Techdirt. Stories filed under "nascar" Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us Techdirt. Stories filed under "nascar"http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Mon, 25 Feb 2013 05:39:14 PST NASCAR Abuses DMCA To Try To Delete Fan Videos Of Daytona Crash Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130224/22411222089/nascar-abuses-dmca-to-try-to-delete-fan-videos-daytona-crash.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130224/22411222089/nascar-abuses-dmca-to-try-to-delete-fan-videos-daytona-crash.shtml Joseph M. Durnal was the first of a whole bunch of you to send in a version of this story showing how NASCAR abused copyright to take down some videos. You may have heard that there was a big NASCAR crash at Daytona that sent debris flying into the stands. Well, a video from those same stands, which shows a wheel lying in the seats next to someone injured, was deleted from YouTube via NASCAR claiming copyright on it and issuing a takedown. Obviously, that's a bogus claim, because the copyright would belong to the guy who filmed it.

As the press started calling, NASCAR gave what might seem like a perfectly reasonable response:
The fan video of the wreck on the final lap of today’s NASCAR Nationwide Series race was blocked on YouTube out of respect for those injured in today’s accident. Information on the status of those fans was unclear and the decision was made to err on the side of caution with this very serious incident.—Steve Phelps, NASCAR Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer
Sounds great, except it's totally bogus. NASCAR may well be concerned about those injured by the crash, but that does not give them the right to automatically remove someone else's video, nor does it allow them to abuse the DMCA takedown process for that purpose. The DMCA only applies to copyright.

Of course, once again, we're seeing how when our laws make it easy to censor via copyright claims, many people seek to do exactly that. Thankfully, all of the attention on the takedown has resulted in YouTube doing what appears to have been an expedited review, and have put the video back:


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]]> that's-now-how-copyright-works http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20130224/22411222089 Mon, 21 Feb 2011 13:59:48 PST Can Someone Explain How Sponsoring NASCAR Is A Good Use Of Taxpayer Funds, If Funding Sesame Street Is Not? Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110221/03540213188/can-someone-explain-how-sponsoring-nascar-is-good-use-taxpayer-funds-if-funding-sesame-street-is-not.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110221/03540213188/can-someone-explain-how-sponsoring-nascar-is-good-use-taxpayer-funds-if-funding-sesame-street-is-not.shtml stop funding NPR and PBS are so vehemently in favor of sponsoring NASCAR? Frankly, as a fan of both NPR and PBS, but not a fan of governments overspending, I actually think the complaints against pulling the funding from both are a bit overblown. I think there are some creative things that both NPR and PBS could do to make up the difference if they lost federal funding. However, if we are going to cut public broadcasting, then it seems only reasonable to cut sponsoring NASCAR as well, doesn't it? I'm curious how folks who claim to support smaller government are defending such sponsorship of a private, for-profit operation with taxpayer funding?

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