Viacom is evil!

So, apparently Viacom, in a totally irresponsible and extremely arrogant move, did a very crude search of YouTube content for ANY term related to ANY of their shows and then SPAMMED YOUTUBE WITH DMCA-TAKEDOWN NOTICES ... 100,000 to be specific.  According to the DMCA, youtube is obligated to take down any content reported as copyright infringement immediately.  They are supposed to actually investigate them, but with as huge as youtube is, they don't really have the time or resources.  Consequently, THOUSANDS of youtube users had their totally copyright-infringement-free content removed from youtube's servers and these users are now on a list of potential copyright infringers.  

How I came about this information was when I discovered that one of my favorite videos, "re: Your Brains" by Spiffworld - music by Jonathan Coulton, has been taken down with a notice about copyright infringement.  Since Mr. Coulton says right on his website that all his songs are under the Creative Commons license (which means anyone can use his songs in any way, as is or altered), this video was clearly not copyright-infringed.  Jonathon Coulton is now notified and is keeping up with developments on his website http://www.jonathancoulton.com and he has included a couple of links to outside news sources who have caught wind of this fiasco.  I plan to show my support by visiting the http://www.metacafe.com/tags/spiffworld and downloading the video where Spiff has also posted it, and re-uploading it to youtube as soon as I have some time.

I was warned...

I saw this post in meowse 's blog:

Creepiest. Website. Ever.

Posted by apostropher

My skin might never stop crawling. The description from Screenhead:

Angels With Attitude is an online beauty contest where the entrants are very young girls, the majority of which have been Photoshopped so extremely in hopes of making them more "angelic" they resemble some sort of gelph creature you'd find in a Dungeons and Dragons monster manual between the Jon Bennett Ramsey and Kathy Lee Gifford entrees. We avoided including an image from the site, as the true willies are achieved by seeing them in aggregate.

Eeesh.
Update: Hmmm, the page disappeared from faithweb's servers. I guess they didn't care for the reaction it was getting. However (da da da dum da dum!), it was all still in my browser cache, so as a service to you, my faithful readers, I present the cached copy of the page, minus the banner ads and cookies.

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So, I was warned by the blog that these pictures are photoshopped and creepy.  I STILL was not prepared.  These pictures have got to be the most creepified pictures of children I've ever seen, only partly because the actual images are just that creepy, but also because parents actually think their kids look good this way and a FUCKING FUNDAMENTALIST organization agrees!  I don't like kids, myself, but damn!  This is enough to have me storming through the Bible Belt on a crusade to "Save the Children!"  I just really feel squicked out right now and I have an irrational urge for a scalding hot shower, preferably straight on my brain to burn those images out of my memory.