(Peter Griffin laughing)
Welcome to The Know I'm Ashley Jenkins
I'm Meg Turney
It's another week, another bogus DMCA Takedown; 
Who's surprised?
Well, except this time, I guess the company issuing the Takedown at least had the decency to steal the video first?
Ashley: That's new!
Meg: Aw, we're making progress, everyone
In a move that sounds like it came out right out of an episode of Family Guy
Ashley: What?
Meg: Fox stole a YouTube video for use in a Family Guy episode
then had the original video removed from YouTube
Bravo, Fox. That's like hidden third degree black belt  DMCA Jujutsu!
Yeah! Now fortunately things have been resolved for the owner of the original video
But, of course, we had a brand new debate
although really, it's the old one that's never stopped
about YouTube's stance on copyright and fair use
Ashley: Last week the Family Guy episode, "Run, Chris, Run", which is episode 19 of season 14, by the way
for any of you who remember Family Guy's first season and want to feel old
featured a scene where Cleveland and Peter played Konami's 1986 NES classic, Double Dribble
Meg: In the scene Peter makes use of an exploit in the game
that makes it much easier to hit a 3-pointer from the top corner of the screen
and the glitch in question plays out similarly to a YouTube clip that was first uploaded in 2009 by YouTube user, sw1tched
Ashley: Calling it similar is actually a generous statement
because the clip of Double Dribble used in the episode is literally sw1tched's video
Family guy didn't even try to cut around it, or like, speed it up
or re-edit it in any way to make it even remotely different
In the episode it's basically voice over happening over the original YouTube video
But hey, that didn't stop Fox from hitting sw1tched with the DMCA Takedown Notice
which then got his video removed from YouTube
sw1tched updated the video's description to fill people in on the situation, writing:
Naturally the internet blew up the way it always does every time one of those
"Where is the fair use" conversations come up, and with good reason
We've seen plenty of instances where a company ignores fair use completely to issue Takedowns
but really rarely have we seen them use the video themselves before doing so
So special
The story made headlines basically everywhere
and angry Twitter moms went after Seth Macfarlane, the show's creator, of course, about the incident
Macfarlane tweeted:
Fuck you Seth Macfarlane, you fix this! You fix all of it! You fix network television!
And then he's like, "I have no power to fix it, but I will fix this. Thank you, I'm Seth Macfarlene."
All the commotion seems to have worked in some way, because Fox did rescind the copyright claim, saying:
So basically it's content ID gone riled, rather than malicious attempt to steal, kill, or destroy the evidence
Ashley: For once!
Meg: Though to be fair, stealing the video in the first place: still wrong
Ashley: Come on guys!
Meg: Yeah
Macfarlene corroborated the story with a follow tweet to the issue saying:
But apparently all the drama didn't stop there! Of course it didn't!
Because YouTube user GameTrailors, not to be confused with GameTrailers
had his Tecmo Bowl footage removed from YouTube after Family Guy used it in the same episode
Fortunately that video's also been instated
so, you know, hey Fox, while you're in the dashboard
do you think you can maybe rescind the copyright claim on our recent X-Men: Apocalypse news story?
That'd be great!
Ashley: We would really appreciate that!
Meg: That'd be nice! Sorry we said that other people didn't like your movie but, uhh.
Well, whatever. We've seen DMCA drama more times than we can count at this point
but this has to rank as, what, probably one of the most ridiculous Takedowns of all time, right?
Meg: Absolutely.
Ashley: This is crazy.
Meg: To be fair, again, to make the point
they still used someone's video without their consent. Still wrong
But it gets fuzzy though because 
Meg: No!
They used their video, but the video game footage would technically be owned by Tecmo?
But their playing of the video game, right?
Ashley: It's a unique performance
Meg: I don't know. Still wrong
Ashley: Anyway.
Although there are few other challengers for 'worst Takedowns of all time' in the ring
like the time a guy's video got pulled down from YouTube because
chirping birds in the background triggered the content ID system
A company named Rumblefish had music that also featured chirping birds, so
yeah, apparently, you can copyright nature
Man, all those, like, sound, like nature videos?
What are those, the sand machines? The ones from...
Meg: Yeah. Like a white noise machine? Absolutely copyrighted
Ashley: Earlier this year a Harvard professor had one of his lectures flagged by Sony Music
Ironically the lecture was titled, 'The Subject Matter of Copyright: Music'
and featured small clips from a number of song in order to talk about, what else? Fair use
While seems like we can just wash our hands to this whole debacle and say,
Well, all's well that ends well. Again, they still stole something
It certainly sounds like an alarming over-rage of YouTube's content ID system
Ashley: Well, to be fair, content ID is automatic
There's not a person in Fox laughing maniacally behind computer
just typing away and taking down everyone's videos. That's not the way it works
It's a filter.
Meg: Right, that's true.
But it is still concerning because content ID is designed to protect people like sw1tched against companies like Fox
The whole point of the system is to make sure smaller creators don't have their works stolen and rebroadcasted without their consent
Ashley: Oh, if only that's the way it worked in the real world.
Meg: Yeah
Well I mean it's also Google throwing a bone to corporations so they don't get sued again
Meg: Yes
Ashley: They've been sued for like millions dollars, billions of dollars?
They've been sued for a lot money, like a couple of times, on account of copyright
Meg: So much
Regardless of who it's meant to protect, it went awry this time around and almost always
and the way the system works, sw1tched was basically
powerless to contest the copyright claim on his own
If you make bad disputes, you get a copyright strike
Ashley: Yeah. Really, the only reason the issue even got resolved is because the internet came to his defense
so while YouTube is doing what it can to stop this kind of thing from happening
still an awful lot of work needs to be done.
And that means internet violence works!
Of course, all this isn't getting into the fact that
Fox basically just ripped this video off like I said about 14 times during this read
and used it without his credit or his permission, which you're supposed to do
Yeah it is weird because what they did was not fair use? They didn't change it in any way
Although it could be argued that him simply posting gameplay wasn't exactly fair use either
It's unique performance, but it isn't necessarily additive, transformative
Meg:It's copyright
so, really, we've got a weird fair use 'snake eating its own tail'
until konami comes in and has all the videos removed
Don't put it past Konami guys, they've done weirder things
Ashley: Oh, yeah.
What do you think of this new case of content ID gone wild? Let us know in the comments
For all your DMCA dramz and your future YouTube copyright discussions
like this video and subscribe to The Know
Ah, it's good to be home
Meg: Yay! You're home! You're home!
Ashley: And we got a fancy new room! It's the best!
Meg: I know! It's so nice!
Ashley: We can twerk in peace!
Meg (off screen): Yea! People do stuff and I'm like, "I don't give a fuck, we have this room!
