TV Station Issues DMCA Takedowns On Videos Of Its Fake Asian Pilot Names Debacle

from the PLEASE-BRING-PUBLIC-ATTENTION-BACK-TO-OUR-SCREWUP dept

Tue, Jul 23rd 2013 5:05am — Tim Cushing

Oh, copyright, you crazy set of mixed-up laws? Is there anything you can't censor?

The DMCA system is at it again, being beaten like a rented mule in order to perform a duty for which it was never intended.

Local San Francisco television news station KTVU has embarked on a novel use of copyright law to cover up embarrassing footage. It has been issuing takedown notices to YouTube for videos showing its anchor literally reading fake names of pilots involved in the recent airline crash at San Francisco International Airport.

While it's true that KTVU owns the rights to the footage of its anchor maintaining a straight face while reading a list of bad jokes, it insists this has nothing to do with flexing its copyright muscle in order to cover up its bad judgment.

While many of the videos of the segment were still live on Google-owned YouTube, the reason why the Fox affiliate has been demanding their removal doesn’t concern copyright.

“The accidental mistake we made was insensitive and offensive. By now, most people have seen it. At this point, continuing to show the video is also insensitive and offensive, especially to the many in our Asian community who were offended. Consistent with our apology, we are carrying through on our responsibility to minimize the thoughtless repetition of the video by others,” the station’s general manager and vice president, Tom Raponi, told Mediabistro today.

First things first. If you're not taking it down for copyright reasons, then why the hell are you using the DMCA takedown system? Noah H. Webster, it's got "COPYRIGHT" right in the frickin' name! Wouldn't a polite note to the YouTube account holders stating the above accomplish the same thing (i.e., a minimal level of compliance)?

As for the arguing it should be removed because "most people have seen it," I don't even know where to go with that. Continuing to show the video isn't "offensive." Only the original act is. Pretending this has something to do with making amends for an earlier error is just kind of sad, especially when the station manager tries to drag viewers into his Shame Circle with "thoughtless repetition of the video by others."

Also: "accidental mistakes" are the best kind. Also, the only kind.

The station manager wants to censor a video while claiming he isn't censoring it, as though yanking it from YouTube with admittedly bogus DCMA takedowns is just part of being a good, sensitive citizen. But by doing this, Raponi is only making it worse. If he just could have left it alone for a few more weeks, something else would have come along to take its place in the publi— OMG! Someone in England had a baby!

But now he's blown it.

This is the internet. No one puts embarrassment in the corner.

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Filed Under: censorship, copyright, crash, dmca, ktvu, youtube
Companies: asiana

41 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 23 Jul 2013 @ 5:16am

bad judgment ?
accidental mistake ?

No - it is clearly incompetence and complete lack of journalist integrity.

What I find absolutely amazing is the brain dead reading of text with no comprehension of the contents. Talking heads indeed.

This could potentially become a criminal investigation, aren't there repercussions for hiding evidence?

As the Daily Show quite humorously pointed out, those aren't even Korean names, they're Japanese.
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S. T. Stone, 23 Jul 2013 @ 5:29am

KTVU, meet the Streisand Effect.

Streisand Effect, meet KTVU.

You two play nice now, y'hear?
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RyanNerd (profile), 23 Jul 2013 @ 5:31am

As Streisand learned the hard way
There is no such thing as a delete button on the Internet. In fact trying to push this button only makes things worse.
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DannyB (profile), 23 Jul 2013 @ 5:43am

One more anomaly in an ocean of anomalies
This is why the DMCA needs to be done away with.

Or alternatively provide a super charged way to respond to bad takedown notices that have penalties with real teeth.
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DannyB (profile), 23 Jul 2013 @ 5:51am

KTVU's response
KTVU's gave only a brief response to criticism of its DMCA takedown notices. "The internet must stop laughing at us. Stop it, stop it now!" and further added "We have no informations about Mrs. Streisand" said spokesperson Wi Su Yu.
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lucidrenegade (profile), 23 Jul 2013 @ 5:52am

This guy should be brought up on charges for willfully abusing the DMCA takedown process. He even admits it has nothing to do with copyright.
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Ninja (profile), 23 Jul 2013 @ 5:52am

New KTVU lead management:

Yu Do Wong
We Too Foo
Ho "Stu" Pi Dee (seems he adopted the name Stuart when he came to America from the Philipines.. Or something)

Remember kids: never waste the chance to come with politically incorrect humor!
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out_of_the_blew_wanda_sykes_for_a_krispy_kreme, 23 Jul 2013 @ 6:01am

Damn I pretty much forgot all about that till now of course. I'm going to have to watch that shit again it was hilarious.

