VR Legal Rights Revisited

As previously covered in my post VR Legal Rights where I discussed the issues of copyright, fair use, and those who would try to twist the legal system in order to serve their own self interest, it seems that the Anshe Chung debacle is back in the news once again. This time with a slightly different twist.

In an interview on C|Net News.com called “DMCA complaint against YouTube dropped,” Guntram Graef, the husband of Anshe Chung’s creator, Ailin Graef, recanted his former DMCA violation cries.

“The husband of Second Life land baroness Anshe Chung said he should not have filed a Digital Millennium Copyright Act complaint against YouTube in his attempts to have the site delete a video of her avatar being attacked by a barrage of digital flying penises. And as a result, he said, he has revoked the DMCA claim. “

It seems that the reasoning behind filing of the DMCA complaint was that there was no way that for Graef to express his feelings that the video was inappropriate and just an offensive sexual attack on his wife. So Graef had no choice other than filling the DCMA complaint form.

One second here, just who are Ailin & Guntram Graef trying to fool here? If you proceed to YouTube and click upon a video to view it, you will notice that there is a gray box that appears underneath the video. If you pay close attention here you will see things like the video’s rating, statistics, and some links. If you examine the links here, do you not see one which says: Flag as Inappropriate?

Now if Guntram Graef had simply chosen to click upon this “Flag as Inappropriate” link, there would have been a window that opened up containing the following message:

This Video is Inappropriate

Please select your reason for flagging this video as inappropriate from the dropdown below. We promise to review each and every submission within 24-48 hours.

If you are the copyright owner of this video and believe it has been uploaded without your permission, please follow these directions to submit a copyright infringement notice.

The dropdown menu mentioned in the above text contained the following complaint reasons:

• Sexually explicit
• Mature (over 18 only) content
• Other Terms of Use violation
• Graphic violence
• Hate speech

It seems that simply choosing one of these may have served their purpose and have the video removed. However, if they felt that this would not provide them with the ability to clarify why they felt that the video was inappropriate they could have clicked upon any of the YouTube Contact links, which offers a variety of options and a text box where you can bring any needed clarification to the issues at hand. Either way, it is rather plain to see that there were other options of contacting YouTube other than filing a DMCA violation to resolve any issues that you may have with a post.

By the way, YouTube has changed its reasoning for deleting the video. A link to it currently produces a message that states the video was removed for a “terms of service violation.”

Perhaps I’m just a bit cynical here, but it does appear to this VTOR contributor that this C|Net interview was just a “cover your ass” move by Guntram Graef, who was being accused of censorship and a number of other things. After all, the feeling that I get from this isn’t that Graef feels that he was not at fault in his original claims here. It was YouTube, who had not provided adequate means of contacting them and the public “misunderstanding” his moves as a form of censorship. Am I wrong here? What are your feelings on this issue?

I am also rather disappointed in C|Net News.com Staff Writer Daniel Terdiman for simply not taking the time to examine Graef’s story and get to the heart of the matter. Over the years, I had come to expect better reporting from C|Net.