Anybody know how to contact Warner Bros. Legal? (1 Viewer)

They just got my YouTube account permanently disabled for posting two commercials; one for the upcoming Sarah Connor Chronicles and the other for the upcoming Harry Potter movie. I know I probably won't get any satisfaction from contacting them, but I'd really like to know exactly what their copyright enforcement policy is. Surely having someone highlight advertising for your product can't be a bad thing? I'd understand if I was posting clips from episodes or something, but this is the same stuff they pay millions to put before a national audience.

Dude posting ANYTHING that legally belongs to someone else without their permission is against the law....you may think you're helping but you're not. You're breaking the law...move on and don't go contacting them to complain.

> you may think you're helping but you're not.

The first part of your post was true, but this part isn't.

I would just create a new YouTube account. I doubt WB legal dept is going to reply to you with anything beyond some generic comment about copyright.

You're probably right. I wonder if anyone else has tried though.

After thinking it over for the night, I think I'm done with contributing to YouTube period. Seems like the safest strategy.

Actually, they do own the ads as well. The fact that they otherwise pay other parties to broadcast it, whilst your upload is in effect free advertising, doesn't change that fact, although it does, from a layman's point of view, make no sense that they would now complain. There is some risk, if they allow third parties to infringe their rights repeatedly, of "trademark dilution", i.e. any trademarks that are infringed without complaint are lost in future, because they didn't defend the marks, although one could query how reposting their own trailer on Youtube causes trademark dilution (as compared to producing counterfeit goods).

Go to www.calsb.org and search for attorneys at headquarters, although this won't give you an org chart. Hint: WB is in Burbank 91522.

Thanks, Dennis. I actually found an address late last night, but after thinking over what Chris said, I'm probably not going to pursue it. No reason to make a big issue out of something that really doesn't impact me that much in the long run (It's not like I was promoting an album or movie of my own through that heavily frequented account) and could set Warner Legal on me in a more intrusive and malicious fashion.

Warner Bros. called their attention to the fact that you had done so, and YouTube took action. You can try contacting WB legal if it makes you feel better, but it seems to me your gripe is with YouTube, not WB, and YouTube was acting well within its rights.

Bummer, but there you have it.

Regards,

Joe

Intellectual property issues seem to bring out the idiot in almost any major corporation. I'll have to research the issue one of these days for the hell of it, but from a marketing perspective, having someone post one of your advertisements should be great news, not something to complain about.

Thanks to corporate meddling that YouTube site will soon need to change it's name to UselessTube. More than half the draw of that site was due to people posting clips of copyrighted material and the changes or additions they made. The guys who owned that thing were the smart ones. They sold it right at the peak before it becomes even more mediocre than it already is. After all, how many people are going to bother watching a site that will soon be nothing but a collectory of bad home movies.

I also think it is funny that Warners would have an account shut down because someone is posting Warners own advertisements for free. The inmates are running the asylum. This overzealous copyright protection nonsense is making people .

Exactly

I don't know whether there is some sort of legal issue here that controls, but otherwise, this is idiocy. You WANT people to spread information about your products. My guess is that the proper people to contact in a case like this would not be the legal department but the marketing department. This reminds me of the Jane Goodall incident with the far side.

Interestingly enough, I've since found out that I was only one a whole swath of people that got knocked out in one fell swoop. I don't think the Harry Potter commercial was the one Warner Bros. reported me for either, now. Apparently Warner Bros. TV is the one making the new Sarah Connor Chronicles show and that's the video that got me nailed (I'm guessing it was intended for industry types only since it came from tvweek.com). I'd already gotten nailed on two previous videos (which were clearly copyright infringement and were not reposted). So my guess is that YouTube has a three strikes policy, and I struck out.

Which doesn't make it any less idiotic on Warner TV's part. But it does mean that Joseph pretty much pinned down the situation. I'm climbing off my soapbox now.