In September 2007, Creation Science Evangelism (CSE), a creationist group founded by Kent Hovind, recently sent a raft of DMCA takedown notices to YouTube complaining that various user-posted videos infringed its copyrights in videos of its seminars. Among those users whose videos were taken down was the Rational Response Squad (RRS), an atheist group.

The videos flagged for removal were all critical of CSE, and some consisted of expression entirely original to the YouTube poster. Other videos used portions of CSE's own videos to make critical commentary about the organization.

RRS created a video -- Open letter to YouTube -- arguing that its videos were protected under fair use.

YouTube also canceled RRS's entire account for a time (the rationale for doing so is not clear), but later reinstated it. As of April 2008, CSE has not taken further action on the matter.

On March 5, 2008, a lawyer for the U.S. Air Force sent a DMCA takedown notice to YouTube, requesting that it remove a thirty-second Air Force promotional video posted to the site by Wired's Kevin Poulsen in connection with a February 27, 2008 article. The article described the Air Force's new recruitment drive as embodied in the promotional video:

The Air Force is going large with a new tech-themed recruitment drive sporting the tagline: "A Changing World." In this 30-second TV spot, cool headed airmen in the service's fledgling Cyber Command are seen combating one of the "three million" hacker attacks that target the Pentagon building every day.

YouTube removed the clip in response to the notice. According to Poulsen's post about the takedown, the Air Force originally sent the clip to him and thanked him for agreeing to run it. Wired is now hosting a copy of the video clip on its own servers.

The takedown notice is interesting given that U.S. government works generally are not copyrightable, but an indepdendent contractor may have created the promotional video and assigned its right to the government. How the law applies in those circumstances is less clear.

Brian Sapient, a member of the "Rational Response Squad," a group which seeks to debunk what it considers irrational beliefs, posted a video on YouTube from the NOVA television program "Secrets of the Psychics," in which magician James Randi challenges the performance techniques of famous spoon-bender Uri Geller. The clip allegedly incorporated images from a film of Geller performing at a charity event in England, the copyrights to which were assigned by the film-maker to Geller's company, Explorologist. According to Sapient, this portion of the NOVA clip lasts only eight seconds.

MoveOn.org, a progressive political organization, and Brave New Films, LLC, a politically oriented film company, created a video parodying Comedy Central's Colbert Report. The video, entitled "Stop the Falsiness," shows clips of the Colbert Report interspersed with tounge-in-cheek "commentary" from MoveOn activists and other political personalities, including liberal pundit Al Franken and Democratic sentator Russ Fiengold. MoveOn and Brave New Films uploaded the video to YouTube in August 2006. They also published it on a separate website, Stop the Falsiness.

On or about March 13, 2007, Viacom, the corporate parent of Comedy Central, delivered a takedown notice to YouTube pursuant to section 512(c) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, apparentl asserting that "Stop the Falsiness" violated its copyright and requesting that it be taken down. (Although Viacom later disputed sending the takedown demand, a notice appeared on YouTube on March 13, 2007 indicating that the video had been removed due to a copyright claim by Viacom, and Viacom ultimately relented.)

MoveOn and Brave New Films responded by suing Viacom under section 512(f) of the DMCA for knowing, material misrepresentation of its claim of copyright infringement with regard to the video. The suit was based on the argument that the video was so clearly a fair use that Viacom could not have asserted in good faith that the clip infringed its copyright. Viacom responded with a letter to the lawyers for MoveOn and Brave New Films, indicating that Viacom could not confirm sending the takedown notice and stating that Viacom had "no problem with your client's continued use of [the video] on its website or on YouTube."

That did not completely satisfy MoveOn and Brave New Films, and further negotiations took place between the lawyers. Eventually, Viacom agreed to adopt new policies enabling YouTube users to complain directly to Viacom about mistaken takedown notices and affirming the company's respect for fair use of its copyrighted materials. MoveOn and Brave New Films then dismissed the suit.

In May 200, Explorologist Limited, a company incorporated in the United Kingdown by paranormalist Uri Geller, brought a lawsuit against Brian Sapient, a member of the Rational Response Squad. The dispute revolved around two videos posted by Sapient on YouTube. One video was a clip from a NOVA television program "Secrets of Psychics," in which magician James Randi challenges the performance techniques of Geller ("NOVA clip"). The NOVA clip allegedly incorporates images from a film of Geller performing at a charity event in England, the copyrights to which were assigned by the film-maker to Explorologist. According to Sapient, this portion of the NOVA clip lasts only eight seconds. The second video showed Sapient himself discussing Geller's performances ("Sapient clip").

Explorologist sued Sapient in federal court in Pennsylvania, alleging that posting the NOVA clip violated its UK copyright in the charity performance film, and that Sapient defamed the company and Geller in their trade (commercial disparagement) and misapproriated Geller's name and likeness "for his own benefit and commercial purpose." Sapient moved to dismiss the lawsuit, and in October 2007 the court dismissed the commercial disparagement claim for failure to properly plead damages with specificity. The court refused to dismiss the other claims, but expresed its initial reservations about whether the claim against Sapient is actionable under UK copyright law, because it is derivative on a claim against YouTube, whose server is located outside the UK.

Update:

2/15/2008 - Explorologist moved to dismiss the case due to its inability to produce a foreign witness for a deposition in Philadelphia.

2/22/2008 - Sapient moved for leave to file an amended answer and counterclaims against Explorologist.

6/3/2008 - Court ruled that Explorologist's motion to dismiss and Sapient's motion to file an amended answer will be heard, if necessary, after settlement negotiations are completed.

8/4/08 -  The parties settled the lawsuit.  As part of the settlement, Explorologist agreed to license the disputed footage under a non-commercial CC license, to avoid future disputes about fair use of the material. A montetary settlement was reached, but the terms are not public.

On October 31, 2007, Doug Clark of the Greensboro News-Record wrote a blog post about a campaign speech made by Douglas McCullough, a North Carolina Court of Appeals judge, to a group of Republican supporters. During the speech, McCullough made statements implying that voting for a fellow Republican candiate, N.C. Supreme Court Justice Bob Edmunds, would help Republicans fair better in redistricting litigation that would come before the N.C. Supreme Court in the future. In the post, Clark originally linked to a video of the speech posted on McCullough's campaign website. When the video was removed from the campaign website, he provided a link to the video on YouTube.

Blogger and law professor Eugene Volokh noticed that Clark's YouTube link led to a notice that the video had been removed due to a third-party copyright claim. Volokh surmised that McCullough or someone connected with him had filed a DMCA takedown claim to remove the video. Volokh commented on the potential fair use defense available to whomever actually posted the video:

This takedown strikes me as quite troublesome: The posting of the video seems very likely to be fair use, because it was for purposes of news reporting and political commentary, and because it was highly unlikely to at all affect the market for the video (since the market likely didn't exist). More broadly, the judge is hiding important information from the public, information that he shouldn't be trying to conceal even if copyright law allowed such concealment. If anyone has a copy of the video and can point me to it, or e-mail it to me, I'd love to see it, and post it if it strikes me as newsworthy.

The page with the takedown notice still exists, but the video has been re-posted to YouTube and remains available at the new URL.