EFF rescues ASL Ally's sign-language YouTube music videos

Cory Doctorow 10:13 pm Fri Nov 26, 2010

When popular YouTuber ASL Ally — who posts videos that interpret song lyrics in American Sign Language for deaf and hard-of-hearing people — had her YouTube channel yanked after complaints by Warner and Universal, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Cindy Cohn came to the rescue. Cohn called up YouTube, and YouTube contacted the rightsholders, and everyone agreed that there was nothing wrong with Ally's wonderful work. However:

"The problem is that the various music groups hire zombies and trained monkeys who scour the Internet searching for any use of their licensed material regardless of the context or purpose," Cohn said by phone on Monday.

"Often, this leads to flagged entries and complaints on sites like YouTube that really should have been approached with greater discretion."

YouTube Reinstates Ally ASL's Account

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