Today Mark Bunker’s XenuTV Youtube account went down again, thanks to yet another false DCMA claim.  This one was by the “American Rights Counsel LLC,” an organization that seems to exist only on YouTube.

XenuTV wasn’t the only victim of these false copyright claims.  Many anons had their own home videos removed.  Some videos not protected by the United States’ DCMA were removed.  One of mine was removed. Here is the note sitting in my inbox that I came home to:

Dear Member:

This is to notify you that we have removed or disabled access to the following material as a result of a third-party notification by American Rights Counsel LLC claiming that this material is infringing:

Tom Cruise’s love for Scientology: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjuhK4b4nQM

Please Note: Repeat incidents of copyright infringement will result in the deletion of your account and all videos uploaded to that account. In order to prevent this from happening, please delete any videos to which you do not own the rights, and refrain from uploading additional videos that infringe on the copyrights of others. For more information about YouTube’s copyright policy, please read the Copyright Tips guide.

If you elect to send us a counter notice, please go to our Help Center to access the instructions.

Please note that under Section 512(f) of the Copyright Act, any person who knowingly materially misrepresents that material or activity was removed or disabled by mistake or misidentification may be subject to liability.

Sincerely,
YouTube, Inc.

As I prepared to file a counter-claim to restore my video and use the legal system to punish whomever broke US law in having it removed, I noticed my video was not down any more.  It seems the American Rights Counsel LLC was a little too overzealous in removing videos, drawing the ire of YouTube.  They subsequently restored all videos this front group had removed.

The person responsible for this little campaign has been identifed, and a message from the hivemind to this individual is in the works.  He should be concerned; he has broken US copyright law, which is practically more sacred than the US constitution.  Also in the works is a new method for tracking these false DCMA claims, which will be used in all the upcoming harassment lawsuits against the Scientology cult and its front groups.

In the meantime, digg hurr.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 5th, 2008 at 6:03 pm and is filed under Fair Game, Footbullets, Sites. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.