The complaint, written by Hollywood lawyer Marty Singer, claims that Dane and Gayheart own the copyright to the video. Reporter Mark Ebner is also listed as a defendant.

Joanna is, of course, disputing the claim.

The video is still up, but now Viacom gets access to her video statistics. The worst part is the fear Joanna has that something she slaved and sweat over could be taken away from her. "I'm just a scared that my little film will be lost in the shadow of the hulking monolith...," she wrote on her blog. Also on her blog is a comment by another filmmaker indicating Joanna isn't the only filmmaker Viacom has fraudulently targeted in this manner.

YouTube used to be cool but the site allowing actions like this show how much it's become just another co-opted drek-hole... all because they're too cheap to hire enough people to vet either the uploads or the corporate takedowns.

Below, a screenshot of the creepy and baseless stake-claiming.

Viacom Wants To Steal My Film [Channel Federator Raw]
Juxtaposer [YouTube]

David Seamon, expert in self-publicity and former Gawker Media intern, found Cox's blog itself to be suspect.

Fishy: So some of this guy's posts receive 0 comments, while others get 81,406 user comments — but you can't view any of them unless you log in. I honestly have trouble believing his blog gets that much traffic, especially considering there are no pics and the whole thing reads like the starter text included with a blog template. (For comparison's sake, the most popular story on PerezHilton.com at the moment has 142 comments...)

3. What's totally even weirder: when you try to create a login so you can view his 81,000+ comments, it doesn't let you...

"Thanks for signing up for our email list. We'll contact you once registration is open. We hope that will be sometime in August and hopefully no later than 9/1/08."

Seaman suggests the entire MBA is just an excuse to sell scared bloggers useless liability insurance. Commenter Triborough agrees!

They do not list any physical location (i.e. street address), the whois info for their domain appears to be a private registration, in the e-mail the phone number is Westchester, but the fax is Arizona (big red flag). Part of me thinks it could be a front group for AP to get money.

This is the group that the blogger behind Drudge Retort turned to when faced with legal threats from the Associated Press. AP backed down, but who knows what Cox and his MBA got from the blogger. And now this group is supposedly in negotiations with the AP to issue blogging guidelines that most likely will be stricter than copyright law even calls for.

If we suspected anyone was maybe going to follow those rules, we'd be worried!

Anyway, Roger, if you have any response to all this, just put it on your blog, and then we'll read it and make fun of it again. That's how it works.

Update: We forgot about the AP's friendly history with Cox!

Media Bloggers Association head Robert Cox gets along just swimmingly with the wire service. They worked together in early 2007 to cover the Scooter Libby trial and Cox was thrilled at the opportunity. "This is a great step forward in the relationship between news bloggers and the mainstream media," Cox said the AP's decision to deign to allow bloggers to get press passes.

In return, Cox promised to keep bloggers in line! “This is not the time to write a post titled ‘Dick Cheney is a [expletive deleted].’ We sought to address [the AP’s concerns] by saying we have a vetted membership of bloggers who’ve agreed to ascribe to certain ideals of what they’re trying to do. [The AP] has the kind of accountability that they want. I’m not going to control what the blogger writes, but if they get way out of line and embarrass the AP, they can be pulled from the feed.”

Goddammit Cox this is the time to write a post titled "Dick Cheney is a [expletive deleted]." If we can't do that, then what is the point of blogging?

(Thanks, it takes a train to cry, for reminding us.)

The association obtained credentials for some bloggers to attend the Scooter Libby trial. Founder Robert Cox claims the group "makes available" pro-bono legal services. There is some sort of partnership with Newsweek. Rabble-rousing blogger Jeff Jarvis is a member. But the association is a self-appointed representative of a hugely diverse group, and its legitimacy appears entirely self-assigned. Gawker Media, for one, is not aligned with the association, I am reliably informed.

The AP's decision to emphasize its meetings with this lone, opaque organization only makes its copyright crusade seem all the more surreal.

