Jihad Watch: Elite Covert Task Force!

My employer, however, is being squeezed.  His main client that makes up about 50% of our entire workload has ordered a slowdown on our services that amounts to about 2-4 fewer hours per week.  Over the course of a year, that more than offsets the benefit I get from this tax credit.

Why is this slowdown happening?  Because Barack H. Obama and his pals in Congress decided to everything except halt the recession.     That could have easily been done by slashing the federal budget.   But no, they decided to loot the country and pile on expensive new government programs.
Bite me, Barry, you stupid pampered twit. You are strangling my country while admiring the aroma of your own farts.

You might have noticed a problem with the last one, in that it starts with part two.   That is because the first part was apparently pulled due to a copyright claim by Cartoon Network.   That is a load of crap, mainly because I saw Part 1 and recall nothing from Cartoon Network being there.

This reminds me of another, more political, incident, when one of John McCain’s 2008 ads was pulled from YouTube, ostensibly as a result of a copyright claim by Fox News, which leads me to criticize  certain measures in the anti-piracy effort.

I am referring to unfortunate consequences of streamlining the process by which big movie and TV companies can get content pulled off of YouTube and similar sites.

At minimum, the process should go as follows.

First, it ought to be established that the video in question does in fact contain content that is owned or exclusively licensed to “The Owner”, and that the complainant is in fact authorized to act on behalf of The Owner. This requires actually watching the video.

Second, it ought to be established in a preliminary assessment whether it is a clear fair use case, a clear illegitimate use case, or a disputable case.  This requires YouTube legal staff to exercise a certain amount of intelligent reasonable judgment.  Obviously a clip of some TV series or movie with no content added is likely to be illegitimate, while a critique is likely to be fair use.   A creative mashup of True Lies and Kindergarten Cop to make an absurd poem out of words spoken by Arnold Schwarzenegger is also likely to be fair use. But it’s not as though as there is always a clear line between piracy and fair use.  If in doubt, it should be regarded as disputable.  But if it is a clear fair use case, YouTube should give the finger to The Owner and take The Publisher’s side in any upcoming legal challenge.  Likewise, if it is a clear illegitimate use case, YouTube should just shut down the video.   But if it is, by reasonable assessment, disputable, YouTube should avoid assuming anything just yet, and take the role of mediator between The Owner and The Publisher.

Third, if it is a disputable case, The Publisher should be offered a chance to offer an argument in his defense, and then a chance to consult a lawyer, before it should be assumed that it is all right to just shut down the video.

Because the way it seems to me, it is probably too easy for someone to falsely represent themselves as an authorized agent of some TV station or film studio to YouTube, and YouTube/Google is no longer in the habit making due effort to verify certain claims.