Viacom v. Knight [1]

Viacom Inc. alleged that independent filmmaker Christopher Knight infringed its copyright by posting a clip of a VH1 television program containing Knight's own video that VH1 had used without permission. YouTube removed Knight's clip at the request of Viacom [2], the parent company of the VH1 network.

According to Knight's blog post about the events [3], he made his own series of video campaign commercials when he ran for a school board seat in Rockingham County, North Carolina in 2006. After Knight posted the commercials on YouTube, one that contained humorous Star Wars imagery [4] attracted the attention of producers at VH1. VH1 ran an episode of Web Junk 2.0 [5] called "Animals & Other Crap" making fun of Knight's commercial and showing parts of it. By Knight's account [3], VH1 never requested his permission to use the commercial. On July 11, 2007 Knight posted a clip [6] of this VH1 segment on YouTube.

On August 29, 2007, Knight received an email from YouTube informing him that it had removed his video of the VH1 segment in response to a DMCA takedown request [7] from Viacom alleging that Knight had infringed its copyright in Web Junk 2.0 [5] program content.

After consulting with Fred von Lohmann [8] of EFF on an informal basis, Knight submitted a counter notification [9] to YouTube, asserting that his video was a fair use of the VH1 program and claiming that Viacom had infringed his copyright in the original commercial. YouTube restored [10] the clip on September 11, 2007.