Takedown Update Rundown

About a month ago my YouTube account was suspended. In brief, Dashgo/Audiobee filed a copyright violation claim against my YouTube account, causing it to be shut down and all my media and links were removed. You can read about the initial experience here: I Command Thee, Fellow!

Last week YouTube made the decision to restore the account.

Many of the amateur and even some professional internet publishers kind of lose their cool when they have their free or paid accounts that host or share media shut down. The most famous recent example being the now-defunct scans_daily forum. A lot of members and visitors went utterly bananas when scans_daily was closed by LiveJournal for Terms Of Use violations. FYI: Posting entire issues of newly published comics and graphic novels does not constitute a review in any context, fellers. That a relative few ruined an experience that many enjoyed is regretable but understandable.

Which brings me to comment on my situation regarding the claim that closed my media account.

Instead of anger, unhinged rants and casting aspersions of the gender-preferences of the various entities involved with the suspension of my account I opened a rational dialog with DashGo/Audiobee and YouTube. As YouTube recommended I filed a counter-notification to the claim. I also contacted DashGo/Audiobee. I defended the posting of the video as part of a review under fair use. The response was concern that the video was not viewable solely within the referring blog post which would further qualify it under fair use. The problem was that the clip could simply be searched for, viewed and even downloaded via YouTube bereft of any context.

So basically my use of the video on the blog was considered fair use but the manner in which it was posted to YouTube wasn't. Utilizing and perceiving YouTube only as a hosting site while ignoring that others will not use it in the same manner as I would created the conflict. That copyright holders feel the need to protect their property in that case is perfectly valid, hard to argue against though still remaining to me at least somewhat arbitrary. They have to draw a line somewhere and don't have the time or resources to review every clip and decide if it is diluting the value of the property or not. In the future there probably will be a way to determine that but right now the usual models fall short.

As of yet YouTube doesn't appear to have a setting to allow clips to be stored on their site and viewed only on another and that is another decision that seems wise on the part of the provider. Advertising, click-throughs and other revenue-generating internet thingies are all on their site and they don't want to become become some anonymous media host that fails and goes bankrupt because they are directing traffic away from their own site without compensation.

Whatever processes on the parts of DashGo/Audiobee and YouTube took place worked in my favor this time and my account was restored complete with the H.R. Pufnstuf video clip. Out of respect for DashGo/Audiobee I have disabled the clip for now and will try to have it hosted elsewhere and then provide a link to it, preferably one that leads the reader to an authorized outlet like the Krofft MySpace page. I don't know if they would be comfortable hosting it as one of their mini-clips as the site seems to be a pretty shiny happy place and the Matango-like theme of the Pufnstuf clip is dark, scary and somewhat out of place alongside Captain Kool and Magic Mongo.