Weebling the DMCA
p2pnet.net News:- Was the Electric Slide a spin-off of the Texas Freeze developed by Ken Engel in 1980? Or was it, as Ric Silver claims, created in 1976 by him for the opening of Vamps Disco in New York at 71st and Broadway?
Both thoughts are posted in the Wikipedia and if you go for the second, you’ll be interested to know Silver is, “fighting back against what he believes are copyright violations and, more importantly, examples of bad dancing,” says CNET News.
At the bottom of it is the infamous DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act), inspired by, and also perhaps paid for, by the entertainment cartels and now used as an online weapon of mass destruction,
“Kyle Machulis, an engineer at San Francisco’s Linden Lab, said he received a Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown notice about a video he had shot at a recent convention showing three people doing the Electric Slide.,” says the story, going on:
“The creator of the Electric Slide claims to hold a copyright on the dance and is DMCAing every single video on YouTube that references the dance, Machulis said. He’s also sent licensing demands to The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Machulis added.”
Whether or not Silver actually is the orginator, he filed the copyright for it in 2004, says the story, and, “It appears Silver has for several years aggressively defended his copyright on the dance,” says the story. “In 2004, Silver apparently wrote an e-mail to Donna Woolard, an associate professor of exercise science at North Carolina’s Campbell University, demanding she remove a video of the dance from a Web site. He complained the dance wasn’t being done correctly on the video, and Woolard took down the video.
” ‘The Electric Slide” has been used in at least FIVE movies and three TV shows,” proclaims Silver on the official site, going on:
In “Nobody’s Baby” (2001) with Skeet Ulrich & Gary Oldman – Oldman and one of the main characters dance “The Slide” while the credits run at the end of the film. .
In “The Replacements” (2000) with Keanu Reeves – the football team dances “The Slide” in jail and again on the football field . No one asked permission to use my choreography and they dance the shortened 18 step incorrect version.
The only film that has actually used the correct choreography was “The Super” (1991) when the tenants invite Joe Pechi to join their house party.
So does sliding badly avoid copyright violation? Sadly, it doesn’t seem so.
An, “incorrect version of the dance may still be covered under copyright law as a derivative of the original, but it depends on the context,” CNET has the EFF’s (Electric Frontier Foundation) Jason Schultz saying, and, “In the case of Machulis’ video, the missteps of the dance probably mean a loss of Silver’s rights.
“Slight variations (of the original) are arguably derivative,” saysSchultz, “but something else, like doing (a dance) out of sequence, you’re probably not even getting close to his copyright.”
Our pic shows Silver with a group of Electric Slide aspirees as featured on GooTube. They’re probably working on such complex Electric Slide manoeuvres as poppin’ and the weeble.
Also See:
CNET News – ‘Electric Slide’ on slippery DMCA slope, February 3, 2007
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February 5th, 2007 at 10:51 pm
Since when can copyrights apply to dances? How would you collect royalties for that anyway?