Alex Jones Channel Reinstated after Filing Lawsuits
http://www.infowars.com/youtube-restores-the-alex-jones-channel/
Youtube Restores The Alex Jones Channel
Alex Jones Channel Reinstated after Filing Lawsuits
Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Youtube Restores The Alex Jones Channel 190509Youtube
Youtube has restored the official Alex Jones Youtube channel after legal counter claims were filed against the original claims of copyright violation.
It took two weeks for this issue to be resolved, with Youtube examining and determining exactly who had filed the original complaint.
The Infowars team had to write up legal papers and file counter claims in federal court, which eventually prompted the complainant to back down.
The Google owned company reversed it’s decision to pull the channel and resurrected it, along with the backup channel The Infowarrior, which was also restricted last week.
Youtube revealed that a second copyright violation was filed, however this turned out to be a fake, with no supporting evidence, no doubt filed by a person who simply dislikes Alex Jones and Infowars.
It also seems that the Pittsburgh Post-Gazzette did not file a complaint against Alex for showing a print out of one of their articles, as originally suggested by Youtube.
The Alex Jones Channel, started by a fan but since embraced as the “official” Alex Jones micro-site on You Tube, has routinely featured in the website’s most popular ranking charts and has collectively attracted close to three million views for videos painstakingly catalogued and uploaded over the past two years.
According to Youtube’s figures, it is the 49th most subscribed to channel of all time and the 99th most viewed channel of all time, despite having only started in February 2008. Furthermore, it is the 9th most viewed channel this month, despite having been recently restricted.
The channel’s deletion seemed terminal, but thanks to the efforts of thousands of viewers and Infowars readers, who have called Youtube to complain about the censorship, the company was prompted to listen to our counter claims.
We would like to thank the viewers/readers for calling in to Youtube and all the Youtubers that have supported the Alex Jones channel. This victory shows the effect that people power can have in the Infowar.
However, having earned this success, we must now better prepare for the inevitable attacks that will follow. There is no doubt that there are people out there who desperately want to see important sources of information eliminated from Youtube, and there is no doubt that the Alex Jones Channel will come under fire in the future.
We would therefore like to announce “Operation Evacuation” - There are over 2000 vitally important videos that, for the moment, are confined to what may now be a compromised vessel.
We encourage readers to take whichever they feel are the most important videos from The Alex Jones Channel, and mirror them all over Youtube.
Man the Lifeboats!!
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Adobe Flash & Youtube
First off, to dump Flash videos from Youtube, you can use this plugin for FireFox (All OSes) to do it manually from your browser window (in a user friendly way), or 'youtube-dl' on Linux/Windows in combination with scripting for automated purposes. Youtube-dl has options to always fetch the highest quality version available. Other, less efficient, options are websites such as http://keepvid.com/, which download the Youtube video for you.
Two of my previous comments on 911blogger show why Alex Jones shouldn't have relied on Youtube in the first place:
(1) By design
And especially:
(2) Flash is not just a tool for rich multimedia/animated content
As I said earlier, this is by design. The Free Software movement knows this. The trap you're lured into is the promise of reaching millions of users without having to supply bandwidth or storage. Alternatives are also discussed in above comments, but the only real solution is symmetrical bandwidth at the same speeds as corporations. This probably means fiber for all citizens. In and around Amsterdam, there are fiber trial runs, and I hope the trend persists.
AJ's now calling for a rescue operation, but imagine what it would have been like if Youtube videos were hosted using the RTMP protocol, because that protocol is currently specifically being used to prevent users from storing content locally. (Case in point: Comedy Central and CNN)
You are then forced to use other proprietary crap tools such as Orbit Downloader. However, the approach of 'fishing for media content' in network streams is fundamentally flawed, especially when such streams become encrypted, which I expect will happen soon. The entertainment industry is waging an all-out war on user freedom, and is constantly deploying new technologies together with Microsoft, Adobe and lawmakers to turn your personal computer into a remote police officer.
Adobe Flash is currently the worst threat to user freedom. You don't ever know what it does inside your browser, and not surprisingly this is where it gets its copy protection qualities from.
There is also a free software tool that aims to dump RTMP streams, called rtmpdump, but my personal tests haven't been too encouraging yet. That goes for Orbit too, by the way. It's there though, and rtmpdump is the sort of tool I like to see.
A working Free Software replacement for Adobe's flash player, such as Gnash, would be best. Even better would be if we started implementing ActionScript in source code form: <script type="text/actionscript"> ...code... </script>
BTW: Anybody with tried and tested rtmp dumping experience, feel free to contact me. I've been warning for this for years, it's apparent that AJ's removal from Youtube should be a wake-up call, especially since he doesn't appear to have local copies of his content. If this had happened to a video containing proof of a countdown at WTC 7, we'd all be banging our heads against the table right now. I'm exaggerating, but you get my point.
thanks for the info
I have always used the keepvid site that you mentioned, and yes, it is outdated and cumbersome. Thanks for the link to the firefox pluggin for direct downloading.
Also, thanks for the other information you mentioned about Flash, Adobe, etc... very informative.