congrats sapient, this is a great achievement. I am just curious to how many more times you'll be removed from youtube in , lets say, the next year.  I"m guessing 2 or 3? and you'll be put back on every single time just like you have been this time.  Maybe youtube needs to change some policy so that people don't get removed willy nilly

Congratulations guys, welcome back.  Very well done.

 

THREE CHEERS FOR THE RATIONAL RESPONSE SQUAD! 

You're the man

Ahh, Brian you ARE the man!  Congratulations for fighting and WINNING the good fight!  We're there for you anytime, anywhere!

Thanks for everything you do RRS. I want to donate but have been saving up for the convention(pluss my mom will be visiting a lifelong friend she hasnt seen in a while).

But, hopefully within the next couple months I hope to donate. Your efforts ARE making a differance.

Yes YOU DA MAN! 

A STERLING ACCOLADE!! WELL DONE. I, and I'm sure all of RRS appreciates the (ugh) time and energy it took to accomplish this task!

I don't see the need to be secretive about all this, unless you're simply playing it up for effect.

I also don't see any reason to be self-congratulatory over what happened here--Youtube is obliged to investigate all claims of copyright infringement, whether real or imagined; if Youtube received a flood of complaints about the RRS, then it is certainly reasonable that they would take down your site while investigating whether such claims have merit. Granted, your efforts probably expedited Youtube's inevitable reinstatement of your account, but this doesn't make you "The Man" in any sense that you got one over on Youtube.

I'd be more interested in what's happened with the claims of copyright infringement themselves. It seems to me that the fair use clause of copyright law protects you in using Hovind's material, regardless of whether it was copyrighted or not. And what of Eric Hovind's supposed false claims of copyright infringement? Are you suing, or did you somehow miraculously get the Feds to investigate and prosecute these claims? Inquiring minds want to know, Brian!

The Saint

Well done, it's good to see you back up on youtube.

 

Suddenly I feel like I'm at The Best Page in the Universe. 

I don't mean that in a bad way. 

w00t!

Great job at organizing and motivating, Brian.  You're damn good at this sort of thing.

Thanks to everyone who participated, too. 

This is in response to your comment and the one you were commenting on.  Your correct that generally when people can't talk about things it usually involves litigation.  Also, RabidApe is not up as he was taken down for a DMCA notice.  Assuming a counterclaim was filed the same day by RA (not sure if he did or not), the DMCA states that you are to quickly remove videos, but a counterclaim can be processed no less than 10 days and no more than 14.  Since I don't think its been that long, or its barely coming up on that is probably why hes not back up yet (again, assuming he filed the counterclaim immediately).  As far as RRS being up already, again following under those rules (and again, I am not a lawyer or an expert so I may be wrong) but I speculate that as suggested before, RRS was taken down simply for being offensive (videos were probably flagged) and YouTube probably reviewed (on their own or from the currently media pressure) and decided to reinstate.  

 

Anyways, in response to taking the videos down, I see no reason to.  More videos means more people see it.  Also in responding to your theist labeling question, yes there has been several issues with people who either come here and pretend to be atheist to stir up trouble or what not.  The labels make it very clear.  Again, Brian probably can give you a better idea on this reasoning. 

No comment.

 

That's up to you and depends on the video. I would adjust the title or maybe the description to make it more accurate. My open letter to youtube contains other accounts that need to come back up, so I would leave it. The original video saying we were banned and had my call to the feds could be pulled if you choose to.

 

Unfortunatly the anonymity of the internet allows for some very dishonest behavior. Over the years theists have come and wasted users times by misrepresenting themselves as something they are not. This is a measure designed to make everyones experience here more honest, so you no longer contend with the guy pretending to be an atheist in his posts. We would have labeled the atheists, with an automated test that they took and once complete would get the atheist label, but the programming was too tough. Since we have much less people here who are theist, the mod team applies theist tags as they spot them one by one. It would be worlds harder to apply an atheist badge, which is exactly what we would have wanted.

 

Ben, seriously calm down. I promise you I have the back of everyone wanting to speak out, and our account being reinstated will only make us stronger throughout this process, not more relegated to giving up. My account wasn't the issue, I was concerned with standing up for others, which is what I was doing before I was banned, and what I will continue to do now that I'm back. My personal efforts which much more heavily weighted on getting everyone else back up, then my own. It just worked out that way that I got my acct back first. And when I say calm down, I mean for at least 10 days.

 

 

Some extra little doohickey things I found...

 If you have an attorney who is worth his salt, then he probably will tell you what you can and can’t do regarding attorney/client privilege. The attorney/client privilege is sacred, and can never be broken, unless the client waives that right, either knowingly or unknowingly. There are certain circumstances in which the attorney/client privilege no longer applies, and clients should be careful about what they say or do.

