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Welcome to the Google police state
Most democracies are based on solid principles to proect its citizens against bureaucracy and baseless legal claims, but don't bother looking for those at Google.
The online search provider last week decided to remove one of our videos. In an email, the provider said:
Google was notified that your video "Cisco on telepresence" allegedly violates the copyright of others. According to our policy regarding copyright complaints under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), we are removing the video in question.
You can find the offending video below (on Yahoo! Video). It features Cisco chief executive John Chambers discussing telepresence at meeting with reporters last June. We're utterly clueless as to the kind of copyrights this video violates... perhaps we weren't allowed to include the image of the plant in the background?
But the worst part isn't even that Google gets to act as judge, jury and executioner. It's the fact that it will act on seemingly anonymous claims and that it won't identify the person filing the complaint. But in the Google police state, I guess that we should be happy that at least we get to hear the charges, however baseless and frivolous they are.
We've protested the removal of the video and requested that Google disclose the identity of our accuser. I'll keep you posted.
technorati tags: google, video, copyright, DMCA, cisco, telepresence
August 29, 2006 at 12:45 AM | Permalink
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Tracked on 30 Aug 2006 11:57:44
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