A few years ago, Jay Leno played a YouTube clip made by Brian Kamerer and his friends on his show. He didn’t credit the Kamerer, but whatever, he was on NBC! Awesome! Except that some time since then, he says in an open letter on Splitsider, YouTube took the down the video because it was violating NBC’s copyright. What the hell.
Now, in all likelihood, the video was nabbed by YouTube’s Content-ID software, which combs through content in videos and cross references it with a database of copyrighted content, and not a copyright monkey at NBC or the Chin himself. But in a judicial atmosphere where teenagers are forced to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for downloading a few dozen songs, lusting for a little blood from NBC doesn’t seem so absurd. Our theft-detecting robot malfunctioned and blew up your house. Sorry for the inconvenience!
For his part, Kamerer wrote that wonderful open letter to Jay Leno over at Splitsider. Here’s an excerpt, from the play-within-the-letter:
JAY LENO
Hey remember those loser kids, we played their bit once, remember those guys? Let’s get em.WRITER
What? Who? Why?JAY LENO
Those guys, we took their video about three years ago and played it, I loved that song, remember?WRITER
Oh yeah, sure, I remember those guys. So, what is it you want to do to them?JAY LENO
I want to have the boys at NBC say that we own the video, so that if they try to watch their video on YouTube, they won’t be able to, and it will look like they stole the video, like Carlos Mencia!WRITER
Or we could just leave those two nice boys alone. After all, you loved that song, remember?JAY LENO
You’re fired! Secretary! Get me someone who has the balls to frame these two unknown arseholes, so that eventually their work will be blocked on YouTube! And I need 50 more classic cars!
And that’s about all you really need to know about Jay Leno. [Splitsider]
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