I love when I hear things like this. Nearly three months ago, Wendy Seltzer posted a YouTube clip on her blog featuring the NFL's copyright message as it appeared during the Superbowl.
This telecast is copyrighted by the NFL for the private use of our audience, and any other use of this telecast or of any pictures, descriptions or accounts of the game without the NFL's consent is prohibited
Ms. Seltzer is a professor at Brooklyn Law School, and this was posted as an example to her students of how content owners, such as the NFL, are beginning to exaggerate their rights.
Five days later, she received a DMCA takedown notice from the NFL via YouTube, claiming copyright violation. That in itself makes me roll my eyes.
But Wendy Seltzer wasn't about to roll over at this. For while she may be a mild-mannered law professor by day, at night she dons her cape and the mantle of staff attourney for the EFF. For those of you unfamiliar with the EFF, they're a nonprofit group of lawyers and technologists dedicated to protecting peoples' online rights. Further, Wendy herself is the founder of Chilling Effects, a website dedicated specifically to combatting such abuses by content holders. Thus, the NFL had stepped on Wendy Seltzer's toes in a big way, and to use a cliche, they'd messed with the wrong woman.
Wendy sent the counter-notice to YouTube as mandated by section 512 of the DMCA, showing "good faith belief" that the removal of the material was in error, and asserting that YouTube must replace the material, as it was clearly fair use, being "an educational excerpt featuring the NFL's overreaching copyright warning aired during the Super Bowl." A few weeks later, YouTube put the clip back up and it looked like things had worked out just fine.
But less than two weeks later, the NFL filed a second takedown notice, and YouTube took down the clip again. But as it turns out, by filing this second takedown notice, the NFL had knowingly misrepresented this clip as infringing, and thus itself had violated the same law that it was using to try to protect its own content. Oops.
The law as stated in the DMCA says that the NFL is now responsible for all legal fees incurred by the alleged infringer, along with damages. We'll see how this turns out, but it's nice to see the bullies get smacked down a little now and then.