t go spreading any unsubstantiated rumors around until I hear back from YouTube though…
Yeah, I never received any warnings or even notifications after the fact. It wasn’t until someone emailed me asking what happened to the video that I even knew anything had transpired.
I’ve been trying to figure out if this means that I should put the pedal to the medal and come up with my next video sooner (just to show ‘em), or if I should just not bother to make another video because it’ll just be taken down eventually anyway. Of course, to make another video, I’d have to stop playing the WoW expansion for a couple of hours in a row, which I haven’t been able to do yet…
It occurs to me that there was at least one other re: Your Brains video up that uses clips from copyrighted movies and anime. I wonder if Spiff’s got tagged by mistake (maybe because of its popularity).
Youtube now says when you click on the link that Viacom Central tagged it. THat seems like a mistaken tag unless VIACOm owns Blizzard.
Looks like I was punked by a YouTube user. The YouTubers responded to my inquiries by saying “The video(s) you posted were in violation of YouTube’s Terms of Use, as reported by users and verified by the YouTube Team.”
I don’t know what the Viacom thing is. I’m going to respond to YouTube again and see if I can get more information. That makes it sound more like a mistake to me.
Yeah, it sounds like a mistake to me. I hope it gets sorted out, the world must see your videos! They are awesome.
In any case, Blizzard is owned by Vivendi Interactive, not Viacom Central. So something in this whole mess seems fishy