Filed under: Business, Fun, Internet, Video
Poor dancing in a YouTube video leads to creative commons license for electric slide
Here are the details: A software engineer named Kyle Machulis and his friends were at a convention, and taped themselves performing a dance move known as the electric slide. For some reason, they felt compelled to share this video with the world, so they did what countless others did before them and put it up on YouTube. Then, in February they were served a takedown notice for the video. Now, as anyone who has had the unfortunate experience of seeing nerds dance can tell you, it is definitely offensive and probably shouldn't be viewed by anyone under the age of 21. But that wasn't the reason why the video was pulled. Richard Silver, who created the electric slide in the 1970's, filed a Digital Millennium Copyright Act claim and had the video shut down. In an interview with CNET News, Silver claimed that the video, and others like it, were ruining his dance by showing it as 18-steps instead of the correct 22-steps. He said "I fought for the last 28 years trying to get it not done as an 18-step dance, and now with all this being presented on the Internet, I had a problem with" which is kind of like saying "I really haven't done anything productive in the last 3 decades."
In May, Silver came to an agreement with the Electric Frontier Federation (who had been representing Machulis and had filed a suit against Silver) in which the EFF would drop the lawsuit, and Silver would no longer pursue DMCA claims against anyone doing his dance improperly in a non-commercial manner. In fact, the Electric Slide is now protected under a Creative Commons license which grants full non-commercial use rights to anyone who wants to use the dance. God bless YouTube. Making the world a better place, one out-dated awkward dance move at a time.
So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do.
Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game.
The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Darien said 10:59AM on 6-05-2007
When I first heard about this when it happened I thought it was a joke... Silver is an idiot.
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Victor Agreda, Jr. said 11:45PM on 6-05-2007
Darien, I just hope Tony Shaloub plays him when they make YouTube: The Movie.
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David said 1:05AM on 6-06-2007
It's a good thing they didn't do it in a 19, 20, 21 or 23 step cause I have the rights to those.
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