New Jersey Sues YouTube Over Crash Video 410
eldavojohn writes "The New Jersey Turnpike Authority (NJTA) has sued YouTube and a number of other video sites for showing footage of a car crash that happened on the turnpike and was, therefore, property of the turnpike. The NJTA requested the footage be removed under the DMCA — which YouTube complied with — unfortunately, the video was copied to several other sites. The NJTA still seems to be targeting YouTube since YouTube 'did not try to prevent the very same video from being uploaded again by users immediately after it was purportedly removed.' We'll have to watch this closely and see if, even after you take down material violating the DMCA, you are at fault to any extent for people who already copied said material."
We must stop this copyright insanity (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What copyright? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What copyright? (Score:2, Interesting)
But I'm no lawyer and I don't know the DMCA I just remember reading that here somewhere.
Re:What copyright? (Score:5, Interesting)
FOIA (Score:3, Interesting)
Video shows police chase gone wrong. (Score:1, Interesting)
A grand total of 13 seconds passes between the initial impact by the crashed car and up until the police car comes to a complete stop. A fair amount of that time, about four seconds, shows the police car rolling slowly to a stop on camera. In other words it was giving chase to the crashed car, since there is only nine seconds worth of driving time between the crash victim and the police car. Some of those nine seconds was spent slowing down the chase car off camera, so unless you believe in extremely unlikely coincidences, then the police car was right on the tail of the crash victim a few moments before the crash.
Your speculations as to motives may commence below.
Re:Background on the crash (Score:3, Interesting)
Correct. My girlfriend had a period of about a year in college where she would occasionally get minor seizures on the left side of her body. She could tell one was coming a few minutes before they occurred, and because they were on the left even if one had come on suddenly it didn't really affect her ability to operate the gas/brake or steer out of traffic to wait for them to end. She didn't report it precisely because she needed to drive to get to work and knew she'd lose her license, have to drop out of school, etc.
Re:video of the crash (Score:3, Interesting)
Except the SUV owner, who is probably late to get her kids to school while she talks to the secretary of the PTA on her cell phone, who actively changes lane to avoid SAID FUCKING FIREBALL that HAPPENED WITHIN EYESIGHT, and cruises on past.
Re:What copyright? (Score:3, Interesting)
such as whether police filming police actions (ie. producing wholly state-funded content) is privately-owned or public-domain material. That could touch on evidence laws too, perhaps?
Films made by police in the course of their official duties would fall under the government. The individual policeman is doing it as a policeman, not as a private person. As far as production of copies in evidence, courts routinely ignore copyright law for these sorts of things. The needs of the overall judicial system come first, and even if you wanted to argue it (which would be unbelievably foolish; litigants are guaranteed discovery and this would be guaranteed to piss off a judge) I cannot think of many stronger fair use arguments.
(I have heard of at least one lawyer who tried to interfere significantly in discovery with copyright arguments. I only heard of it long after the fact, but had it happened to me, I'd've pressed for sanctions from the court and the bar in a heartbeat.)
Be careful what you wish for (Score:2, Interesting)
Sure, there is the problem that it's pretty easy to send a frivolous take-down notice and most site operators will comply rather than risk a lawsuit, but with the proliferation of so many video sites, the content will just pop up somewhere else, and the copyright owners are destined to lose this game of whack-a-mole.
Re:video of the crash (Score:3, Interesting)
The Streisand effect (Score:3, Interesting)