Last month, I wrote an article, The 3 (or 7) Houses of Parliament. It was about a joke in the TV series Arrested Development. For the article, I made a video that used 22.8 seconds from one of their episodes, “The Ocean Walker.” And I uploaded it to YouTube.[1]
Fox, via some robot on YouTube determined that I was using copyrighted material and banned the video instantly. At first, I just bitched. Typical! Fox is evil. You know the script.
Finally, I decided that I would fight it. I filed an appeal. I noted that I was using only one-fiftieth of an episode. I noted that it was part of a larger video and that video was part of a larger article and so my use should be considered fair use. And I noted that my video acted as a commercial for the episode.
Shockingly, today I received email from YouTube:
FOX has reviewed your dispute and released its copyright claim on your video, “The 3 (or 7) Houses of Parliament“. For more information, please visit your Copyright Notice page[.]
Sincerely,
– The YouTube Team
This is great news. It makes me think that the system—at least when it comes to Fox—works. I think the copyright system is completely broken. Until it is fixed, however, I don’t think people should be able to post whole episodes and such. But my video—and now that it’s been approved, I wish it were better—clearly falls under fair use rights. I’m glad that Fox agrees.
Of course, Fox is still evil.
[1] Here is the video:
[2] GBUtests is short for “Good Bad & Uglies Tests,” which are the videos I am trying to make but are still too weak to show in public. It does, however, still have a couple misc videos that don’t involve my face that you can look at. Don’t expect much.
