Wesnoth trailer banned from Youtube by Viacom

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radoz
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Post by radoz »

irrevenant wrote:
Viliam wrote:So, Viacom is the one to blame. They said that our video belonged to them, and they took legal action to remove it from internet. Dirty thieves!
Hmm, is that an infringement of our copyright?
I would not , neccessarily call it infringement of our copyright. Viacom falsely claimed ownership of our video, so YouTube removed it. It is not up to YouTube to decide if this claim is true or false.

So, technically speaking, Viacom caused damage to our project, because of their legal actions the video was removed, fewer people could see it. Actually, a lot of people who had followed the old link, will think: "Those Wesnoth guys infringed the copyright of Viacom - what a bunch of crooks!". And this is where the damage happened. If Wesnoth was a commercial product, "our" lawyers would be very excited and in a frenzy writing nasty letters to Viacom, listing the damage and fees to be paid.
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darkwraith007
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class action lawsuit...

Post by darkwraith007 »

If anyone is interested, I'm sure the EFF would let us use a lawyer to represent all Wesnoth developers/players in a class-action lawsuit against Viacom for "severe and irreperable damage to reputation" and "blatent disregard for proper copyright attribution" among other things. Well whatever the actual legal lingo is...>_>

Whether anyone wants to take up this task is up to you guys, but I'd gladly help where I can, maybe we could set up a petition or something? Or a blog? Get the word out somehow...at least this "negative" event could be used as publicity to push Wesnoth into the limelight perhaps.
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Post by Tux2B »

Create a banner about it, and use it in your sig in other forums. That will have some very limited effect, but at least it would be a concrete example of what "private justice" means and how that can be very dangerous.*
It might also interest people from organisations like Framasoft, APRIL and FSF, so you might want to tell them about it, so they can add it to lists of people that have been bothered** by false copyright claims in documents telling about it. I think that Wesnoth has reached quite a high status in the open source community by showing that you can make good open source games.
I think what would ready bother Viacom is bad press. They don't really care about the rest. If they would ever be fined because of this, it wouldn't change much for them, as it would be very few money and that they have a lot more.

*because in this case, it was a case of private justice, IMO
** I know I need to use a stronger word here, but I my English vocabulary one again shows its limits...
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darkwraith007
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situation resolved...

Post by darkwraith007 »

Just cause noone bothered to post any updates, thought I'd let people know, if they don't already know, that the trailer is back up on YouTube.

Seems someone (or more then one person) was able to work their magic and get the trailer back up on YouTube.

Good work everyone! Lets keep Wesnoth alive and continue to expose people to it!

Till then.
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Cuyo Quiz
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Post by Cuyo Quiz »

Good work everyone! Lets keep Wesnoth alive and continue to expose people to it!
I'm having Treshold flashback all over.

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radoz
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Post by radoz »

Good to see the trailer back online at youTube.

Viacom is getting some heat from the EFF regarding the removal of another video on youTube.
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db0
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Post by db0 »

Btw, now that I remembered, if anyone has the full quality trailer available, they can upload it to the gallery as well. There is no size limit and it certainly won't be taken down by Viacom ;)
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