More News from the YouTube Liberation Front

I have had some fun watching the dispute emails come in from YouTube about the videos I have uploaded over the years. And I am actually excited to report 4 of the last 5 disputes were decided in my favor. If you were to ask my why, however, there is no way I could tell you because the media companies hold all the cards in this game. I am simply a fiat of fate watching my culture move from company to company.

What’s interesting to me, however, is that Warner Brothers (who has rejected ever single fair use claim I have made thus far) has rescinded on two of the three videos I uploaded featuring Peter Sellers as Clare Quilty in Stanley Kubrik’s Lolita. The clips were part of this post about film auters, acting, and Kubrik.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUymEUg1Sj0


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4OmdybGf2M

I was also very pleased to see the German licensing company Content Lizenz Agentur has released the clip I uploaded to YouTube from David Conenberg’s Scanners. (Although they look like on of these scam companies that claim copyright to see if they can get ad revenue off the videos from Google.)  That was the first film-based visualization of the internet as a child I can remember, and I wrote extensively about this clip as well on the bava here.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQWWlb_NCpI

Also, it was nice to see the company Music Video Distributors (I think this is their site: http://mvdb2b.com/) released their false claim on “Public Demonstrations of Affection will Not be Tolerated Here” —somethign I was pretty sure I would win given this video is available in the Public Domain on the Internet Archive here. Copyright cockroaches.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbL9YRznwB8

All that said, Warner Brothers refuses to give any way on The Wild Bunch, the refused my claim for the “so god damned right” scene with Thornton and Harrigan—shame.

I would love to begin to form a theory as to why some videos are being liberated and others not—and outside from seemingly obvious cases of copyright cockroaches claiming whatever they can to see what sticks—the rational from the major media outlets is veiled in unilateral secrecy making this process not only undesirable, but downright unAmerican 🙂 The corporate tail is wagging the dog here, people.

One more thing, I have yet another dispute in over an excerpt from the 1946 version of The Killers which was taken down recently, still haven’t heard back, but that is another case where I have a post on the bava and this clip is part and parcel of a larger argument about the film, noir as a genre, and the vision of a post-WWII world through director Richard Siodomak’s eyes (himself a German Jew who fled during the 1930s and came to the U.S.). This was the first clip I ever ripped and posted to YouTube for such a post, so in my mind it has sentimental value, plus the clip had been viewed 31,000 times. I’m sure many of whom are liked minded film lovers.

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5 Responses to More News from the YouTube Liberation Front

  1. I am enjoying the hell out of your interactions with these companies.

  2. Tim Owens says:

    What is the breakdown like between videos getting pulled vs ads instituted on them for the big companies? I’d assume folks like WB and Viacom don’t need the ad revenue and are mostly (if not completely) pulling them off outright?

  3. Reverend says:

    @Cathy,
    I am kind of enjoying it too, it is kind of the vigil before the account deletion. It feels very ritualistic to me.

    @Tim,
    Yeah, that is exactly right. The bigger media companies like Warner Brothers, NBC, etc. often go straight for the takedown. What’s more, they penalize your account standing. The smaller companies are basically trawling for ads it seems.

  4. Pingback: YouTube, Copyright, and the ongoing Claims on our Culture | bavatuesdays

  5. Pingback: Terminated with Extreme Prejudice | bavatuesdays

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