Monday, July 16, 2007

Geller versus YouTube

Second-rate magician and first-rate fraudulant psychic, Uri Geller, has been using the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to censor skeptics who have been showing videos of his tricks on YouTube.

Clips censored by Geller include a slow-motion clip of him palming a magnet just before making a compass needle move, and his famous flop on the Johnny Carson Show when he was unable to perform when Carson provided his own spoons instead of Gellar's pre-prepared ones. (That's why I call him a second-rate magician -- a first-rate magician would have ad-libbed and done something.)

The DMCA is ripe for abuse, and leaves service providers like YouTube in the unfortunate position of being "copyright cops", removing material on no more basis than the say-so of somebody claiming to be the copyright owner.

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