For April Fool's Day this year, ImprovEverywhere pretended they'd done a flashmob at a funeral, posting a staged video of the prank to YouTube. The Tribune's CW11 news-team presented the prank as fact that night on their evening newscast, so ImprovEverywhere put a little clip on YouTube of the CW11 broadcast of their gag — CW11 simply aired their own video with the words "YouTube" superimposed on it.
So, naturally, CW11 sent a copyright notice to YouTube saying that the video infringed their copyright.
CW 11 News Falls for Fake Improv Everywhere April Fool's Mission – video powered by Metacafe
Tonight I got a copyright notice from YouTube informing me that Tribune (the parent company of the CW 11) had filed a copyright claim against the video and that it had been removed. Clearly they want this embarrassment off of the Internets. What's more interesting is the fact that their original broadcast used our content without permission. They simply put "YOUTUBE" on the screen to indicate that's where they found the video. So it's OK for them to air content that we shot and own, but it's not OK for me to upload their footage of the content they took from me? It's "fair use" for the news to take a video off of YouTube and broadcast it, but it's not "fair use" for a citizen to expose their poor reporting on his own content?
(Thanks, Jim!)
