Almost a month ago I posted about a notice I had received from YouTube telling me the following:
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 Entertainment Rights claiming that this material is infringing
This was about a video of Bronto’s Adventure Playland with VeggieTales. Entertainment Rights is the corporation that owns Big Idea. Big Idea is the VeggieTales company. So apparently they saw the word VeggieTales and said it was copyright infringement.
In the email it said that in order to get the video back, I had to send a counter notice. I replied to the email within 10 minutes, and told them it was ridiculous. Obviously no one had looked at the video, and demanded that it be put back up. 24 hours later I still hadn’t received a response yet. Another 24 hours went by and I finally got a response back that said the following:
When we’re notified that a particular video uploaded to our site infringes another’s copyright, we remove the material as the law requires. If you feel a content owner has misidentified your content as infringing, you may file a counter-notification.
So I checked out the counter-notification page, and I would have had to send in a document to Google that might be used in Federal District Court in San Francisco County, California. What?! I have a video of an attraction in Niagara Falls and I need to send a document that would be used in court to prove that it isn’t copyrighted material?!
So, I replied to that message again, and also emailed an info email address at Entertainment Rights, and the customer service email address at Big Idea. I was pretty angry. VeggieTales is supposed to teach good moral values (Sunday morning values, Saturday morning fun), yet they essentially lied to Google about my video. Even though I’m sure it was software that did it automatically, it still reflected bad on them.
Three days later I still hadn’t heard back again from Google/YouTube, Entertainment Rights, or Big Idea, so I emailed Entertainment Rights and Big Idea again. Later that day, I got an email from someone named Tammy that said:
I have passed along your concern to our legal group to review
She then emailed me the next day (without me email in between):
Again, thank you for your patience. Our sincere apologies for the disappointment you have experienced with this incident. Google has been contacted and hope to have resolution very soon.
Then finally, one week later, I received the following from Google/YouTube:
Dear Graham,
Entertainment Rights has retracted its copyright claim with respect to the following video:
Bronto’s Adventure Playland with VeggieTales http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=bMrq5Mmqu2o
This content has been restored and your account will not be penalised.
For technical reasons, it may take a day for the video to be available again.Hope this helps,
Vicky
The YouTube Team
So, it’s now back up. I watched the video, and there isn’t a single shot of anything that says VeggieTales on it. The entire video is of the inside of the place. You don’t even see the sign (which has VeggieTales on it).
Anyway, I’m glad that’s over with. But it sure was frustrating. It seems like there should be some sort of punishment/consequence for companies that file erroneous claims. They have the right to file a claim/notice, and I have no chance to defend myself before they take the video down?!
As a side note, remember that you can see all of my Niagara Falls related YouTube videos right here on my site. Just visit the blog and at the top of every page is a link called Videos
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Good for you Graham!
Most people and I am sure Youtube, google etc counts on most people just saying it is not worth fighting it. You proved them wrong. If anything Veggietales should be happy you are giving them free publicity. If you are not hurting them in anyway why make a big deal. And Youtube acted like they did no wrong.
all this because of a WORD?! honestly, i think some people need to get a life. the video in know way exploits weggietales and should therefore have never been taken off!
Congrats I’m glad you did not give up on this, it’s just too bad this happened in the first place though!
Youtube is facing many lawsuits from companies like Viacom for millions. It would be impossible to check all videos. Glad to see the video back up.
Nice job man. Yea I had my video taken down due to third party copyright claims. It was a video of me dribbling a basketball to 3 different songs.. the video reached over 10,000 views and then it got taken down. So I protested it and sent in a dispute, and it was put back on for a few weeks, until it was taken down again yesterday. They said they reviewed it and it did indeed infringe. I can’t really argue, because supposively you cannot put any song that is not yours on a video.. The only thing I wonder is how my dumb little video got taken down where theres videos with hundreds of thousands of views with songs and are just from people like me.. Also, I have 3 other basketball videos with songs, here… http://www.youtube.com/user/ThePaperboy9….so why didn’t they take those down as well.. I mean, the song is playing while I dribble, I’m not degrading the song right? So they say they have a library of music i can choose to go on my video instead.. but it’s a crap collection of nothing that suits my video. It’s just artists that volunteered to be used in it or something.. the whole things a little over the top I think..