The Alan Sondheim Mail Archive

Re: Termination of my YouTube account:

Update: I just filed a claim against them for the Viacom / sutra tape; the 
other tape - I have no idea, since I can't access the site to see what 
they're objecting to.

By the way the Viacom claim goes to Federal District Court - with nothing 
better to do they get to watch a thoroughly innocuous video from me.

I'm infuriated and depressed - there's no real recourse in the US re: 
anything to do with corporations.

- Alan


Here's the documentation: They haven't replied yet:


First, their email:

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: YouTube Support <support@youtube.com>
Date: Fri, Mar 25, 2011 at 4:18 PM
Subject: Re: [#783740898] Account Inquiry
To: sondheim@gmail.com


Hi asondheim,

Thanks for your email. Your "asondheim" account has been suspended due to 
repeated or severe violations of our Terms of Use and claims of copyright 
infringement. Suspended accounts cannot be reinstated. Federal law 
requires that we terminate accounts when there are repeated claims of 
copyright infringement.

Because you have had other videos rejected in the past, we are unable to 
reinstate your account. Users with suspended or terminated accounts are 
prohibited from creating new accounts or accessing YouTube?s community. In 
order for your account to be reinstated, you will need to resolve at least 
one of the following video removals.

The following videos have been removed from your account:

Penalty 1: "evasion of being sutra" formerly at 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gP0Np_s3Bj4 Removed due to a copyright 
claim by Viacom International Inc. on 02/03/2007

Penalty 2:
"avatar sex hex dance for Anita Berber" formerly at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1e-HxYJm8A8
Removed for violating our Terms of Use on 02/14/2011.
Please see http://www.youtube.com/t/terms and
http://www.youtube.com/t/community_guidelines

IMPORTANT: If you feel a content owner has misidentified your content as 
infringing, you may be able to resolve one or more of these penalties by 
filing a counter-notification. For more information, please visit our Help 
Center article about counter-notifications at 
http://help.youtube.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?answer=59826.

Regards,


The YouTube Team


Original Message Follows:
------------------------
From: sondheim@gmail.com
Subject: Account Inquiry

no idea why my account was terminated. I haven't added to it for a couple
of years. there was no nudity on it. i never received notice. most of the
work was dancework. please inform.

AutoDetectedBrowser: Google Chrome 10
AutoDetectedOS: Linux
IssueType: accountdisabled
Language: en
username: asondheim

MY REPLIES (There are four of them):

no idea why my account was terminated. I haven't added to it for a couple 
of years. there was no nudity on it. i never received notice. most of the 
work was dancework. please inform.

I've never had videos rejected in the past as far as I know - never. This
isn't making sense to me.
- Alan

In terms of the Anita Berber piece, as far as I can tell, that was put up 
2007; you changed terms of Use in 2011, but I haven't put up anything in a 
couple of years (check the account) - and as a result, I never saw these 
terms. I'm an artist; I've been extremely careful about what I've put up; 
I think I had something like 70+ videos on YouTube. For you to take them 
all out, because of new regulations (why wasn't I told earlier about 
something that happened four years ago)? seems inherently wrong. As far as 
the Viacom ruling, I have no idea what that's about and am trying to track 
that down.

Please reconsider this; it's not making sense to me.

This is making less and less sense. What on earth is wrong with Evasion of 
Being? Viacom had nothing to do with this; it's a figure from Poser, 
that's all. It came out of my modifications of motion capture equipment at 
the virtual environments lab at West Virginia University. This is 
senseless to me; please explain. What did Viacom say to you? - Thanks, 
Alan (still trying to locate the other video)

Finally, on the Anita Berber video - you say "against spam, spams, and 
commercially deceptive content" - Where on earth is there any of this in 
an artwork? I can't find the original video, but the piece isn't spam, nor 
do I imitate commercial works.

Again, please explain.

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