Creationists can't take critisism

I know, many of you who read the title are probably thinking "no sh*t" because anyone you has ever read an article about evolution or the creation of life as told in the Book of Genesis that the comments section of said article will often times degrade into a flame war of Biblical Creationists vs. everyone else with ultimately the creationists trying to drown out or force off anyone who say they are wrong... and brings evidence that shows them they are wrong.

Then there are ofcourse videos on Youtube that either explains how evolution works and why it's true, or why the Biblical story of Creation is false. Such videos will usually invoke the same reactions as I stated above, but it will invoke another type of reaction: trying to get video removed.

Most of the time a creationist will try to get a video removed that criticizes creationism or promotes evolution by false flagging said video, but sometimes they will go one step further and issue a DMCA takedown notice against the video (which is illegal).

There are two Atheist vloggers on Youtube by the names of EssenceOfThought and The Fantastic Skeptic who made videos criticizing the trailer for the movie A Matter of Faith (the movie itself is not out yet), which has been described by critics as a creationist propaganda film (which I agree), and used footage from the trailer in their videos, which is perfectly legal so long as they name the original owner of the footage either in the video itself, or in the description of the video, and link to the creator of the video and the original trailer itself, which both did.

So everything they did was perfectly legal. This did not matter to the creators of the film, who issued DMCA takedown notices against both vloggers videos that criticized the trailer of the film.

Now both vloggers have responded to their respective takedown notices:




And both videos criticizing the trailer has since been mirrored on The Atheist Hub as well as other Youtube channels:




Now I'm not sure what The Fantastic Skeptic is planning to do about this illegal DMCA takedown notice, but I do know that EssenceOfThought has filled a counter claim, which I'm glad he did, but the fact remains is that he shouldn't even have had to have done this in the first place because these takedown notices should never have been issued.

I suppose if the creators of this movie are just like every other hardcore creationist: unable to deal with criticism and counter arguments, and do what they can to get rid of them.

Help stop DMCA abuse and homophobia at the same time

Today I found out that former U.S. Navy chaplain turned far right fundamentalist Christian and notorious homophobic, Gordon "Dr. Chaps" Klingenschmitt, manged to get Right Wing Watch's Youtube account suspended after filing a series of bogus copyright claims (I.E. a DMCA attack) because the page hosted several one to two minute video clips showcasing his blatant bigotry.

This is the second time this has happen in the past two weeks (read about it here, here, here, and here) and despite already having restored it once after RWW filed a counter claim that clearly demonstrated that they do infact have every right to use those video clips under the FAIR USE Act (not to mention the 1st Amendment, which also allows Mr. Klingenschmitt to continue to spread his hate speech, as well as allows me and RWW to call it hate speech), Youtube decided to side with "Dr. Chaps" and took down the page again.

Youtube is ofcourse notorious for taking down both videos and entire pages after someone files a false DMCA claim, and not even doing any investigation into the claim to see if there is any validity to the claim (as is the case here). The way that Youtube handles these DMCA claims basically allows most people to get away with suppressing information about a group, or a single person, or themselves, that puts them in a bad light (again, as in the case here). That, or it's used as a form of information gathering because Youtube requires a user to send a certain amount of personnel information that would be made available to the person filing the DMCA claim to begin the counter claim process.

This type of abusive behavior needs to stopped, and it can be stopped, and here are a couple of ways you can do that:

First, you can go to Youtube's Twitter page and tell them to restore Right Wing Watch's account and to revise there takedown policy to keep abuse like this from happening (go here to ask them).

Second (and the one that I most recommend), you can sign a petition started by Right Wing Watch and it's parent group, People For the American Way, asking Youtube to restore RWW's account, and to stop abuse of it's own takedown policies (go here to sign the petition).

This in my opinion is just another example of why the DMCA needs either a heavy overhaul, or needs to be repelled entirely and replaced with something much better, and also what lengths that a homophobic bigot will go to (or really anyone with a extremist and/or harmful agenda) inorder to suppress criticism not only of themselves, but also what they claim to believe in.