You may want to check out this thread for background information. http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/12/155256/1.ashx
So I get an email from one of the Knocking directors threatening legal action over an alleged copyright infringement in the Watchtower Comments videos. This is ironic for a couple of reasons. I have nothing to do with the production of those videos. They are hosted on Youtube. I just embedded those videos on my blog. It's strange that they would contact me instead of the site that is actually hosting the videos. As was discussed in the other thread, they finally contacted the person who is involved in producing them. The message was different. They didn't threaten to sue him. They just threatened to ask Youtube to take them down unless he removed the short segment of video that is in question. Why would they threaten to sue me, but not the producer of the videos?
I don't know what their motives are, but I can think of some possible reasons for their peculiar actions. One possibility is that they just made a mistake in threatening me. It would be surprising if the director of a documentary lacked the research skills to discover that embedding a Youtube video on a blog does not necessarily mean that you are the producer of that video. Still that is a possibility, and it's the most charitable possibility that I can think of.
I also feel compelled to wonder if that threatening email was meant to be harassing or intimidating. Let's review the circumstances. My video blog is critical of Jehovah's Witnesses, while the Knocking documentary is very favorable and ignored many of the scandalous details about Jehovah's Witnesses. There are allegations that Knocking received funding from individual Jehovah's Witnesses and they are aggressively marketing their DVDS to Jehovah's Witnesses. The Watchtower Society has also provided help to these film makers, including archival material and permission to film at Assemblies, Kingdom Halls, etc. It is understandable that they would be embarrassed if even a very short segment of their film appeared in a context that is critical of Jehovah's Witnesses, whether or not it was fair use.
The makers of Knocking have come down hard on criticism of their film and of Jehovah's Witnesses. They have removed commenting from the videos clips that they posted on Youtube. They also started a forum and then closed it down when it received a lot of critical comments.
I doubt that their only concern was the protection of copyright. The effects of their action go far beyond that. It might seem like a trivial thing to just edit out a few seconds of footage. The problem is that you can't do that on Youtube without starting over. The new video has to start over with a new link, comments, viewer stats, etc. This can be big deal. Watchtower Comments was very popular and reposting the videos means that the old links will no longer work and the search engine traffic will also have to start from the beginning. If the makers of Knocking have a legitimate copyright claim, then fine, they are within their rights. If, however, those three seconds falls under fair use, then this action has the appearance of a reprehensible attempt to stifle public debate about Jehovah's Witnesses. It's not practical to battle this in court, especially since Youtube would probably remove the challenged videos anyways.
The presence of third parties, like myself, puts a different spin on this situation. I embedded those videos on blog pages that can keep the same URL, even if I change the embeds to the new edited videos. That means that any links to those pages will still work, unlike the links to Youtube. It also means that the search engine traffic I have been receiving on those pages should continue without interruption. It should also mean that the status of those blog pages will help the edited videos to reclaim their former search engine status on Youtube.
Could this be why I was threatened with unwarranted legal action before they even bothered to contact the producer of those videos? I don't know, but it can be an effective strategy, even if it wasn't intended in this case. It would be understandable if a blogger just decided to remove the embedded videos when faced with that kind of legal threat. This would have made it much harder for the videos to regain their former popularity.
I better stop for now. I hope to discuss this more in the future. If the Knocking people are trying to interfere with public debate, then this might be a small victory for them, but it will come at a cost in negative publicity. I hope the cost will be big enough to discourage similar actions in the future.