Google lets video uploaders claim copyrights on public domain/free footage

Paulo sez,

I'm the guy who made the cloudy timelapse video popularly used later "Anonymous Message to Scientology."

Three days ago, Google's copyright bot flagged my own video as infringing because 236.com (Arianna Huffington's comedy news outfit) had posted a parody video using my footage with a content identification sig on it. When I asked who had flagged my video as infringing in preparation for a dispute, I was told that 236.com had graciously allowed me to keep "their copyrighted video."

Basically I put out a free public domain video for the internet to use as they wished, 236.com made a thirdhand derivative parody, and through Google Video they made an aggressively claim of copyright over my own material. At the time of this writing my video has not been restored.

Link

(Thanks, Paulo!)