Copyright Magic

Today we're protesting the House's proposed Stop Online Piracy Act and the Senate's PROTECT IP Act.

Who among us hasn't posted some material that we don't own the copyright of?

I've been living in fear of the lawyers because of one of my YouTube videos.

I uploaded the Magic Meryle segment of the Rosie O'Donnell show to YouTube. I worried that I'd be hearing from Oprah's lawyers about that. I thought about making the Privacy setting of the video so that only people with the link to it could see the video. If I did that it could be seen from my blog but it wouldn't show up in searches of YouTube. Maybe Oprah wouldn't notice it and would leave me alone. But with that setting Magic Meryle wouldn't get the exposure that she deserves.

So I got brave and made it Public so people searching for her would be able to enjoy it. I figured that at worst I'd be asked to remove it.

It appears I didn't need to be worried.

I recently got an email from Meryle. She had no luck watching videos on Rosie's web site. So she sent a message to Oprah's company telling them that the videos weren't working for her at either the Carlsbad or the Oceanside libraries. She also pointed out that they had misspelled her name. She told them that she was looking forward to watching the videos.

She forwarded their reply to me.

They told her that they had corrected the spelling of her name. They said that they had tested the videos on different computers and that they work for them and that the problem might be with her connection.

They then told her that she can watch her episode on YouTube and linked her to the video that I had uploaded!

It looks like I can sleep at night now.

Until SOPA/PIPA passes. Then I'll be off to jail.