Worldcon HUGO Ceremonies coverage pulled from Ustream after showing clips from BBC and NBC

SFFaudio News

A live video of this year’s Worldcon Hugo Awards (Chicon 7: The 70th World Science Fiction Convention), held in Chicago, was being streamed on Ustream until shortly after clips from three Doctor Who episodes, an episode of Community, and a clip from last year’s Hugo Awards ceremony were shown. Neil Gaiman was giving his acceptance speech, for The Doctor’s Wife, when he was suddenly cut-off and replaced by a black screen and the words “Worldcon was removed due to violation of terms of service.”

Worldcon Was Removed

Speculation by viewers, in the chat room associated with Ustream included surmises such as “Well, someone DCMA’d the Hugo live webcast” – and yet another chatter rightly pointed out that the clips used were “clearly FAIR USE.”

Things are clearly fucked up south of the border when a private “TERMS OF SERVICE” acts in place of copyright.

The next Hugo Awards ceremony should be released via torrent.

Update:

“Samuel Montgomery-Blinn Official announcement from @Chicon7 says that Ustream won’t be bringing this back online.”

Update II:

Worldcon banned due to copyright infringement.

Posted by Jesse Willis

Leave a Reply