Air Force asks YouTube to change videos - Air Force News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Air Force Times

Air Force asks YouTube to change videos

The blogosphere was buzzing Wednesday with reports that the Air Force had demanded YouTube remove the service’s newest commercial from the video sharing site.

Wired magazine’s Threat Level blog, whose author posted the video in question on YouTube, posted on Wednesday a copy of a complaint reportedly sent to YouTube’s corporate offices in San Bruno, Calif. The legal notice, drafted by a lawyer at the firm Reed Smith LLP at the behest of the Air Force, demanded that YouTube take down the video, as it presented a copyright violation. The video is the first commercial in the service’s new “Above All” campaign, and highlights the function of Cyber Command.

Several bloggers and Internet commenters pointed out that the Air Force’s privacy policy at its site AirForce.com labels all the site’s content, the commercial included, as public domain. But the problem with the video in question was that it not the final version of the commercial and included copyrighted images inserted as placeholders, according to Keith Lebling, chief of marketing for the Air Force. Lebling was notified of the wrong video’s posting on YouTube by officials at GSD&M Idea City, the ad agency that produced the commercial.

Those images belong to a photography clearinghouse, and were taken out for the final version in a commonly used video editing practice, Lebling said.

Lebling said he communicated with writers at Wired on Wednesday, and had provided them with a copy of the final commercial, which he encouraged them to post.

“We’re thrilled that people want to put it up on their site, and we’re happy that it goes viral,” Lebling said.