"Nearly as fast" ? Try never...

ok by the time i am posting this there are only 204 views and 1 comment....hate to say it but what publicity....? I am glad it turned out ok but to viacom we are all ants.... they are going after google and youtube...unless this was posted earlier or something then i apologize but if it wasnt i do not think viacom gives two Sh*ts about 204 people let alone a thousand....

@RodAox: This story, referenced and linked to in the very first line of the post has currently 16,328 views and 62 comments.

It's too bad Viacom has to have public scrutiny in order to do the right thing.

i knew i was missing something... thank you for the heads up...I was actually hoping for this...

Good Job CONSUMERIST... I hope we do not have to put viacom in with the two thumbs up crowd after they did this...

Well how nice of them.

I thought this was the case. Glad to see it resolved quickly!

At least there was actually a logical reason for the Viacom tag. It's not as random and draconic as it originally seemed.

I wonder how many other filmmakers from the same festival are subject to the same thing - and didn't get the added help of Consumerist publicity.

Glad everything was sorted out, less glad to see it's because someone wasn't doing their homework before they started flagging things erroneously. Either way, it's nice to see that Joanna's hard work isn't flying willy-nilly into their corporate domain.

Eh... I'd still sue them. Fraudulent use of the DMCA, attempted theft, blah blah blah.

@krispykrink: Find me a lawyer who will take on Viacom for "fraudulent use of the DMCA". I is laughing.

@johnfrombrooklyn: Yeah, I'm laughing too, that's why I was sarcastic. In case you missed it... ;-)

Laughing or not, I'm sure that if they get too gung ho claiming ownership over things they have Zero legal right to, someone at the EFF would mount a case against them. What they've done is the equivalent of me walking into the Viacom office and taking one of their computers claiming it as mine. Then coming back a week later and going "Oops, my bad. Sorry." and giving it back.

Well, it beats what Viacom execs usually do with the artists they have under contract: grind them up and feed them to exec's babies so that when they get a job in their folk's company, they'll have the proper attitude on artist relations.

Score another one for the Consumerist and the little guy!

@krispykrink: I agree. They need to be taught a lesson.

@johnfrombrooklyn: Universal isn't laughing: [techblog.dallasnews.com] The EFF is sueing them for the same reason.

They're apologizing because they were caught. Once they make a claim like this, they have no impetus whatsoever to justify it.

And @sleze69: "...no such thing as obvious fair use." !!!

If the corporations didn't own this country (and others), we'd have no DMCA. But I obviously overlook all the wonderful things corporations do...

So when are the criminal procedings going to be brought against viacom for purgury?

There need to be clear-cut rules and penalties for those who infringe on others rights like this. Viacom should be fined a set fee, and then punitive damages as well as lost revenues or fined for lost publicity.

@krispykrink: And you'd lose.

@dequeued: Never. They haven't perjured themselves, because it wasn't a sworn statement in a court, and being wrong/making a mistake isn't perjury - there needs to be the knowledge that the statement is false.

this and other stories like this just show that companies are not doing their due diligence before issuing take down notices. they should be made to prove or show their copyright and/or ownership to it with the takedown notice. I assume they don't have to currently because if they did, they would have discovered that they had no legal right to the movie.

@RodAox: Companies are coming to respect the power this blog has, if my company was on here I'd be damned sure that a resolution was brought to the forefront ASAP!

I hope we do not have to put viacom in with the two thumbs up crowd after they did this.
@RodAox: Oh, I seriously doubt that.

Seriously, how hard is it to make sure you actually have a right to the content before slinging accusations left and right?

Screwups are more common than vicious attempts to commit fraud, which is a good lesson to learn for the four millionth time. It never made a lick of sense that Viacom would intentionally try to fraudulently gank the credit for an animation nobody ever heard of, and indeed, that's not what they were doing.

The filmmaker is taking exactly the right approach by considering the matter over and done with now that the mistake has been ironed out.

@snakeskin33: "Screwups are more common than vicious attempts to commit fraud"

At what point do shotgun-type tactics of sending out invalid DMCA takedown notices cease being "screwups" and start being fraud?

[bits.blogs.nytimes.com]

This large corporations are using the DMCA to bully a lot of innocent people. They should be held accountable when the go over the line.

Hold on, if the OP presented the animation at a festival at which rights were granted (through Nicktoons) there likely was a contract in place allowing Viacom and its subsidiaries to show, promote, etc. this video in the context of the festival. Given that it's an independant piece of work and possibly was tagged with the name of the festival ("as shown at...") then it's probable that Viacom assumed someone was showing a version of the animation acquired at the festival. So, in fact, they may have been attempting to protect the copyright of... the OP as well as the copyright of the festival.

Solution: Every time a company makes a claim of copyright infringement on a work which they do not own the copyright to, they should pay the site that was forced to take down the material a small fee ($50?) for the site's time and effort spent in taking down the work and any possible revenue losses.

The sad part is it will always be easier to VIACOM to squash first and then apologize later, rather than be careful to begin with. When you are that big you get to do what you want.

@JustThatGuy3: Filing a DMCA Takedown Notice is a sworn statement by the requester, that the item they're asking to be taken down is rightfully owned by them. It is ILLEGAL to file a DMCA Takedown on something you have no ownership rights to.

This happened to me on Google Video when 236.com spoofed 'Message From Anonymous,' which used a time lapse video of clouds that I had made. The original video was pulled for a false infringement notice. 236.com apologized but Google still hasn't restored the video despite assurances that it is back up: [hownow.brownpau.com]

So to all of you who claimed in the original story that this was simply because the matching software got a false hit, and Viacom wasn't actually claiming rights to the film.

No. They WERE claiming rights to the film, just like the rest of us thought.