By that I mean I'm laughing at FAUX!
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Richard (profile), 23 Jul 2013 @ 6:14am

Parody
Surely this is fair use as parody - OK they didn't make a new parody video - but then again they didn't need to...
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Anonymous Coward, 23 Jul 2013 @ 6:33am

Re:
Those aren't Japanese names either. They might be Chinese, but I wouldn't be for certain on it without speaking to someone that speaks Chinese. I wouldn't bet on them being any other language for that matter. The bottom line is that they're jokes altered to look vaguely like asian names if you aren't paying attention. I doubt the pranksters went to the effort of making sure those were actual names in a language.
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Anonymous Coward, 23 Jul 2013 @ 6:35am

Re:
There's only one...2
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egghead (profile), 23 Jul 2013 @ 6:37am

More than one kind of mistake!
Also: "accidental mistakes" are the best kind. Also, the only kind.
I've made many deliberate mistakes in my life; mainly it's to keep from sounding as though I'm correcting everyone else's speech. I've also been known to make an honest mistake; one where the mistaken accepts something as truth when it's later revealed to be false.
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Anonymous Coward, 23 Jul 2013 @ 6:40am

eff you Mike, come Tom Raponi lets make some more deliberate mistakes and remove everything from the internet ever! It would be incensitive not to bring more attention to the names by not doing everything within your power to cleanse the world of the evidence.
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Anonymous Coward, 23 Jul 2013 @ 7:04am

Likely trying not to "censor", but to establish a plausible argument should a lawsuit over the names be filed that it exercised reasonable attempts to reduce further publication. The fact it may not work is not the issue...trying to do something, even if you know it is likely fruitless, is at the least a showing of good faith.
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Jeremy, 23 Jul 2013 @ 7:25am

I'm wondering if the talking head's lawyers are involved.
I'm wondering if the station cares a lot less than the female Ron Burgundy who went brain dead and read those names. I can see her realizing her career is essentially dead unless somehow she can make the internet forget.
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Anonymous Coward, 23 Jul 2013 @ 7:29am

I swear there are so many "anomalies" these days, you could make a breakfast cereal out of it.
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pixelpusher220 (profile), 23 Jul 2013 @ 7:57am

Re: I'm wondering if the talking head's lawyers are involved.
Dunno, in the News biz, that might be a skill worth keeping, no?
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Anonymous Coward, 23 Jul 2013 @ 7:59am

Re:
Mmmm sugar frosted anomalies!
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Ragnarredbeard (profile), 23 Jul 2013 @ 8:07am

Re:
Actually, Chinese.
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nbcart (profile), 23 Jul 2013 @ 8:39am

Maybe someone should fly over the KTVU station, take pictures and then post them online...
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Anonymous Coward, 23 Jul 2013 @ 8:54am

Re:
Will this do?
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John Fenderson (profile), 23 Jul 2013 @ 9:00am

Re: More than one kind of mistake!
I've made many deliberate mistakes in my life

No, you haven't. If you did something intentionally incorrect, it wasn't a mistake. It was just incorrect.
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John Fenderson (profile), 23 Jul 2013 @ 9:02am

Re:
that it exercised reasonable attempts to reduce further publication

So breaking the law now constitutes a "reasonable attempt"? We live in strange times indeed!
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John Fenderson (profile), 23 Jul 2013 @ 9:03am

Re: I'm wondering if the talking head's lawyers are involved.
I doubt if this will have any negative career impact on her whatsoever. Nobody expects accuracy or thought from TV news anchors. They expect eye candy.
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Wally (profile), 23 Jul 2013 @ 9:13am

