(this is not the banned video, though it is indicative of Andrew Christian’s video style)

Andrew Christian’s cheeky videos on YouTube advertise the clothing company’s expressive line of men’s underwear, featuring gorgeous male models flaunting their assets—and front-sets: Andrew Christian’s “Show-it” line promises

maximum frontal enhancement.

The company directs their marketing towards gay men, though seriously straight dudes couldn’t go wrong wearing some of these styles which look far more comfortable and sexy than the standard hide-away tighty-whiteys and boxer briefs. A man, no matter what his sexual orientation, would definitely cut a fine figure in these underpinnings–they are kinda like a super-bra for the meat and potatoes.

The Andrew Christian videos–which are age restricted on YouTube–definitely play up sexuality, as do vast number of YouTube videos aimed towards straights and featuring female models (and amateurs). So why did YouTube yank Andrew Christian’s “Pink Paradise” promo from the company’s YouTube channel? (I haven’t seen it, but if it’s anything like their others, it’s cute, playful, and sexy with hot guys frolicking in skivvies, eye candy for straight women and gay men).

In an open letter to YouTube, Andrew Christian wrote:

Our video was meant to be a fun way to feature our new line of underwear. We’re disappointed and confused about its removal for inappropriate content when there are hundreds of thousands of videos featuring overtly sexual female imagery. We are a company that only produces menswear, and it feels unfair that our ads are held to different standards for featuring the male body.

There is no doubt in our mind that there would be no issue if the exact same video was posted with female models instead of male. Are you being homophobic or is it something else?

All we request is for our account to be unblocked, and the “Pink Paradise” video to be restored with its original view count so we may continue to regard YouTube as a fair and balanced outlet for reaching our audience.

The company’s channel is now unblocked.  Their letter included a short list of videos which feature the same type of content as the Andrew Christian video (and may be NSFW depending on your company standards):

-Fully exposed breasts / butt

-Lingering shots of tight underwear, exposed butts (and over 18 million views)

-Visible nipples and butts

-Fully exposed breasts

-Camel toe video

-Entire video is slow motion close-ups of bouncing breasts

-Girl rubbing her barely covered body, very near nudity

-Female pool party video with just as much exposed butt and small swimsuits

-Exposed butts, near-exposed breasts

Some of these are age restricted, and one that Andrew Christian listed in their letter featuring

Women making out and putting their hands under each others’ underwear

is now removed. I found more raunchy videos of women including this one which far exceeds the amount of ass shown in Andrew Christian videos, and the related videos that are featured on the same page are um, really rather extreme. Based on their titles, I cannot unsee them, so I didn’t click. You may be braver than I.

YouTube’s community guidelines state:

YouTube is not for pornography or sexually explicit content.

While I haven’s seen Andrew Christian’s “Pink Paradise,” based on other videos featured the company’s channel, I can safely say they are sexy but not explicitly sexual. And definitely not porn.

YouTube’s Terms of Service explain that by using YouTube:

You further understand and acknowledge that you may be exposed to Content that is inaccurate, offensive, indecent, or objectionable

Undoubtedly there are people who find videos of  anyone frolicking in their underwear offensive, indecent, or objectionable, but seriously, they are adults. In underwear. And just like Victoria’s Secret and that god awful Paris Hilton Carl’s Jr commercial (I do not recommend clicking on the “banned” version which will get you a whole list of related videos which are really skanky and somehow have passed muster with YouTube’s community standards, possibly because they cater to heterosexuals, though feminists might get a bit worked up over a couple of them based on the preview stills).

Seriously, YouTube, did you cave to some homophobic complaints? Please reinstate Andrew Christian’s “Pink Paradise,”  which is simply a sexy underwear ad, the same as this one.

In recent months there has been a slew of DMCA takedowns on YouTube affecting numerous punk bands.

Apparently SST Records, owned by Greg Ginn, has been utilizing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to claim copyright infringement on a vast number of videos that utilize brief clips of music from Black Flag, including skateboard videos made by fans. Well, gosh, that’s what copyright holders can do, though it does seem sort of mean.

SST has also claimed multiple copyright takedowns on bands that have nothing to do with SST, including X, Fear, Sin 34, Lower Class Brats, Puzzled Panthers, and the Adolescents. Also affected, videos made by fans under Fair Use, utilizing snippets of  songs.

YouTube user Creamy GoodnessX writes that SST:

have since admitted that they never even viewed the allegedly offending videos before issuing the strikes! Rather, they used automated software in their campaign, in many cases resulting in false DMCA takedowns of videos that were legitimately using copyrighted material under the fair use doctrine. Several users permanently lost their channels (i.e., termination), and others permanently lost special privileges like being able to upload videos longer than 15 minutes.

YouTube provides copyright holders with a Content ID program. YouTube account holders who use the software must submit title lists and audio files, as well as proof of copyright. The program can be used to:

• Identify user-uploaded videos comprised entirely OR partially of their content, and
• Choose, in advance, what they want to happen when those videos are found. Make money from them. Get stats on them. Or block them from YouTube altogether.>

• Reduce Infringement. Educate your fans about your copyright preferences and prevent your content from being distributed on YouTube without your permission.
• Fully Automated. Once you’re set up, Content ID will identify, claim, and apply policies to YouTube videos for you.

