Second Life millionaire retracts DMCA claim
Published: 16 Jan 2007 09:30 GMT
The husband of Second Life land baroness Anshe Chung said filing a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) complaint with YouTube to delete a video of her avatar being attacked by a barrage of digital flying penises was a mistake. And as a result, he said he has revoked the DMCA claim.
In an interview with ZDNet UK sister site CNET News.com, Guntram Graef, the husband of Anshe Chung's creator, Ailin Graef, explained that he now understands that the video, which he still considers offensive and a sexual attack on his wife, was not copyright infringement and therefore his DMCA complaint was not appropriate.
"I would like to make it clear that I regret filing DMCA claims in this case, because the real issue at hand wasn't at all about copyright," Graef said.
The DMCA claim, and YouTube's resulting decision to take down the video — which stemmed from a December interview in CNET's Second Life theater with Anshe Chung — were decried by free speech advocates as an illegitimate use of the law. And legal experts said that that the video, and screenshots take from it and used by the Sydney Morning Herald and the tech culture blog, Boing Boing, were fair use.
"I didn't realise that some people would misunderstand this as a censorship attempt, which it definitely was not," Graef said.
Graef said he tried to engage in a conversation with everyone involved, but got nowhere and felt he had no choice but to resort to a DMCA claim.
In part, he said, that's because he found no other way to complain to YouTube about what he considered the offensive nature of the video. Graef contended that the only option YouTube gave him was to file a DMCA claim.
"I searched for a way to notify them about the abusive and inappropriate nature of the material," he said. "The only thing readily available was the DMCA complaint form."
Now, YouTube has changed its reasoning for deleting the video. A link to it currently produces a message that the video was removed for a "terms of service violation".
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