MediaDefender Busted September 15, 2007
Our friends over at torrentfreak recently discovered a huge cache of internal emails that were made public from MediaDefender. The sole purpose of MediaDefender’s “Miivi” site was to trick people into uploading copyrighted material, and bust them for it. These emails discuss everything from Miivi to fake torrents.
From the TorrentFreak article:
“When TorrentFreak reported that Media Defender (MD) was behind the video site MiiVi, they cast doubt on us. Now, in what is surely the biggest BitTorrent leak ever, nearly 700mb of MD’s emails have gone public. When MD’s Randy Saaf found out we rumbled MiiVi he said, “This is really f***ed.” This is too, but much more so.”
So give it a read, it’s very enlightening stuff.
Viacom steals video, issues take down notice to the artist August 30, 2007
Christopher Knight made a video as part of his campaign for Rockingham County Board of Education and posted it on Youtube last fall. A little over a month ago the cable network VH1 took the video he made from Youtube without permission and used it in their for-profit television show Web Junk 2.0. Knight wasn’t upset about that. He was pleased that so many more people got to see his work than he expected. So he put a clip of the VH1 segment showing his own video on Youtube.
Yesterday he got a letter from Youtube. It seems that Viacom had the clip containing the work they pirated taken down for copyright infringement.
Dear Member:
This is to notify you that we have removed or disabled access to the following material as a result of a third-party notification by Viacom International Inc. claiming that this material is infringing:Web Junk 2.0 on VH1 features my school board commercial!:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddyVQwpByug
On his blog Knight brings up questions we all should be asking. “What does this mean for independent producers of content, if material they create can be co-opted by a giant corporation without permission or apology or compensation? When in fact, said corporations can take punitive action against you for using material that you created on your own?” Vaicom is heavy handed in it’s copyright infringement patrol but they don’t seem to have a problem violating copyright them selves. It’s not just fair use thats under attack these days. We the people are too.
