For April Fool’s Day we posted a video of a fake mission where it appeared that we had lost our judgment and crashed a funeral. We fooled thousands of angry YouTube users into thinking it was real. The biggest fools of all were the CW 11 news team who reported on the funeral as if it actually happened. They didn’t do one bit of research or fact checking, they simply broadcast a YouTube video and reported it as fact (a video from a prank group on April 1st!) I of course uploaded their story to my personal YouTube channel to show the world their lack of journalism skills.
Tonight I got a copyright notice from YouTube informing me that Tribune (the parent company of the CW 11) had filed a copyright claim against the video and that it had been removed. Clearly they want this embarrassment off of the Internets. What’s more interesting is the fact that their original broadcast used our content without permission. They simply put “YOUTUBE” on the screen to indicate that’s where they found the video. So it’s OK for them to air content that we shot and own, but it’s not OK for me to upload their footage of the content they took from me? It’s “fair use” for the news to take a video off of YouTube and broadcast it, but it’s not “fair use” for a citizen to expose their poor reporting on his own content?
Good thing the video has already been uploaded somewhere else:
And if you’d like to download it and keep a copy for safekeeping, you can do that too.
For reference, here is the original hoax video:
And here are our ridiculous outtakes:
Thanks for posting this, keep those “journalists” online for all to see. Awesome funeral by the way, you are welcome to come to mine any time, except I want it to be a musical. It could be “Food Court Musical II: The Tyranny of the Chicken Bone.”
haa haa, awesome! thanks for following up and posting, looking forward to seeing what other brilliant scenarios are executed!
Brilliant work on your part!
Not so much for the “real” reporters.
That is brilliant… they have a rival station who could air your version of the story? Too funny! I think that made the april fools joke even better!
Wow! I am always amazed by ever new levels of ridiculousness in media! It’s pretty disturbing actually! But shucks! Can you blame them!? It’s much easier to lift something off youtube than to do actual reporting! Maybe they had a bad day and really needed a story!
Well! I loved the April Fool’s joke! Keep up your good work!!!
Why not file a counter-notice?
Media corps are run by a bunch of idiots. This becomes more apparent every day.
Please do file a counter-notice. CW 11 broadcasting your video without proper attribution is on a much more shaky ground IP-wise than you showing their broadcast for editorial commentary purposes.
Don’t file a counter-notice, but send them a bill for using your material.
IANAL, But as far as I understand the requirements of the DCMA, YouTube should put your video back up if you tell them that the video is not in violation of copyright.
Fighting IE is like fighting a Chinese finger trap: The harder you struggle, the more you’re stuck.
Awesome work! Everything you do is great and absolutely funny. I would soo bill them with a counter-notice. That was very unfair. xoxo
As some people have already said, don’t make them play wack-a-mole with the original clip – you should file a counter-notice because you’ll get your video back. The EFF will most likely to be more than happy to help you out.
Please tell me this television station’s news does state fair coverage or something in a public place some time. They’re really begging for a “best live broadcast ever.”
Awesome! They may remove the video again but they can’t erase every copy on the web. Anyway, you should thank them for the big publicity of this site ;)
Hilarious. Thanks for making it available for download there at the end… brilliant.
Oh man, this just keeps getting better and better. Props to all you “cruel, hipster douchebags.”
“Please tell me this television station’s news does state fair coverage or something in a public place some time. They’re really begging for a ‘best live broadcast ever.’”
I second this idea… IE, please do this!
In Mexico television companies do that a lot, they don’t want their crap on youtube but a lot of shows feature “internet videos” that show a lot of copyrighted stuff. “But it’s on the internet” they say :S
I think this is all gotta stop. Youtube videos are acted as a public domain even though the video was created and is technically owned by someone else! People can just Extract/print screen and just say where they found it and they can publish it! There’s no contact to the producer at all! The same can be said for Google Earth/maps. It is treated as a public domain even though there is an infringement in the whole privacy laws! There’s been no survey to say whether you want your house to be shown via google maps/earth but they put it up anyway. And what about that lawsuit that google said they were going to take when someone drew a 60 foot cock on their roof and they said that it was public domain. NOT private. They didn’t think of blurring it? but they did think of blurring faces after people were caught coming out of sex shops. It’s a load of bull!