Google Removes Comedy Group's Video from YouTube. Kafkaesque Nightmare Ensues.
On November 17th, 2012, New York-based comedy music group Fortress of Attitude uploaded a music video they created for their song “PS Gay Car” (using the exact words of a mean note they found on their car one day) to YouTube. The pro-gay rights video was immensely popular, garnering coverage from, Huffington Post, Out Magazine, College Humor and Queerty.
The video gained 39,800 views in its first month, and then a month later Youtube took down the video, claiming they’d used bots to drive up views.
The story that unfolds is Kafkaesque: Fortress of Attitude hires New Media Rights to help them get their video reinstated, and Google/YouTube’s response is to send form letters back that just restate the alleged initial TOU violation. Ultimately, Google/YouTube refuses to consider any evidence or explanation from Fortress of Attitude, and deletes the video permanently.
This presents a serious problem, Fortress of Attitude’s Pat Stango writes, because “Basically, ours is a case showcasing how Youtube can delete the work and the accounts of their users on a whim, without any chance for users to plead their case. (Hell, without any chance to interact with a live human at the company.) Frankly, we think it’s crazy for a business, with millions of users and customers around the world, to act in this manner and to be so unreachable.
“We’ve been told there are a lot of other people that also got mistakenly caught in this Section H filter on the same day. We feel bad for those people because they’ve had to pay lawyers $100s an hour only to get those same form responses from Youtube’s legal department. At least we found lawyers who would help with this for free.
“Therefore we ask you, oh nameless faceless readers of this rambling letter, to help bring this issue to a wider attention. Tell Youtube that you don’t think it’s right for them to delete their users’ work in such an unfair manner. SPECIFICALLY tell them you want “PS Gay Car” to be reinstated immediately. Tweet and Facebook this post! (We’ll be tweeting @Google and using the hashtag #PSGayCar on tweets about this.) And then, if someday “PS Gay Car” does get rightfully reinstated, please like the video and share with your friends. (If you want to.)”
