Note the difference between the title of the actual article and the title of this thread. No bias there ... oh, wait ... it's /.

Nice argument re: the bill of rights, but it's fantasy. Retrieving something online doesn't make it your property, although clearly that's the point of contention. There's no legal basis for the idea that by posting something online I automatically give away property rights to it. Again, copyright protects the copyright holder and puts the onus for defending fair use on the user. The gray area falls on the side of the copyright holder. It seems you don't agree that should be the case, an opinion that you're certainly entitled to. Your intepretation of copyright law is very broad, and very convenient. Unfortunately, it's not borne out by much legal precedent, nor is the EFF's (in this case).

I'm going to get flamed for this, but under what idea of "Fair Use" would this fall? IANAL but I don't see how this is particularly transformative, and it certainly isn't parody. Pretty much just a guy who got his feelings hurt, sounds like. There is no inalienable right to use copyrighted material, and the law generalizes on the side of the copyright holder, not the user. In general, copyrightable materials are copyrighted unless proven otherwise, not in the public domain unless proven otherwise. And oh by the way, YouTube is private. They're not obligated to post anything, ever. Or as a corrolary, they can pretty much take anything down anytime they want. You don't have to like it, support YouTube, etc., certainly, but the whole idea of having some inalienable right to use a service that costs somebody else money for free, on your own terms, is pretty laughable. I have to say the EFF is starting to look like the ACLU in that their arguments are becoming increasingly bizarre. The EFF should probably recommend that people boycott my media server too, since I don't have any intention of ever letting anyone outside of my immediate family post to it. Fire away ...

IANAL, but "signing away" isn't really correct terminology here ... software is generally considered a "work for hire" in the U.S., which means that whoever's paying for the software (the employer) owns it. In point of ugly fact, that usually applies to any software that you write, whether or not it's on company time, if writing software is part of your job. In this particular case, the university has signed away some of their rights to some people and not to others.

Of course you should not sign a contract that contains clauses you don't agree with, whether or not it's conventional wisdom or law. My point is only that you really need to be aware of labor law around your work when you go to work for somebody else. The "lost right" that's shown here was actually never a right you had in the first place, at least in most places in the U.S.