The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has backed away from a DMCA take-down request to remove a YouTube video of a Tibetan protest at the Chinese consulate in New York.
The video in question (see below) was clearly not an example of copyright infringement. YouTube and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) both pushed back against the IOC, which then withdrew their complaint. As the EFF notes, however, the inaccurate title of the video was “Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony,” so in all likelihood, the IOC was filing DMCA notices for Olympics content, which has been springing up on YouTube faster than they can take it down.
Anthony Falzone, Executive Director of the Fair Use Project, was impressed that YouTube went beyond the call of duty in pushing back at the IOC. With the sheer volume of DMCA requests that YouTube must be fielding with the Olympics, taking the time to double-check the content is certainly impressive. At the same time, however, it highlights how much work YouTube has to do in terms of policing copyrighted content. The number of legal notices they have to respond to consume time and resources that might be put to better use.
4 comments
Comments feed for this article
February 17, 2010 at 10:14 am
IOC Uses DMCA to Suppress Luge Accident Video « The Legal Satyricon
[…] was originally published on The Tactical IP Blog Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)IOC retracts video take-down noticeNo TitleLUGE ACCIDENT KILLS OLYMPIC STAR VIDEO […]
February 17, 2010 at 10:14 am
IOC Uses DMCA to Suppress Luge Accident Video | TacticalIP.com
[…] Even where all of this is true, U.S. copyright law was not implemented to choke off the flow of facts and news reporting. In fact, § 107 of the Copyright Act specifically limits a copyright owner’s rights in these kinds of situations. The IOC cannot use DMCA takedown notices to silence the speech it does not like. In fact, sending those notices may end up costing the IOC, unless they can successfully make the case that they considered whether use of the clips could be fair use before making their demands. Just ask the artist currently known as Prince. This will be tough argument for the IOC, considering this isn’t the first time they’ve tried to misuse their copyrights. […]
February 17, 2010 at 10:15 am
IOC Uses DMCA to Suppress Luge Accident Video | GaneshaFish.com
[…] Even where all of this is true, U.S. copyright law was not implemented to choke off the flow of facts and news reporting. In fact, § 107 of the Copyright Act specifically limits a copyright owner’s rights in these kinds of situations. The IOC cannot use DMCA takedown notices to silence the speech it does not like. In fact, sending those notices may end up costing the IOC, unless they can successfully make the case that they considered whether use of the clips could be fair use before making their demands. Just ask the artist currently known as Prince. This will be tough argument for the IOC, considering this isn’t the first time they’ve tried to misuse their copyrights. […]
February 19, 2010 at 9:22 pm
john gleason
who the fuck are you to make unavailable to the public something we allready know The accident happened. I want to see it.3 Also go fuck yourself. PS GO FUCK YOURSELF!