STRANGE TIMES

“Freeview” (Wikipedia) is a campaign by Australian free-to-air channels to convince you that free-to-air TV is not mostly boring rubbish. The campaign boasts about the fact that Australians will have fifteen digital channels to choose from on free-to-air TV, instead of the six free-to-air channels that Australians have (at least the ones who live in a major city).

What the campaign doesn’t mention is that most of the new channels are just exact rebroadcasts of the already-existing free-to-air channels (exceptions include ABC2 and SBS World News, which broadcasts foreign-language news reports). So some Melbourne comedians doing a show about TV today decided to parody the Freeview TV commercial.

The parody was posted on the Internet’s most popular video-sharing site, YouTube, but yesterday it disappeared, due to a “terms of use violation”.

However the video is available on several other video-sharing sites, including this copy from break.com:

Freeview: More of the same sh#t – Watch more

The Tech Wired AU blog has an interview with one of the creators of the spoof video commercial, and a link where you can download it yourself.

Meanwhile, Margaret Simons’ blog at Crikey, The Content Makers, yesterday reported a denial by Freeview that they have plans to sue the makers of the spoof, and also a denial that they had anything to do with its removal from YouTube. However, today Simons’ blog reports that the ad WAS pulled from YouTube after action from Freeview’s lawyers:

This morning I received the following e-mail from Rob Shilkin, the Head of Corporate Communications and Public Affairs for Google Australia (Google owns YouTube).

“Hi Margaret – I’ve been reading your blog. We don’t ordinarily comment on individual videos or any DMCA notices that may be filed, but due to some confusion that is circulating online, I’ve made some enquiries internally.  I wanted to confirm that we received a DMCA notice for lawyers acting on behalf of Freeview Australia Limited to remove the video in question.  More information on the DMCA process is here: http://www.youtube.com/t/dmca_policy

Kind regards!

Rob Shilkin

Rob Shilkin
Head of Corporate Communications & Public Affairs
Google Australia & New Zealand