Ike
2/4/2007, 11:30 PM
Before now, the realm of copyright law had just been teetering back and forth between ridiculous and sensible, but with this case, it has officially crossed over, never to return to the realm of sensibility again.
http://news.com.com/Electric+Slide+on+slippery+DMCA+slope/2100-1030_3-6156021.html?tag=nefd.top
The inventor of the "Electric Slide," an iconic dance created in 1976, is fighting back against what he believes are copyright violations and, more importantly, examples of bad dancing.
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.
"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.
Indeed, Richard Silver, who filed the copyright for the Electric Slide in 2004, said on one of his Web pages that the DeGeneres Show had been putting up a legal fight as he tried to get compensation for a segment that aired in February 2006 in which actress Teri Hatcher and other dancers performed the popular wedding shuffle.
and it gets better...according to the "inventor" of this dance, the only guy in holywood who can do it "correctly" is none other than dance master Joe Pesci.
Silver wrote, according to e-mail correspondence posted by Woolard, that he had sued two Hollywood production companies for using the dance in several films and that he was now adding her as a co-defendant. It's unclear what happened to the suit.
Interestingly, he also complained that actors in those movies also didn't do the dance right. In fact, of several movies mentioned, surprisingly, Silver said only Joe Pesci, best known for his Oscar-winning role in the gangster classic Goodfellas, performed the dance correctly in the decidedly lesser-known film, The Super.
http://news.com.com/Electric+Slide+on+slippery+DMCA+slope/2100-1030_3-6156021.html?tag=nefd.top
The inventor of the "Electric Slide," an iconic dance created in 1976, is fighting back against what he believes are copyright violations and, more importantly, examples of bad dancing.
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.
"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.
Indeed, Richard Silver, who filed the copyright for the Electric Slide in 2004, said on one of his Web pages that the DeGeneres Show had been putting up a legal fight as he tried to get compensation for a segment that aired in February 2006 in which actress Teri Hatcher and other dancers performed the popular wedding shuffle.
and it gets better...according to the "inventor" of this dance, the only guy in holywood who can do it "correctly" is none other than dance master Joe Pesci.
Silver wrote, according to e-mail correspondence posted by Woolard, that he had sued two Hollywood production companies for using the dance in several films and that he was now adding her as a co-defendant. It's unclear what happened to the suit.
Interestingly, he also complained that actors in those movies also didn't do the dance right. In fact, of several movies mentioned, surprisingly, Silver said only Joe Pesci, best known for his Oscar-winning role in the gangster classic Goodfellas, performed the dance correctly in the decidedly lesser-known film, The Super.