Fox Scare

A Personal Account on Youtube's Crackdown on Copyright Infringement

When I posted the entire two-part episode of The Simpsons “Who Shot Mr. Burns” on youtube.com last fall, I did not feel easy about it from the beginning. Afterall, I was violating copyright laws, and had an inkling that I would be caught in the crosshairs of 20th Century Fox, the rightful owner of the show.

One month after Google acquired Youtube for $1.65 Billion, I received emails informing me that that episode had been deleted from my account. Why did I post that episode on youtube in the first place? I would say that it was peer pressure. One youtube user (we’ll call him Vince, although that’s probably not his real name) had initially asked me if I could upload Part 2 of that episode onto youtube, after he saw clips of it on my account. Going against my better judgment, I decided to upload Part 1 as well. I’m not holding him accountable for my actions, because I could have backed down from doing it at anytime and told him no. I had seen several copyrighted videos for months, and wondered how people were getting away with it, music videos, movies, TV clips, commercials, etc. Many videos were from Nickelodeon shows, and a variety of other TV networks, which are all owned by American Media Conglomerate Viacom Inc.

The first full episode of a TV show I saw posted on youtube was from “My Brother and Me”. I suppose I was brainwashed because, on one hand, one could watch these videos, free of charge (or upload them, without receiving compensation), whether he or she has seem them for the first time, not seem them in ages, or wants to preview material before buying the DVD. On the other hand, this material that people do not own, violates the website’s policy as well as the slogan “Broadcast Yourself”.

I have also seen material from exclusive VHS and DVD releases posted on youtube that should be deleted.

I originally bought a video hub for my computer last June to connect with my VCR and copy home footage and make short films and DVDs out of them. When I discovered retrojunk.com around the same time, I had another use for it. I dug up old videos from my archives of TV recordings and found commercials to upload onto the site. Later that summer, I discovered that I could use the video hub to upload VHS clips onto youtube, whether they were original material or not. I uploaded a few clips from The Simpsons, as well as clips from old shows on Nickelodeon and MTV.

I had a tape of the entire (or almost entire) two-part episode of The Simpsons episode “Who Shot Mr. Burns” from the original 1995 broadcast. I say “almost entire” because the ending of part 2 got cut off. I used one of the computers connected to a VCR in my school computer lab because my computer at home was a little slow. The school was completely unaware of this activity too. The episode was divided into acts and parts. Over the course of a month, I got several views, as well as comments, on the “Who Shot Mr. Burns” episode.

A month after the Google acquisition, I had a "Fox Scare", meaning I had received some intimidating emails from 20th Century Fox informing me of the copyright violation on youtube. They would have threatened to take legal action against me had I not done anything about it.
Although the other copyrighted material I had on my account was not deleted, I got rid of it all anyways to eliminate myself from lawsuits from major corporations like Viacom and 20th Century Fox. Youtube had already begun to crack down on copyright infringement, and in February of this year, over 100,000 videos of material owned by Viacom were removed from the website.
So in a nutshell, I posted copyrighted material on youtube that I initially knew was wrong, but did it anyways because of what other people were doing, and was later penalized as well as other youtube users when pirated videos from their youtube accounts were deleted in response to copyright claims.
I will no longer upload copyrighted videos of any kind onto the Internet, especially youtube. I also do not want to be targeted by any of the major corporations. That is why I feel we need to continue to crack down on copyright infringement. The way I see it, life is so much more than spending our days indoors on your computer watching (or uploading) Internet Videos. Real fans of TV shows and movies would buy the DVD releases. Furthermore, I think a website should be started dedicated to classic Nickelodeon, classic Disney Channel, and so forth.

Image Credits:

20th Century Fox Logo-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Logo_20th_century_fox.jpg

Youtube.com Logo-http://www.youtube.com

Simpsons Image-http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/
Photos/060228/060228_simpsons_hmed_4p.hmedium.jpg

Mr. Burns Image-http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/0f/
Who_Shot_Mr_Burns.gif/180px-Who_Shot_Mr_Burns.gif

Nickelodeon Logo-http://www.localmediatv.com/
images/nickelodeon.jpg

Viacom Logo-http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/global.influentials/
interactive/gi.2003/story.viacom.jpg

Google/Youtube Logo-http://www.kcci.com/2006/1009/10037163_240X180.jpg

Disney Logo-http://www.cip.informatik.uni-muenchen.de/~benkmana/anime/images/disney.jpg

Comments

I'm sorry that happened to you.

Nothing to do with retro stuff at all. Someone please delete this piece of shit article.

Ummm.. you need to get a blog. This doesn't have anything to do with the nostalgic premise of this site (I don't even know why RJ has these articles when the bulk of them are written by people who don't know the correct words to use, can't spell most of them, and can't structure sentences, excluding you). This is blog material here.

