The New Jersey Turnpike Authority is suing a number of online video sites, among them YouTube, for infringing on the copyright of footage from a fatal car accident.
The footage was captured by a NJTA video camera. The video shows a car on the New Jersey Turnpike crashing into the Great Egg Harbor toll plaza on May 10. The driver, a New Jersey resident, was killed.
Others named in the suit by the NJTA include NextPoint owner of the video site break.com and LiveLeak.com although LiveLeak has since removed the video from their site and the NJTA has reportedly dropped their suit against them.
The NJTA is suing for direct copyright infringement by public performance, public display and reproduction.
"The video serves no worthwhile purpose and shows a tremendous lack of common human decency towards the family of the victim," the suit reads. "Nevertheless, defendants have either refused or failed to remove the video from their Web sites."
The NJTA asked YouTube to remove the offending video from their site, which they did, but only to have it uploaded again by other users.
"YouTube did not try to prevent the very same video from being uploaded again by users immediately after it was purportedly removed," the complaint reads.
YouTube says they removed the video "because it violated our terms of services. Because our removal also complied with our obligations under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we see no legal basis for a claim."
As of May 22 the video had been viewed 24,346 times on YouTube, 213,295 times on LiveLeak and 16,812 times on break.com.
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Public domain?
I don't know the law in NJ, but in Oregon, the traffic camera video is public domain/public record. There is a very good reason that the Transportation Agencies in the State do not record any of the video. They also have internal policies that preclude the use of the camera to zoom in on accidents. I doubt the NJTA has a case.
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