The best thing that you can do when it comes to the attorney/client privilege is to do your best to keep all conversations as private as possible. Don’t have them in public, don’t discuss them with friends, don’t bring in anyone else and don’t use monitored prison phones. Your attorney should do his best to make sure that the privilege is maintained, but he or she cannot control what you do outside of the office or prison. 

 

With all that said... a special thanks goes to everyone who stood behind this.  We will never know to what extent the letters being posted on youtube have made an impact in restoring our account, and we hope the letter alone will help get back some other accounts soon.  But if the letter doesn't, there are other things that can be done.  Counter-notification notices must be sent by everyone who had a video pulled by CSEM.

 

 

Defeat. 

I've got a feeling that much of what Gizmo said here is accurate.  Not sure if I can confirm or deny though. 

 

Anyone ever see someone give you three fingers and tell you to read between the lines?  If you got it, then you're probably following along with this stuff. 

Dude great work with youtube!!  I am officially putting you "the man," in my hero's category on Myspace!!!  You deserve it!! 

Thanks for the hard work and the sacrifice you have made on behalf of atheist's around the world. 

 

Copyright infringement is a violation of Youtube's Terms of Service. Nevertheless, I'm a little confused now that you're making a distinction here, since when this began you seemed to make a rather large deal about Eric Hovind and the CSE filing dozens of false copyright infringement claims with Youtube, that supposedly resulted in your account being taken down. Forgive me in advance if somewhere in the vastness of the reactions to your takedown the facts have changed--I don't have a lot of time to read each and every response. Is the real reason your account was suspended unrelated to the claims of copyright infringement?



To be perfectly honest, my time is more involved in dealing with and discussing weightier issues, such as the right to life, religious freedom, and the moral, social and political issues that humanity faces--the fate of one's Youtube account doesn't really rank very high on my care meter in relation to the real problems that plague the world. That said, I know of at least two incidents of Youtube accounts being pulled for TOS violations, and then reinstated--Newshound and Politics.TV. There's likely more, but those are the only one's I'm currently aware of. And, of course, yours.



20%? That seems like a lot for something as mundane as having a free internet account reinstated, but then again, the other 80% is unknown--it is possible I suppose that in context with the sum of your life's achievements, having your account reinstated represents nearly a quarter of the greatest things you'll ever accomplish.



It means that you have (or, at least had) a video of you on the phone, talking to someone who supposedly prosecuted Kent Hovind, and wanted them to pursue perjury charges against whomever filed the false copyright infringement claims with Youtube. In that video, you stated that you didn't want to pursue charges in civil court, but wanted them prosecuted for "serious, serious violations of copyright law". So, my question is, did you decide to sue, or were you able to get the federal prosecutors to pursue the perjury charges against the CSE?

The Saint

You didn't burst my bubble at all. I'm thankful for the information. I hope it was obvious that I wasn't saying it's never happened, I just didn't know of any cases where it had.

Nevertheless I feel very happy of all that is being achieved. Kelly and I were so thrilled that our youtube account has gone back up that we took the time to make a few good videos illustrating some big problems with theism. We will have more Kent Hovind DMCA type videos coming soon.

http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=RationalResponse

I manage a Group: "Militant Atheist Materialist" and am a member of "The Cuckoo's Nest". I posted this message on both Groups:

Creation Science Evangelism Ministries succeeds in silencing some opponents. YouTube has banned a group called the Rational Response Squad after it complained its videos were being taken down due to spurious DMCA requests from creationists.

The takedown followed copyright requests sent by Creation Science Evangelism Ministries, an organization founded by currently-imprisoned tax evader Kent Hovind. The Squad says the clips comprise material that is either public domain, covered by fair use, or entirely self-produced.

This again highlights a central problem with the DMCA, namely that it forces takedowns without any kind of review, and puts the burden on proof on the "defendant" to show that its material is non-infringing. But to ban people for protesting when the process has been used illegitimately is something entirely different. The creationist ministry's own website said that "none of the materials ... are copyrighted, so feel free to copy these and distribute them freely."

---

So censorship is alive and well in the United "Christian" States of America. Christians can discriminate against anyone who disagrees with the ideas, especially Atheists who can be kicked out of house and town in the bible belt. Well I have joined the  Rational Response Squad and will help fight this hatred shown by bigoted Christians towards those who have to brains to know about the lies of Christianity

"Yeah, I've been negatively impacted...it pisses me off that you guys are way toooo polite." - Entomophilia after I asked if we should address more haters.