Furious Electric Sliding Furries

Furries. People that dress up in giant anthropomorphic costumes, like college mascots, but do so to pretend they are the loveable animal suit they are wearing. They gather together in “fur-cons” to meet one another, and role play, and engage in plushy love. They roll around in “fur-piles” and “yiff” each other. Its a disgusting, shameful lifestyle.

In a list of my most reviled humans, from the bottom up, it goes:

• Cannibal Zombies
• Emo-kid Postal Workers with Guns
• Furries
• Pedophiles
• Clowns
• Mimes
• Goths
• White Rappers

But it seems that there is an uproar over a YouTube Video that was filmed at a recent Fur Con. The video is of a bunch of disgusting plushies doing a disgusting dance- The Dreaded Electric Slide, the bane of cruise ship gatherings and wedding receptions. It seems that a man owns the copyright to the choreography of the electric slide and has forced YouTube to pull the video from the Internet.

Now that champion of Internet Wierdness, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), has taken the case. You may remember them from the only victory- vanquishing criticism of Barney the Dinosaur.

From VNUNet here:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has stepped in on behalf of an amateur video maker in a copyright case involving a popular line dance.

The case centres on the removal of a video posted on YouTube by amateur video maker Kyle Machulis. The five-minute video shows a musical performance by techno band Sublevel 3 at the 2007 Further Confusion conference, a yearly “furry” convention sponsored by the Anthropomorphic Arts Education Foundation.

The choreographer displays the original directions for the dance on his Electric Slide website, along with two videos demonstrating the dance and a 2004 copyright granted for the dance.

The EFF contends that Machulis’s footage falls under the protection of fair use laws which allow for the limited use of copyrighted work in certain situations, such as non-commercial or educational broadcasts.

I think the EFF has a good case here. Too bad about their disgusting clients though.