The DMCA takedown of “Democracy” by the Adolescents on Frontier Records, which also handles their publishing via Bug Music, indicated that a company called Love Cat Music had also claimed DMCA rights, along with SST. I wrote to Love Cat, which has only one punk band, Reagan Youth, in its catalog. Owner Randy Frisch replied:

i do not know why LoveCat Music is mentioned here.   Could be a mistake.

we have sent takedown notices with respect to other songs in our
catalog that we do in fact control.

But not this one

Is it possible that YouTube’s Content ID program is faulty and can’t tell punk songs apart? If so, major fail.

So I wrote to SST Record’s owner Greg Ginn and asked him about YouTube. At first he said

I don’t know much about YouTube.

Then I asked about fan videos being posted on YouTube. His response:

I then asked if he enforced copyright. He replied:

At times.

Then:

Greg did not write back, and blocked me on Facebook, making it impossible to contact him further. Ginn has been a brutal enforcer of SST’s copyrights, though oddly he showed disdain for U2′s when SST released Negativland’s single U2 (Full disclosure, I worked for a branch of SST Records in the mid-1980s. In 1991 I wrote an analysis of the U2/Negativland controversy for U2′s magazine Propaganda; when that piece was repurposed as a press release, I was paid. I know many former SST Records artists, as well as people affiliated with U2).

When a video is falsely DMCA’ed on YouTube, it is the responsibility of the real copyright owner to prove they are the rightful copyright holder. It can take up to 10 days for the DMCAed video to be restored.  Alerted to the Adolescents’ video takedown, Frontier Records’ owner and founder Lisa Fancher worked with YouTube, sending in the correct forms to restore the video.  Often bands do not know their videos have been taken down, or why, as in the case of Lower Class Brats:

How could they get our videos taken down off of YouTube and why would they do something like this? I am completely baffled…
I look forward to your reply, thanks….

Since it can take over a week to restore a video, DMCA-ing  a video is an effective means of harassment or of silencing speech, as seen during Anonymous’ Project Chanology when videos shot at protests and/or using Fair Use clips of Scientology videos, or the organization’s logos, were DMCA-ed.

If YouTube’s content identifying software is at fault for false DMCAs, then those using it should definitely alert YouTube about the glitches since it looks pretty creepy and bad to take down videos for which you do not own the copyrights. However, if  people are purposefully DMCAing  videos out of spite, and have a long record of false claims, perhaps YouTube should treat them with the same vigorous enforcement they show to copyright abusers.

YouTube’s PR department did not respond to my questions about the accuracy of its Content ID software, however they did say:

Unfortunately, in some cases, individuals abuse our notification process by submitting fraudulent claims.  When we become aware of this, we take action by reinstating the videos and/or accounts affected, and taking appropriate action against the individual responsible.

The PR person followed up to my questions about Content ID being possibly faulty with this:

You can read more about both of these things are our Copyright Center. Thanks!

Which is where I started in the first place.

Today is International Draw Mohammad Day, and the government of Pakistan is pretty angry about the Facebook group and related YouTube channels. Actually some folks on Facebook are are a little disgusted, too. One guy wrote:

This is just primitive primate politics — one troop of monkeys looking for an excuse to fling poop at another. I understand wanting to show the radical extremists that we aren’t afraid of them, but what is the point in causing anger and disgust in the vast majority of Muslims who are just regular folks?

It is sort of poking a rabid badger with a stick, and I’d rather spend my time making fun of other things. Dentists like Orly Taitz and Don McLeroy for example.

The Washington Post reports that links to over 450 internet sites have been shut down by the Pakistani government:

An Internet clampdown in Pakistan widened Thursday as the government blocked access to the YouTube Web site, citing its “growing sacrilegious content.” The move came one day after the civilian government ordered Internet service providers to restrict access to the Facebook social networking site, which drew fire in Pakistan over a page encouraging people to post caricatures Thursday of the Prophet Muhammad….

Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia, also appeared to be blocked in Pakistan on Thursday, but it was not clear whether the government had restricted access or there was a glitch in the system. Access from smartphones to Facebook, YouTube and other sites with “blasphemous content” was also blocked, according to one major cellphone company, Mobilink.

The Facebook group claims:

They can’t kill us all, there is safety in numbers

Okay. Sure.  And

In Islamabad, about 100 young men belonging to the Islami Jamiat Talba, the student wing of a religious political party, carried signs bearing slogans such as, “Death to Those Responsible for Blasphemy.” They called Facebook a tool for spreading anti-Islamic sentiments.

“If Facebook and other such tools continue to be used for blasphemy by the Western nations, then we will target their embassies,” said Faisal Javed, 21.

I think something is blasphemy if the person doing it is of that faith. How can you blaspheme against something you don’t believe in?  And if you’re a really good member of that religion you wouldn’t be doing anything blasphemous anyway–whether it’s looking at a forbidden website or frolicking illicitly–right Messrs. Ensign, Souder, Rekers and Sanders?

(all artwork: Dan Lacey)