G4 Media Inc. Demands Removal of Our YouTube Video

Some of you may remember Grandma appearing on G4's Attack of the Show last August for a panel discussion on 'Women and Gaming'... We drove to studio here in Ohio from which Grandma could participate via satellite. During the taping, I sat in the control room with our little camcorder pointed at the screen (with the studio's permission, mind you) showing the feed from the camera that was being sent to LA, with the audio from Grandma's earpiece piped into a tiny speaker by the monitor. We couldn't see the show, only Grandma. Grandma was told by a producer of AOTS before the show started to speak up whenever she had something to say. Grandma tried the best she could. She didn't get too frustrated when it was clear the 'panel discussion' was merely going to be a tongue-in-cheek sort of thing, but it was obvious from our view that she was a bit disappointed.

The day after it aired we put up a post showing our video from the control room. Under our video we also included G4's own embedded flash video of that particular segment of the show so readers could compare and also see what it's like to be on the other end of a satellite feed. The G4 producer who contacted us initially saw the post, thanked Grandma for participating and that was the end of it. Amber and Seanbaby were actually very cool people, it was just a silly skit rather than a real discussion.

Our video, in the year it's been online, only got a little over 10,000 views total. To put that in perspective, Video 21, which we posted Wednesday, is already at 15,000. Nobody really seemed to care all that much about the AOTS fiasco.

Today, G4 Media Inc sent a third party copyright infringement notice to YouTube for the video I shot of Grandma sitting in the studio in Ohio. The video was subsequently deleted and we were given a warning that that ALL our videos may be removed if another video is flagged.

We don't have any hard feelings against YouTube for the video removal. It's more or less an automatic thing anymore. Hell, even the person at G4 who flagged our video might not have watched it, they simply saw the thumbnail of Grandma on a television screen with the video title "Old Grandma Hardcore on Attack of the Show" and thought to themselves 'SONOFABITCH! I got one!" ...and then pressed the 'report' button. Could have it been taken down because it portrayed AOTS and G4 in an unflattering way? I don't know. Maybe! But it's more likely that this is either a mistake or there is just some real fucking ball-buster content manager over at G4 Media that cracks a heavy whip to the backs of interns to meet their daily quota of YouTube, Break, and Metafilter infringement reporting.

Hell, they might even have a little corkboard with everybody's name on it with differently colored stars representing the number of videos deleted in a day. Now, I'm not saying that corkboard was stolen from an underfunded elementary school; the poverty stricken kids forced now to huddle around an ancient eMachines monitor displaying a poorly formatted spreadsheet of the class roster with cold, unfeeling numbers where their beautiful, shiny star stickers used to be.

I'm not saying it isn't possible, but it's highly unlikely.

Here's why: G4 Media Inc is located on W. Olympic Blvd. in West Los Angeles, right near the Santa Monica Freeway. The closest elementary school is The Park Century School, which is a private institution. A G4 Media Content Manager couldn't get passed the guard without some sort of identification as a parent, and it's even more unlikely they could make it out with a corkboard and shiny star stickers if they managed to bribe one of the kids with a classic and rare TechTV t-shirt from their secret Vault of Quality Programming into faking a family relationship, because the guards at an elementary school in West L.A. can see right through that shit.

It just wouldn't make any sense.

So it was probably just an innocent mistake!

Anyway, here's the segment as you would have seen it on television, provided by G4 on their very own nifty embedded player.



Our video, however, has been cast out into the ether; lost forever, only the remnants of its tiny zeros and ones remain in the form of a haunting thumbnail on our YouTube Channel.

That is, unless you click here and judge for yourself. That's right folks. Grandma is clearly an evil copyright infringer. She infringes constantly. Just look at her infringe. You might want to do it quickly before an intern goes for another coveted gold star.

Game on!