I understand why he wrote it. I'm sure a lot of us put clips from our old favorite shows on YouTube. I've watched Pete & Pete on YouTube, and if this becomes a problem we might have no way to watch our favorite old shows anymore. And the article was well-written, at lwast I thought so, anyways.

just like mad dog said, nothing retro here. Except that you almost got sued.

So whatever happened to 'fair use'?

This wasn't a retro article or a trip down memory lane, it was a "I'm scared of copyrights" testimonial. Might as well have been uploading en episode of The OC. Thumbs down.

Remember the days when WPIX-TV in New York City used to air the classic Tom & Jerry cartoons? YouTube did the same thing too. There were hundreds of users and some of them who uploads the Tom & Jerry that I grew up watching those cartoons except the Tex Avery cartoons that has been on WPIX-TV since the 80's has been permanently taken down because of copyright infringement. Thanks to Video Downloader for saving my all my T&J cartoons that WPIX-TV used to air. I can watch all the T&J cartoons that YouTube used to put those up. All my Disney cartoons I saved including the Three Little Pigs series along with the Silly Symphonies, Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck cartoons that I used to watch since I was a kid. Greatfully, I also saved Mighty Mouse cartoons except the Ralph Bashaki ones along with the Terrytoons cartoons like Heckle & Jeckle, Deputy Dawg, Popeye and others. Those are the cartoons I remember since I was a kid. I usually seen the Woody Woodpecker cartoons that YouTube had, but they took it down due to copyright claim by NBC/Universal, the company owns the Walter Lantz cartoons. They usually put commercials up on YouTube, but I ended up saving it and add it to RJ, because YouTube is not allowed to put copyrighted material, or maybe one of the members will be banned from YouTube for uploading copyrighted stuff. I was banned from YouTube for uploading too much copyrighted stuff that CBS, Disney, Viacom or any corporate brand who made those material. I was "musicradio77", but I switched to "HomeoftheGoodGuys" (which was referred to the old WMCA back in the 60's) and I'm not going to upload anymore of this stuff. I should rather watch fireworks and even game reviews made by Jedite, Super Nintendo Guy and the Angry Video Game Nerd. That's all there is. I will boycott YouTube for uploading copyrighted material except the Tom & Jerry cartoons that WPIX-TV or "11 Alive" where it used to be the home of Tom & Jerry to what was then called "The Tom & Jerry Station". cbsfm101 loved the Tom & Jerry cartoon when it was WPIX-TV back in the late 70's and throughout the 80's. Keep in mind that "Tom & Jerry Tales" is on Saturday Mornings on CW-11. Those are the new Tom & Jerry cartoons, and guess what, they suck. WPIX-TV ruined another piece of nostalgia from the good old "11 Alive". Those bring back memories and I missed the classic T&J cartoons. If you see the T&J cartoons on YouTube, look out! They're going to take them down very soon.

i could understand ur situation, retroguy78. i uploaded the Sleepy Hollow sequence from "Disney's Halloween Treat". i thought, "they havent done anything to bring both versions back, so wat the hell, upload it." and i did. after a while, Disney requested Youtube to remove it. so then i thought, "oh NOW they catch up on their previous works." makes me want to throw a rock at a window

I myself am also a loyal youtube member, just the other day in fact i was checking out my music and cartoon videos I had saved in my favorites only to see they had been taken down and a notice put up saying that it had been removed due to copyright. Man was I ticked, now I pretty much have to go to the end of the earth (in a manner of speaking)just to find and reload all the non copywritten videos without getting a warning myself. I think ever since google bought youtube it has gotten more strict and gone downhill slightly, but I still love and like watching all kinds of videos and alot of them do bring back memories for me.

I believed and still that uploading ads on YT can’t be as harmful as full shows. I mean how could it be. Full shows I understand. They could get ripped off. It will decrease DVD sales, (even uploading TV intros could have the same effect,) and I know little FOX network being only 20 years old wouldn’t like that. I know so many others do it and it make things temping, to like, provide others. “The wonder years”, “Kidd Video“, “Captain N“, I was happy to have seen those shows on that site I haven’t seen for fifteen years, and I know others were. I have VHS tapes that date as far back as 1985, and to upload shows that haven’t been talked about for decades and watching the comments fall like rain and to see how many people remember it and getting thanked ridiculously, I know the feeling. I was afraid of uploading any show, because despite of all the others I thought that the heat would come to me in the worst way. I thought that most who upload them had to submit some good written cite or they where using some sort of hacker computer card device to bypass any of that copyrighted bullsmack. I was just afraid of getting fined. Like 100k. (I’m just too ignorant with the copy laws.) I’ve seen former shows on the site disappear, maybe the heat is just now getting to them.