Psychic out of line online?

Showman abuses copyright claims, his critics allege

By Paul Elias

SAN FRANCISCO -- Uri Geller became a 1970s superstar and made millions with an act that included bending spoons, seemingly through the power of his own mind.

Now, the online video generation is so bent out of shape over the self-proclaimed psychic's behavior that he's fast reaching the same Internet pariah status as the recording and movie industries.

Geller's tireless attempts to silence his detractors have extended to Google Inc.'s popular video-sharing site YouTube, landing him squarely in the center of a raging digital-age debate over controlling copyrights amid the massive volume of video and music clips flowing freely on the Internet.

Geller's critics say he and others are abusing a federal law meant to protect against online copyright infringement, and that YouTube and other Web sites are not doing enough to combat frivolous claims.

At issue is the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which makes it easy for Geller and others to persuade Internet companies to remove videos and music simply by sending so-called takedown notices that claim copyright ownership.

Most companies, including YouTube, do almost no investigation of the claims. That's because the copyright act protects companies being sued for copyright infringement if they respond quickly to the takedown notices.

"All it takes is a single e-mail to completely censor someone on the Internet," said Jason Schultz, a lawyer with the online civil-rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The San Francisco-based foundation is suing Geller for getting YouTube to remove an unflattering clip over which he claimed copyright ownership.

It turns out that Geller owns just a brief snippet -- perhaps no more than eight seconds of the 13 minutes of video.

It's the fifth such federal lawsuit the foundation has filed against people it says have sent bogus takedown notices to YouTube and other online video forums. The foundation has won its four previous cases.

For almost as long as Geller has been bending spoons and moving compass needles with the wave of a hand, professional magicians have been loudly debunking his claims of psychic ability.

A new generation of critics, led by 30-year-old Brian Sapient of an organization called the Rational Response Squad, has taken the crusade online. Sapient and others recently posted several video clips to YouTube demonstrating how Geller uses simple sleight of hand in his act.

One clip includes Geller's infamous Tonight Show flop, in which Johnny Carson exposed Geller by providing his own spoons and other props.

In March, YouTube took down many of the clips and suspended Sapient's account when Geller sent takedown notices claiming he owned the copyrights to the unflattering clips.

The video and Sapient's YouTube account were restored two weeks later after he complained. But Geller is still suing Sapient in Philadelphia's federal court, accusing him of copyright infringement and defamation.

Sapient said the clips and his views of Geller are protected by the First Amendment and "fair use" legal provisions, which allow the use of copyrighted material for certain noncommercial purposes such as criticism, news reporting and education.

But Geller knows his way around the court system. He unsuccessfully sued longtime nemesis James "Amazing" Randi at least three times for defamation, stemming from Randi's own efforts to unmask Geller as a fraud, and lost several other cases lodged against his critics throughout the years.

Legal scholars and Internet watchdogs say the explosion of freely available online video and music has been accompanied by a surge of abusive copyright claims such as Geller's.

Most recently, the Electronic Frontier Foundation successfully sued choreographer Richard Silver to stop sending takedown notices to YouTube claiming videos of people performing the "Electric Slide" dance -- sometimes at weddings -- were violating his copyright on the dance.

There's also a growing frustration that resolving copyright disputes is being left largely to YouTube and other Internet service providers that are taking down material with scant investigation.

For instance, YouTube removed about 150,000 clips from its site after Viacom Inc. complained. Viacom is also suing YouTube and its parent company Google for $1 billion in damages because it says the site is allowing copyrighted material such as TV sitcoms to be posted.

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