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:
Sounds like they don’t like being made fools of to me. Shame they have no sense of humour.
Should there be any need to help with any kind of legal costs, I’m sure you have a great number of thankful followers willing to help.
Keep up the good vibes!
Why hello there, Streisand Effect.
Have you seen the reply from Jim Watkins at CW11?
http://weblogs.wpix.com/news/jimwatkins/2009/04/the_april_fools_funeral_who_re.html
Reading through the irate YouTube comments and their responses, my favourite comeback has to be:
PhaTboyBLIIM: “its called a FUNeral for a reason”
Even better is that I don’t think PhaTboyBLIIM has any affiliation with Improve Everywhere. He was just some random YouTube browser.
Crikey, full-on war has broken out on the reply from Jim Watkins… The comments are getting so heated!
I, personally, think his attempt at covering up the fact that they were ‘just playing along’ is pathetic – I have a six-year-old cousin who’s already figured out that that excuse just makes you look stupid.
This prank just keeps getting better and better – can’t wait for the next mission though!
They were so stupid…
It was so clear, that this vid was just a joke ^^
Don’t give up the copyfight! Keep that video online for everyone to see!
What you say about fair use is sooo true. All news agencies post video without permission and web sites and Fat people walking down the street (whenever they do one of those “how fat is america” reports)
yet they sick the lawyers on the first citizen that publishes something that can be viewed on public TV. Make’s no sense. Cheers to you for fighting back. Vive la resistance!
Seriously, I suspect you have a strong fair use defense here. Just ask YouTube to put it back and they will.
If you have the inclination, get a lawyer to send them a letter asking them to drop it or you’ll go after them for using your material. Seems simple enough.
What tools they are at the Tribune.
For the record, Jim Watkins was just trying to be funny with that blog post. He’s not really trying convince people he wasn’t fooled. It’s tongue-in-cheek. It’s a little weird that a news blog would joke around rather than just post a retraction, but there’s nothing more going on there. (I know because he emailed me about it several times.)
Lets turn this into another mission. Lets make more fake events and see if they cover them?
do write them a bill for use of your video.
why is it so hard to understand that if you wanna get the attention away from something in the web, just STFU. nothing more effective., you can ask Barbra.
They may have the right to have the news footage pulled. Though I think you can really mess with them in a very uncomfortable way since they took your source. Maybe you could CC your videos under a condition they can’t be used commercially. Hell, you could probably make that claim for video you’ve already posted. Then if someone pulls stunt like this and are jerks about it, you can go to town on them.
Good for you.
We need more people with your fierce spirit.
Excelsior.
(I hope I don’t ever give you reason to catch me out… !)
IANAL but according to the interview with Lawrence Lessig on the Colbert Report, you guys should have joint copyright to the video that features you…
In any case this is all sorts of funny and sad :D
this makes my fucking blodo boil
fucking money hungry fucks controlling everythign we do
REVOLT NOW
RIOT NOW
orwell, switch to decaff. That is all.
Here’s a great story about a similar situation involving Viacom taking down a video under the same circumstances: http://techdirt.com/articles/20070830/143225.shtml