Proof that sometimes the ones with the deepest pockets are not always the winners! Viacom VS Christopher Knight In 2006, Mr. Knight was running for a seat on the Rockingham County Board of Education. To this end he produced a goofy, Star Wars themed commercial featuring a little red schoolhouse being blown up by the Death Star. He uploaded the video to youtube some time later, and it went viral.A year later, Knight was informed that a VH1 show called Web Junk 2.0 had used the video in one of their episodes. Despite not having approached Knight to ask permission to do so – and despite the fact that they were using his work in a for-profit format – he took this all in stride. He thought the host’s banter over his video was amusing, so he took the time to upload that segment from the show to his own Youtube account.Viacom then had the video removed, claiming that it infringed on their copyright. Knight responded by claiming, quite rightly, that as a derivative of his work he was entitled to fair use. Viacom countered with the claim that by having Aries Spears talk over the top of it, his video had magically become theirs.Eventually they backed down, and the video was restored, but only after the media began reporting on the story. youtu.be/nLi5B0Iefsk
Posted on: Fri, 05 Dec 2014 15:21:44 +0000