Fair Use.
It's even more interesting that most of the videos that have the full report have not been taken down at all. Under DMCA's fair use clause, all those videos are completely protected...which means that the station manager is a double fail.
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Wally (profile), 23 Jul 2013 @ 9:20am

Re: I'm wondering if the talking head's lawyers are involved.
I don't think that was a brain dead moment. As an anchorperson, she is trained to keep her composure through gaffes like the one she encountered...Watch the videos of the broadcast. Before reading the names she was loose and yet composed, and you can tell when she had the "OH SHIT!!" moment in her head as she read the names she stiffens up. That was her overcompensation brought on by her professional training as an anchorwoman.
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Anonymous Coward, 23 Jul 2013 @ 9:36am

Re: Re:
With blueberries?

Yum!
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Anonymous Coward, 23 Jul 2013 @ 10:14am

Re:
Zero chance of charges - and I don't think they should be filed. They HAVE the copyright of the video in question, so they aren't violating the "under penalty of perjury" part. The rest is just deciding whether the videos are fair use.

But the case for fair use is extremely strong. I think it is often very strong with news clips that are more than a day old. The videos are not competing with the station in any way, because there isn't really any market for old news (and in this case, incorrect news), and the station is certainly not going to claim they want to market it as humor.
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Gwiz (profile), 23 Jul 2013 @ 10:38am

Re: I'm wondering if the talking head's lawyers are involved.
I'm wondering if the station cares a lot less than the female Ron Burgundy who went brain dead and read those names.

Nah. She'll be fine. She's the bubble-headed bleach blonde who comes on at 5 to tell us about the plane crash with a gleam in her eye. It's interesting when people die.

On a similar note, there was a very uncomfortable broadcast a few years ago with a local anchorman reading the risque text messages of then Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick on air:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTDpH6vRXFk
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Anonymous Coward, 23 Jul 2013 @ 12:15pm

Re:
They aren't even vaguely Japanese, if anything they are Chinese.
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Anonymous Coward, 23 Jul 2013 @ 1:01pm

Re: Re:
There was a judge not long ago that said fair use must be considered or there was a risk of violating the "under penalty of perjury" part. Which is really the way it should be given that there's a notice and takedown procedure at all.
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Anonymous Coward, 23 Jul 2013 @ 1:03pm

Re:
Who would have standing to sue them over the fake names?
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Anonymous Coward, 23 Jul 2013 @ 1:03pm

Re: I'm wondering if the talking head's lawyers are involved.
Fuk Yu San Diego.
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Rekrul, 23 Jul 2013 @ 3:45pm

I'm glad I downloaded a copy. For posterity, of course...
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Anonymous Coward, 23 Jul 2013 @ 5:05pm

Re:
Yes, that is correct.

And now with a news update - this just in from Korean News Network.
Southwest flight 345 Captain, Kent Parker Wright is under investigation.
Interviews with flight instructor, Haywood U. Flye-Moore and passenger Macy Lawyers.

http://imgur.com/lyTERBV
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Derek Kerton (profile), 24 Jul 2013 @ 2:58am

Re: Re: I'm wondering if the talking head's lawyers are involved.
The station just seems to be airing their dirty laundry. People love it when you lose, they love dirty laundry.
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Paul Schmidt, 24 Jul 2013 @ 12:11pm

This was one of the most embarrassing gaffes I've ever seen on television. It'd be a shame not being able to have continued access to the video though...If nothing else it just proves that many TV anchors have earned the talking haircut label that is often assigned to them.
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Aaron, 24 Jul 2013 @ 1:57pm

TV News is a now a medium of record
As such, the clip in question is archived as part of the Internet Archive's TV News Search & Borrow service:

http://archive.org/details/KTVU_20130712_190000_KTVU_Noon_News#start/240/end/270
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Anonymous, 24 Jul 2013 @ 2:46pm

Did I just hear the sound of silverware being thrown down the stairs?
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Anonymous, 24 Jul 2013 @ 2:48pm

Re: Re: Re: I'm wondering if the talking head's lawyers are involved.
That was originally Don Henley, and remade by Lisa Marie Presley. The Talking Heads had nothing to do with it.
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Daniel S, 24 Jul 2013 @ 5:41pm

it was an "accidental mistake" so does that mean it was intended?
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