Chamber Of Commerce Sues Yes Men; Someone Just Gave Protestors A Lot More Attention

from the a-lot-of-happy-yes-men dept

While we weren't sure that the EFF was correct in suggesting the Yes Men's fake U.S. Chamber of Commerce website was a parody, we did think that it was rather short-sighted of the CoC to try to takedown the site, since it would only serve to give the Yes Men and their anti-CoC campaign more attention. Apparently, the folks at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce still haven't quite figured this out. They've now gone a step further and are suing the Yes Men for trademark infringement. Again, the trademark claim is probably stronger than the original copyright claim, but this is a really dumb move. All the Yes Men want is more attention in their campaign against the CoC's stance on climate change, and you know what gets them a lot of attention? Getting sued. Of course, given how backwards the Chamber's views on intellectual property are, perhaps it's no surprise that they wouldn't realize how such a plan would backfire.

19 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Chamber Of Commerce Uses DMCA Claim Against Yes Men Prank Site

from the this-won't-end-well dept

There was a lot of news a few days back when notorious pranksters, Yes Men, set up a fake press conference pretending to be the US Chamber of Commerce, announcing that it had changed its controversial stance on climate change -- which had recently driven some large companies, including PG&E and Apple, to leave the CoC. The fake press conference, along with a fake website and fake press release, apparently fooled some in the media -- including Reuters -- until someone from the real Chamber of Commerce burst into the room and confronted the pranksters. The video is great:

Part of the hoax was a fake website at www.chamber-of-commerce.us, and apparently the real Chamber of Commerce has sent a DMCA takedown on the site. The EFF is responding in support of Yes Men, saying that the site is a parody, which is protected fair use. While I think that the Chamber of Commerce is pretty dumb to issue the takedown -- only giving the Yes Men more attention -- I'm not sure that the parody defense will stick here. While the site is for the purpose of criticism, the site is most certainly not an obvious parody. It's designed to look real. Thus, the bigger issue may actually be trademark infringement, not copyright infringement, as the site could certainly confuse users, but there are other ways to deal with such things that don't involve a DMCA takedown.

46 Comments | Leave a Comment..

News Station Falls For April Fool's Prank, Turns to DMCA As Remedy

from the take-downs-don't-actually-make-things-go-away dept

Improv Everywhere, a comedic performance art group based in New York, has a history of pulling off hilarious and impressive "scenes of chaos and joy." Running "missions" such as the annual "No Pants Subway Ride," a food court musical, sending 80 people into Best Buy dressed as employees and getting 200 people to "freeze" during rush hour in Grand Central station, these guys are masters of the flash mob and the harmless prank. Last April, in a mission called "Best Game Ever," they showed up at a little league baseball game with signs, peanut vendors, programs and even an NBC sponsored jumbotron with live commentary and player stats to turn an ordinary event into something extraordinary.

Building on that theme, Improv Everywhere's latest mission was to create the "Best Funeral Ever," to pick a random funeral from the obituaries and show up to make it "truly awesome." It sounds terrible, and the video is pretty horrifying... until you realize it's from April 1^st. The next day, they confirmed it was an April Fool's joke and that it wasn't a real funeral -- all of the "family members" were actors. Lots of people fell for it (I definitely did at first), but best of all was the local CW 11 news team that covered the YouTube video as if it were a real funeral. Charlie Todd, founder of Improv Everywhere, uploaded a video of the newscast with the following commentary:

So basically the extent of their reporting is watching a video on YouTube and then describing it as fact on air. They didn't bother to email Improv Everywhere for comment, call the cemetery to verify, or try to get a quote from the"family." They just watched the video and threw it on TV. Great journalism!

The story was on the news channel's website too, but was later removed without any explanation or correction. Now, two weeks later, Todd has received a copyright notice from YouTube that his video of the newscast was removed due to a copyright claim from Tribune (the station's parent company). First of all, it's pretty silly to try to hide the mistake rather than owning up to it and posting a correction (Streisand Effect anyone?). But beyond that, it's pretty ironic and hypocritical that the news organization, which used the Improv Eveywhere video without permission or even proper attribution, would send a take-down notice to the owner of the that video who was commenting on their commentary. Todd writes,

It's OK for them to air content that we shot and own, but it's not OK for me to upload their footage of the content they took from me? It's "fair use" for the news to take a video off of YouTube and broadcast it, but it's not "fair use" for a citizen to expose their poor reporting on his own content?

Fair use or not, Tribune just found a great way to draw more attention to the fact that their "journalists" fell for the prank and seem to be pretty embarrassed about it.

Blaise Alleyne is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Blaise Alleyne and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

38 Comments | Leave a Comment..