The copyright DIV appearing directly above the "Samsung apology" is aptly named / placed:

</div> <!--/sosumi--><p class="statement">On 25 October 2012, Apple Inc. published a statement on its UK website in relation to Samsung's Galaxy tablet computers. [ ... ]

The author is CEO of 33across.com. And . . . here's their opt-out link: http://optout.33across.com/api/optout/

YouTube's counter-claim procedure clearly laid out here: http://www.youtube.com/t/copyright_counter

Although hiring an attorney is not a bad idea, the rest of this is not accurate. DMCA is a large unwieldy tool but YouTube's approach is pretty fair. If you assert your willingness to be identified and sued by the rights holder (through a counter-notification) they will put your content back online. Only if the rights holder then takes legal action do they remove the content.

Although "the media giants" may abuse DMCA, we have nobody to blame but ourselves for not taking the time to learn what our own rights are and how we can assert them; and asserting them doesn't have to cost us anything other than investing a little time in the process.

Has YouTube changed their procedures for dealing with DMCA takedowns? I had this same experience with a video for my nonprofit and once I asserted my willingness to be sued YouTube restored the video. Their position at the time (and apparently still their position per their site) was that it was up to the rights holder to sue under DMCA --- not for a contributor to sue to have content restored. The process I followed is here: http://www.youtube.com/t/copyright_counter and although my video was down for a few months it was put back up and is still up years later. This is the way that I believe DMCA was designed to work and YouTube does a pretty good job of balancing this process. YouTube does not make any determination about if the content is "fair use" or not - they instead put the onus on the one asserting infringement to take legal action. Seems reasonable to me - and at least in my case - their process worked.

IANAL but did graduate from law school a few months ago.

It is respect for victims and their loved ones. Anybody seeking this gore out has serious issues - and the most serious issue is that most would disagree with me because this is the point at which we now find ourselves. Entertainment trumps compassion in our culture and frankly I think we'd be better off without those who see this type of tragedy as a way to get their gore-rocks-off; I wish they would just go away.

We have become numb to genuine tragedy because we celebrate fictionalized tragedy as plot devices and then squeeze every possible $ out of genuine tragedy. Fuck those who say they have a "right to know" or "right to see" - that's crap and intellectually you know better. If it's your sister / mom / daughter who is burning to death in a video nobody has a *right* to watch that on youtube while they chow down on cheezy-poofs.

My condolences to the many many victims of this whose lives will never be the same. Such a horrible loss and I wish that your lives would never have been so affected.

P.S. I know somewhat of what I speak. E! Entertainment did a show on my daughter's murder on their program "True Hollywood Stories." My daughter was a high school student murdered by her ex-boyfriend. There was NO "Hollywood" story, true or otherwise. They just wanted to make $$$ off of my poor daughter's death so they could buy more cheezy-poofs. Nothing but parasites.

Personally I don't think there's a problem with preferring arbitration over litigation for business entities; but I agree that arbitration is generally a terrible fit for consumers.

Also, a recent post on SCOTUSblog has a nice analysis of why the AT&T decision wasn't necessarily as dire for consumers as most commentators have stated: http://www.scotusblog.com/2011/09/att-mobility-faa-preemption-and-class-arbitration/

The color red is not trademarked by Coke (although the bottle shape is).

However, in 1995 in Qualitex Co. v. Jacobson Products Co., SCOTUS held, "sometimes, a color will meet ordinary legal trademark requirements. And, when it does so, no special legal rule prevents color alone from serving as a trademark [as long as] "in the minds of the public, the primary significance of a product feature [...] is to identify the source of the product rather than the product itself."

Qualitex Co. v. Jacobson Products Co.: http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/93-1577.ZS.html

From TFA:

"BART’s primary purpose is to provide, safe, secure, efficient, reliable, and clean transportation services. BART accommodates expressive activities that are constitutionally protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and the Liberty of Speech Clause of the California Constitution (expressive activity), and has made available certain areas of its property for expressive activity.

"Paid areas of BART stations are reserved for ticketed passengers who are boarding, exiting or waiting for BART cars and trains, or for authorized BART personnel. No person shall conduct or participate in assemblies or demonstrations or engage in other expressive activities in the paid areas of BART stations, including BART cars and trains and BART station platforms."

Done!

PopeScott: Interesting - very good to know!

Everybody else: invites sent - have fun!

I'll be happy to send you an invite (as I've done for many others who have posted on message boards) but currently you need a Gmail address. If you send me a Gmail address I'll add you right away. (the same applies for anybody else)

- Drew

The Berkman Center had a discussion (in Feb. 2010) with Joe Karaganis, Director of SSRC, to discuss the "findings from a forthcoming six-country study of media piracy..."

.

Q: What will be the take-away of the report?
A: It won’t be liked by industry lobbyists because it departs from the theft narrative that has defined the debate. It’s written from the perspective of the developing economies, where the reasons and conditions for piracy are just not part of the piracy of debate. You never hear about problems of pricing, for example. Our goal is to encourage developing cvountries to ssert more control over their IP policies and enforcement in order to enrich their own culture.

Here is a liveblogged capture of that discussion: http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/2010/02/02/berkman-piracy-in-developing-countries

The relevant Michigan statute Section 750.145c includes the following:

Sec. 145c.
(1) As used in this section:
(a) "Appears to include a child" means that the depiction appears to include, or conveys the impression that it includes, a person who is less than 18 years of age, and the depiction meets either of the following conditions:
(i) It was created using a depiction of any part of an actual person under the age of 18.
(ii) It was not created using a depiction of any part of an actual person under the age of 18, but all of the following apply to that depiction:
(A) The average individual, applying contemporary community standards, would find the depiction, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest.
(B) The reasonable person would find the depiction, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.
(C) The depiction depicts or describes a listed sexual act in a patently offensive way.

[. . .]
(k) "Prurient interest" means a shameful or morbid interest in nudity, sex, or excretion.

-----

It's likely that under the "appears to include a child" standard, the issue will be:

Based on "community standards" would an "average individual" find the video to appeal to "a shameful or morbid interest in sex"?

That seems like a stretch - but the bigger issue (IMO) is the use of the prosecutorial resources for a situation that would be more appropriately handled through civil litigation than criminal prosecution.

If your mother is considered to be "elderly" (which could be as young as 60 depending on the state) there might be statutes that provide additional protection(s) against "fraud" or "deception" based on her age. You might want to check out the statutes for the state in which she lives. If the Earthlink billing was within the statute of limitations they might be interested in refunding the fees if the applicable statute(s) were pointed out to them.