Harassment by The YouTube Team -- An open message to Sergey Brin

YouTube may have yanked the wrong guy's... video.

Does YouTube follow the law?

(BANGKOK / SALEM) - This video by our friend and fellow writer Anthony Lawson, about YouTube's propensity to yank videos from the site when they fail to meet their undisclosed political test, illustrates what may be the real evolving character of a company whose motto is 'Do No Evil'.

This most analytical writer and presenter always lays it down with an eloquent simplicity that simply works, and this is a serious subject that needs to be publicly vetted and ultimately, hopefully, changed. Anthony's highly enunciated verse rang like an alarm for me on a number of levels. I am familiar because I've experienced this strange disappearing video phenomena from YouTube twice now and let's just say, it isn't cool.

One of Anthony's videos that was recently pulled from his YouTube account (YouTube.com/alawson 911), disappeared through the same fishy circumstances that claimed two of ours in the past. Anthony's highly produced video was flagged because a random individual with a YouTube account, (which takes about three minutes to create), 'flagged' it, claiming a copyright infringement- by clicking a box and hitting 'send'. (This takes about three seconds.) What Anthony explains in the video below (while it's still here), is that no proof is required by the so-called copyright holder. They just visit sites that disagree with their politics, often from coffee houses, and your hard work, sometimes work you risked your life to shoot, is gone with a click of their button. So much for customer service. I mean punish us if we're wrong YouTube, no problemo, but this is ridiculous.

Taking Liberty

In another incident, a YouTube video about Israel's 1967 attack and attempted sinking of the U.S. Navy Ship 'Liberty' that we included with an article about the same, disappeared down what we have come to call 'The Google Hole' that swallows up content critical of Israeli politics, particularly when it relates to the Israeli Defence Forces and military activity.

This was not our clip, so we replaced it with a produced video series on the U.S.S. Liberty found on Google Video. It is still there at the time of this writing, but as detailed below, that will soon be gone also^[1].

Disappearing the Clips

In one case involving Salem-News.com (YouTube.com/SalemNews) content, a video posted to our account in 2008 was pulled because it showed (not clearly) the body of a man killed by the Iraqi special forces platoon I was with. They said he was a terrorist.

YouTube is full of gore, but for some reason this video that showed a body, recorded with a phone camera and added to my report, hit the roundfile. The guy had been killed in Dora which was a hot place at the time. I believe the story was part of history but YouTube didn't think twice about killing it. Plus, they send you a threatening message stating that our account will be closed if this happens again, that sort of thing^[2].

The second video of mine yanked from YouTube was about the plight of Afghan refugees in France. The footage was from the UN video feed, which we are and have for a long time, been official subscribers. The exclusive stated purpose of the video was for media use. Yet, one person's complaint that the video was a copyright infringement, which was virtually impossible, made it disappear like Harry Houdini.

The only extra footage in that story was video from a combat patrol in Afghanistan, shot by me, on my own camera in 2007. Just to make sure there was salt in the wounds, we learned that the person who complained about the video, did so from the United Nations itself. We were one of the only media groups actually making use of the video at the time, fully acknowledging the UN in the process. We never used UN video again^[3].

Sergey Brin, co-founder and president of Google

Harassment by The YouTube Team — An open message to Sergey Brin

By Anthony Lawson

YouTube may be acting illegally by taking down videos for alleged copyright infringement, without first determining important factors regarding Fair Use as provided for in copyright law.

In August 2008, U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel of San Jose, California ruled that copyright holders cannot order a deletion of an online file without determining whether that posting reflected "fair use" of the copyrighted material.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act)

Anthony Lawson highlights how YouTube is clearly giving favor to anyone who files a complaint, and also that the company is not investigating these allegations; instead stating that the unverified claims create a legal requirement for them to dump your video.

He explains in precise terms and makes a good case against this highly questionable practice.

Several other serious producers, like Debbie Menon of MyCatBirdSeat.com, agree that his work is the highest caliber work of its nature.

Perhaps that is why YouTube wants to block it from public view; because it explains in plain language exactly what Israel's genocidal apartheid politics have resulted in for mankind.

Do Just a Little Evil?

And on the subject of video 'dumping', YouTube and Google, are getting just a little evil after all. They sent out a casual notice this week to those of us who have Google Video accounts, advising that they are going to purge all user video content, and that we have about two weeks to move it or lose it^[4].

In our case, 151 videos are posted on the Google Video site, and many are there because they exceed the length YouTube allows; so they really got us with that one.

At the end of the day, YouTube and Google are doing less for the world community than it seems, but in traditional corporate American spirit, the disregard for its obviously insignificant users, allows their ability to profit hand over fist, so it keeps getting bigger and gaining power.

So watch Anthony's very clear explanation of what happened to his recent video, and perhaps consider creating your own message to Sergey Brin.

^[1] Mar-19-2010: Israel's Deadly 1967 Attack on the U.S.S. Ship Liberty - Tim King Salem-News.com

^[2] Jan-15-2009: YouTube Pulls Salem-News.com Video Showing Dead Terrorist in Iraq - Tim King Salem-News.com

^[3] Mar-09-2010: YouTube Rejection: UN Alleges Copyright Violation over Report from Media Video Feed - Tim King Salem-News.com

^[4] Apr-15-2011: Google Will Purge Customer's Uploaded Videos - Tim King Salem-News.com

Special thanks to MyCatBirdSeat.com

Anthony Lawson is a retired international-prize-winning commercials director, cameraman, ad-agency creative director and voice over. He used to be known for shooting humorous commercials, but doesn't find much to laugh about, with the way the world is going, these days.

After recovering from the shock of seeing the Twin Towers collapse, on subsequent showings, I developed a strong feeling that what I was seeing and what I was being told were quite different things. For two such buildings to collapse, in the manner they did, solely because they had been hit by large aircraft, did not make sense. The collapses were too uniform. If aircraft impacts were the cause, at least one of the buildings should have fallen over. I subsequently made a video called "WTC7 -- This is an Orange" to express my concern that the public was not being told the truth about 9/11.

Tim King is a former U.S. Marine with twenty years of experience on the west coast as a television news producer, photojournalist, reporter and assignment editor. In addition to his role as a war correspondent, this Los Angeles native serves as Salem-News.com's Executive News Editor. Tim spent the winter of 2006/07 covering the war in Afghanistan, and he was in Iraq over the summer of 2008, reporting from the war while embedded with both the U.S. Army and the Marines. Tim holds numerous awards for reporting, photography, writing and editing, including the Oregon AP Award for Spot News Photographer of the Year (2004), first place Electronic Media Award in Spot News, Las Vegas, (1998), Oregon AP Cooperation Award (1991); and several others including the 2005 Red Cross Good Neighborhood Award for reporting. Tim has several years of experience in network affiliate news TV stations, having worked as a reporter and photographer at NBC, ABC and FOX stations in Arizona, Nevada and Oregon. You can send Tim an email at this address: newsroom@salem-news.com

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