Interestingly, the Spanish Broadcasting System seem to have laid a copyright claim to the shortened version of the video titled ‘Collateral Murder’ released by Wikileaks, and hosted on YouTube – and thus the video has been disabled.

On what basis SBS would be making the claim will be interesting to see. Perhaps on the basis that it contains an archive or copy of the video in question, and thus alleges it owns the work i.e. copyfraud? If this had been time sensitive material, or not as widely disseminated, such take downs could be very detrimental, not to mention the time taken to lodge an appeal.

After Wikileaks of course made this widely known, using it’s clout and contacts, that video has since been made available once again. In the case of Wikileaks this is inevitable – a well known and respected entity – however what about other smaller publishers that have to deal with such takedowns? Perhaps there should be some penalty to dissuade false claims of a copyright.

wikileaks

WikiLeaks

@wikileaks: Collateral Murder, with over 6M views, removed from YouTube after unknown US copyright claim http://bit.ly/aS3bMk

May 16, 2010 @ 05:29 AM from bit.ly Powered by Tweeted

The section which deals with a groundless claim with respect to copyright infringement in Australia is s202 of the Copyright Act 1968. In the US the equivalent section looks to be s506(c) which stiputlates:

Any person who, with fraudulent intent, places on any article a notice of copyright or words of the same purport that such person knows to be false, or who, with fraudulent intent, publicly distributes or imports for public distribution any article bearing such notice or words that such person knows to be false, shall be fined not more than $2,500.

Will be interesting to see where this all goes.