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

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.

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

NASCAR Abuses DMCA To Try To Delete Fan Videos Of Daytona Crash

from the that's-now-how-copyright-works dept

Joseph M. Durnal was the first of a whole bunch of you to send in a version of this story showing how NASCAR abused copyright to take down some videos. You may have heard that there was a big NASCAR crash at Daytona that sent debris flying into the stands. Well, a video from those same stands, which shows a wheel lying in the seats next to someone injured, was deleted from YouTube via NASCAR claiming copyright on it and issuing a takedown. Obviously, that's a bogus claim, because the copyright would belong to the guy who filmed it.

As the press started calling, NASCAR gave what might seem like a perfectly reasonable response:

The fan video of the wreck on the final lap of today’s NASCAR Nationwide Series race was blocked on YouTube out of respect for those injured in today’s accident. Information on the status of those fans was unclear and the decision was made to err on the side of caution with this very serious incident.—Steve Phelps, NASCAR Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer

Sounds great, except it's totally bogus. NASCAR may well be concerned about those injured by the crash, but that does not give them the right to automatically remove someone else's video, nor does it allow them to abuse the DMCA takedown process for that purpose. The DMCA only applies to copyright.

Of course, once again, we're seeing how when our laws make it easy to censor via copyright claims, many people seek to do exactly that. Thankfully, all of the attention on the takedown has resulted in YouTube doing what appears to have been an expedited review, and have put the video back:

Filed Under: censorship, crash, daytona, dmca, nascar, takedowns
Companies: google, nascar, youtube

United Airlines Massive Computer Crash Leads To Handwritten Boarding Passes

from the so-retro dept

Hopefully, you weren't flying United Airlines yesterday. As you may have heard, the company had a massive computer crash, which caused chaos at many airports. These kinds of things aren't new, but this one did seem quite impressive in terms of how much it impacted. Still, what interests me is that the airline sought to deal with no computers by handwriting boarding passes, some of which people started photographing and putting on Twitter.

Moira Forbes got one that at least looked kinda sorta like a normal boarding pass, done on a boarding pass blank: A James Fortune got a similar one that was a bit messier with the handwriting: And, finally, someone going by the name jmeg on Twitter didn't even get a boarding pass blank, but just sheet of paper. A few months ago, I ended up flying on the day that Virgin America chose to "switch over" its computer system. While they warned us a week ahead of time, they still suggested we show up early and noted that getting boarding passes would be more manual. In that case, they had pre-printed them all out before the systems were shut off, and then had to flip through the stack to find the right one. Even that took more time than usual, so I can only imagine the mess of having to do boarding passes by hand.

But what fascinates me about this is how people figure out how to cope when computer systems go down. Every so often we have these fear mongering stories about computer crashes, and we learn about how the Y2K bug could lead to the end of society or some computer hackers could create havoc by attacking key computers. And while there are computers that run some critical systems, even in situations like this -- where the computers are incredibly important -- when they go down it may create a major pain in the ass for some, but it's not the end of the world. People figure out ways to cope and to use alternative systems, such as handwriting boarding passes. It's not perfect, and there were plenty of people who didn't get to fly at all, but it's not like civilization broke down. Computer systems fail, people deal with it, and everyone gets on with their lives.

Filed Under: boarding pass, computers, crash
Companies: united airlines

Is Malware To Blame For Plane Crash That Killed 154?

from the were-they-flying-WindowsAir? dept

As someone who flies all too frequently, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a bit spooked by a report that the Spanair flight 5022 crash from two years ago may have been caused -- at least in part -- by malware on a computer that failed to detect three technical problems. Apparently, the computer which monitored those things got some sort of trojan horse, and may have failed to set off the necessary alarms because of this. As for how the computer got infected... it sounds like investigators still are not sure, but someone sticking in an infected USB stick or some other remote network connection seem like the most likely culprit. Of course, the reports seem woefully lacking in details. It's unclear how a trojan would block some software from alerting the crew that there was a problem with the aircraft. Honestly, the report seems to raise a lot more questions than it answers, and if it's actually true, it makes me wonder why we're relying on software that can be disabled via some random malware to watch for life-and-death safety issues on airplanes...

Filed Under: airplanes, crash, malware