How Does Someone With Psychic Powers Silence YouTube (GOOG) Critics?
Television “psychic” Uri Geller claims to be able to bend spoons with the power of his mind. So we’d have guessed the paranormalist would silence critic Brian Sapient, who uploaded a 13-minute debunking video to YouTube in March of last year, by frying his brain with a telekinetic bolt. Instead, Geller filed a takedown notice under the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Geller’s complaint? That the video, originally part of a skeptical NOVA program called “Secrets of the Psychics,” contained an eight-second long clip that was under Geller’s copyright. Google’s (GOOG) video site complied and suspended Sapient’s account, and all of his videos, for two weeks. But Sapient, who belongs to a debunking group called the “Rational Response Squad,” fought back. Together with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Sapient sued Geller for filing a fraudulent DMCA complaint. Muddying the legal waters, Geller countersued, charging that British copyright law should hold sway as he’s a citizen