[AP]

On Friday, The A.P. issued a statement defending its action, saying it was going to challenge blog postings containing excerpts of A.P. articles “when we feel the use is more reproduction than reference, or when others are encouraged to cut and paste.” An A.P. spokesman declined Friday to further explain the association’s position.

Now they're not setting these standards yet, and they say they won't go around suing bloggers, but that has not stopped outraged internet people from announcing their intention to give the AP exactly what they want. It's boycott time! Jeff Jarvis will fuck you up.

* Remember, AP, you declared war on the bloggers. Remember that.

* I don’t really give a damn what your guidelines are. I have my own guidelines. I stated them below. The point of fair use and fair comment is that there can be no set guidelines. That’s just ridiculous.
[...]
* One last bit of advice for the AP before I get on my plane: Back off.

The moral here is that no one understands fair use, at all. Not the copyright holders, or the bloggers. Or the courts?

Will Gawker join the boycott? Yes. From now on the only wire service we'll link to is UPI, because their reports have that hint of nutty Moonie-owned desperate madness that we love.

you purport that the Drudge Retort's users reproduce and display AP headlines and leads under a fair use defense. Please note that contrary to your assertion, AP considers that the Drudge Retort users' use of AP content does not fall within the parameters of fair use. The use is not fair use simply because the work copied happened to be a news article and that the use is of the headline and the first few sentences only. This is a misunderstanding of the doctrine of "fair use." AP considers taking the headline and lede of a story without a proper license to be an infringement of its copyrights, and additionally constitutes "hot news" misappropriation.

Well. Like we said, troubling! And incredibly short-sighted and stupid!

If the AP "wins" (and they probably will), that could shake the internet to its core. Which, uh... mixed blessing?

Here's part of the letter Fuchs received:

It has come to our attention that you are using the GOOGLE logo on your website (www.locallytype.com/pages/submit.htm) without our express written permission... It misleads consumers into believing that some association exists between you and Google; and it weakens the ability of the GOOGLE mark and name to identify a single source, namely, Google.

Click to enlarge.

Ben Greenman is an editor at the New Yorker and the author of several books of fiction. His latest book, A Circle is a Balloon and Compass Both, is just being published.

Burning Man fans are split. In theory, Burning Man belongs to everybody, even me. In practice, setting the name free would allow Starbucks, Nike and Hummer to legally use it in products and promos. The dirty secret is that old-school hippie Harvey and his team have kept Burning Man's name clean for twenty years through diligent, ruthless enforcement of their corporate trademark. Test it yourself: Post an item on eBay with "PERFECT FOR BURNING MAN" and get out your stopwatch.

John Law Sues His Former Burning Man Partners [Laughing Squid]

Burning Man Founders Mired in Dispute [SF Examiner]

But only the New York Times can capture the moment when Howard Stern and Jon Stewart are accosted by the police and forcibly dragged off the site — Jon cackling in disbelief, Stern already submissive to his captors.

YouTube Is Purging Copyrighted Clips [NY Times]

UPDATE: Untwist your panties (or socks), says YouTube. More after the jump.

Wired points out the scary new mumbo-jumbo:

...by submitting the User Submissions to YouTube, you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the User Submissions in connection with the YouTube Website and YouTube's (and its successor's) business... in any media formats and through any media channels.

UPDATE: Turns out the excerpt above clipped out preceding and succeeding sentences noting that YouTube users still own their work, in the sense that taking a video off YouTube terminates YouTube's license to copy a video around, broadcast it, etc. Guess the Sock Johnson Boys are safe, for now.

YouTube's new policy says "we own your content." [Boing Boing]
YouTube's 'New' Terms Still Fleece Musicians [Wired]

Google this afternoon:

Google buckled under pressure from the firm representing Joan Miró's family, who threatened a copyright suit over the holiday logo. Google just wanted to celebrate the surrealist artist's birthday with a tribute — and one would guess they have enough lawyers to defend an obviously non-infringing work. But hey, no problem — someone else can go defend creative rights.

Artist's family asks Google to take down Thursday's `painted' logo [Mercury News]
Earlier: Google Miro: Brilliant or toddler? [Valleywag]