One of Australia’s most popular YouTube channels has been threatened with legal action over public footage of an incident taken with a dash camera.
Dash Cam Owners Australia is an Australian company that runs a popular Facebook, YouTube and Twitch account featuring dash cam footage of crashes, road rage and other vehicular incidents.
Last week, the business was sent a letter demanding that one video ‘JEEP DRIVER THREATENS TO BREAK WOMENS NECK – ROAD RAGE NSW’ be taken down off their online accounts.
The video takes place in a public parking lot, where one car is watching another pull out of a parking spot in front of them.
As the reversing car moves towards the car with the dash cam, the driver honks their horn. Then, the driver of the reversing car comes out and after a short exchange says “Blow your fucking horn at me and I’ll break your neck”.
Solutions Law’s Anthony Buda claims the video was posted without the consent of his client and that it violates laws about private conversations.
He said that his client has “received negative threatening feedback in various forms which include but are not limited to various threats of violence and defamatory remarks,” and threatens to sue Dash Cam Owners Australia for damages.
Dash Cam Owners Australia also posted correspondence from YouTube showing that the video had received a privacy complaint.
The letter cites South Australia’s Surveillance Devices Act 2016, a law which penalises using optical surveillance devices that “visually records or observes a private activity without the consent of all the principal parties”. However, the law is for recording private interactions, and exempts people who are subjected to threats of violence.
It is not known if this footage — which was filmed in NSW, not SA — would violate this law.
Since the video was removed from Dash Cam Owners Australia’s YouTube account, copies of the footage have popped up across YouTube, Facebook and other sites.
“Jeep driver never heard of the Streisand effect I take it…” Dash Cam Owners Australia wrote on Facebook.