Occasionally, we get requests from people who we’ve featured on our site, requesting that we remove them. Under our Polite Request policy, we quite often will comply, and often do. Then, of course, we get letters like this:
To: [email protected]
cc: [email protected]
Date: Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 9:41 PM
Subject: Removal of Copyrighted material
To: Administrator(s) of hamsexy.com
It is at the request of the Txswat.com Admin that you remove all copyrighted material belonging to them immediately, otherwise further action will be taken and formal complaints will be filed with our legal department. This includes the youtube videos and all content currently being used on your website without our expressed written consent. We are asking that you promptly comply without disregard. If you have any questions feel free to contact me on my email or by phone.
Thank you very much,
Michael Vinther
TX S.W.A.T.
936-xxx-xxxx
First of all, threatening us with their ‘legal department’ pretty much nullifies the Polite Request policy (at least that’s what our ‘for real’ lawyer told us). Secondly, we are hosting nothing on our site from their group, only a single directly-linked Youtube video.
Here is our reply:
Date: Thurs, Feb 26, 2009 at 7:48 AM
Subject: Re: Removal of Copyrighted material
We have nothing on our site from your organization. All we have is a
direct link to your video on Youtube, which we will not be removing.
You might want to re-check with your ‘legal department’ – but when you
post something on Youtube, you pretty much lose all rights to it as
long as its on Youtube. If you want your video taken off of our site,
you should delete it from Youtube.
Nothing from your organization is hosted on our site, all we are doing
is providing a link to an existing video, a video which you willingly
posted on the world’s most visited video sharing site, a site which
allows and encourages others to externally link to videos (which is
what we’ve done).
Feel free to find a real lawyer and file a complaint, they will tell
you exactly what I’ve just told you.
Regards,
Hamsexy Administration
PS Thanks for visiting the site!
We will keep you informed on any further replies. If you want to see what we are dealing with here, check out their site: http://www.txswat.com/
** UPDATE **
Well, we had a conversation with one of the members of TX Swat, which was quite positive. He admitted he was wrong to try and threaten us, and even offered to give us a formal apology in order to remove the video (which we would never accept, he was very polite and professional and no apology was necessary to remove the video.)
I was about to go onto the site and remove their video, when a much less professional (and a lot more infantile) member of their group decided he absolutely needed to toss his two cents in:
To: [email protected]
From: Michael Vinther
Date: Thurs, Feb 26, 2009 at 7:36PM
Subject: Copyright
That You-Tube video is under copyright.
We will give you 1 day to remove it completely or a complaint will be filed.
And please, I don’t give a shit! Post this on your pointless website.
Storm chasers are the eyes and ears of the National Weather Service,
and their purpose is to report and record valuable data from severe storms,
which helps improve life saving warnings. Another point… doppler radar can not
detect tornadoes, only rotation, so sometimes they may not even have a warning out
during a life threatening tornado event.
Methinks Mikey got home from school, saw he missed his chance to get his piece in, and fired off this letter without realizing that his much-more mature and level-headed colleague had pretty much already resolved the issue in his stead. I am not sure who he will be filing a complaint with… It’s been pretty much established that this group doesn’t have a ‘legal department’ as they stated in their first communique with us…. They should probably be filing the complaint against Youtube, since it’s that site that’s hosting the video.
After telling him that we now would not be removing the video, and that he pretty much blew his chances to let this go quietly, he lets loose again:
To: [email protected]
From: Michael Vinther
Date: Thurs, Feb 26, 2009 at 7:36PM
Subject: Copyright
I didnt blow it, you are just saying all this shit to piss me off.
Go fuck yourself you worthless trash. We do so much
to help the public. They even have a series
on discovery channel called “Storm Chasers”.
Get your fat ass of that moldy chair in your radio shack and go
for a walk in whats called outdoors.
Now now now… what would the NWS think if they knew their official storm chasers were using such language? Is this *really* the behavoir of budding meteorologists? I mean, REALLY.
Now, it seems they took our advice and removed the video we originally linked from. So, just because we can, lets show some more of their videos, shall we?
What’s with the sound that camera makes when it zooms? Yeesh.
This one is good. The totally pointless lightshow on the top of the car, along with the plumber’s nightmare on the roofrack is nothing compared to the dangerous stack of radios inside. If these guys were the professionals they claim to be, they’d mount the radios in a professional manner. And, of course, you’ve gotta have the NOAA automated broadcast on in the background.
Hmm… For a group that is so concerned about copyright, they seem to have no problem using copyrighted music in their videos. They got zapped by the Youtube police, and got their audio track disabled. Losers.
This video shows all of the stuff a storm nerd needs to feel comfortable. Generic weather programs like GRLevel3, an SLR camera, a remote control….. more remote control…. more remote control…. camera again… two ipods and a cell phone… stapler… a radio shack scanner…. a thermometer… another thermometer… A tackle box…. An empty keyboard shelf holding a smaller tackle box… bits of white stuff on the carpet…
And of course, no whacker is complete with the requisite lightshow video.
So, enjoy the videos while you can, before loserboy files his ‘complaint’.
If all of their videos are copyrighted, perhaps they would like to provide the registration number as listed in the patent and trade office database?
TSWAT… Texas Super Whacker Action Team!
Isn’t “punching the core” a gay metaphor?
When someone drops the “legal department” bomb, I usually tell them, “Bring it on, bitches.” It’ll cost them far more in litigation costs than they might ever hope to win from me, and if they ever happen to hit it big, I can just drop the bankruptcy bomb on them.
Fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke…..
I think we should start a Whacker’s organization for them similar to what the alcoholics have.
We could call it Whacker’s Anonymous and they could practice a twelve step program to help them overcome their delusions of grandeur about Whackers.
I am sure many ARES members would benefit from this type of thing as well.
“What’s with the sound that camera makes when it zooms? Yeesh.”
There’s a hack for Canon cameras called “CHDK”. It allows Canon point-and-shoot (P & S) digital cameras to zoom in or out during movie mode, which normally you can’t do while recording a video. The problem is that the motor is noisy and is picked up by the camera’s mic while video is being recorded.
I haven’t seen the video (now that it’s been removed) but I wouldn’t be surprised if the video was done with a Canon point-and-shoot digital camera with CHDK in movie mode.