G2 Got Our YouTube Account Shut Down

By Matt Van Hoven 

Late last week we found a page on G2.com (Grey’s interactive agency G2 Direct & Digital site) which contained a case-study video for the VW ‘Das Pulse’ campaign. We recorded that video with a little camera and then posted it on YouTube. G2 then made a claim to YouTube that we stole their Copyrighted material, so they took our video (and entire YouTube account!) down. Don’t worry, we got another one. Oh, and we still have the original copy of the video. It’s pretty boring, so our gut is to cut it down into something more palatable, and re-post. But it’d be a little time consuming, so we wanted to ask you: should we re-post it? Note: we risk getting sued, but the journalist in me (yes, it exists!) is compelled not to let this story die &#151 but that’s mostly because we didn’t actually, you know, do what G2 is accusing us of.

Don’t forget, they threatened to get us fired. Also, as for the YouTube account &#151 YouTube has an itchy trigger finger on these issues. We could probably hide behind fair use, aka the First Amendment, if it came to court (who knows, I’m not a lawyer). Anyway, the reason the account came down is we had a similar infraction with a different video, and the “owner” complained. With YouTube it’s two-strikes then done. Annoying! We filed ‘counter complaints’ in both cases, and have yet to hear back from Google on either.

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