February 2008
I've been getting a lot of emails asking why do the juggling videos keep disappearing. Instead of typing it over and over here's my recollection of the events so far.
First Andrew Conway, acting on behalf of the IJA without their knowledge or permission in the matter, filed legal papers with YouTube claiming he personally owned some footage I put up and that it was from an IJA DVD. Fortunately Andrew can be pretty stupid and he totally screwed everything up when making these fraudulent claims by saying I stole footage from a DVD that doesn't even include the performer in the video he was trying to claim ownership of. I simply filed a counterclaim stating the obvious facts, won, and Andrew has conceded his false claims and gone back to the Bahamas to his tax shelter. Within days of Andrew filing his fraudulent claim the IJA board of directors unanimously kicked him off the board. Thanks to the IJA board for realizing that hiding juggling videos from jugglers is not a good thing for jugglers.
Now we move onto Dick Franco, a Vegas act with a fake chainsaw who has spent decades trying to keep videos of jugglers hidden so only he, and those he judges worthy, can see them. Dick has long been known for his keeping of unseen footage of Rastelli, Cinquevalli and others I haven't even heard of. He has now blamed me personally for him keeping these videos from the public. I don't think Dick Franco understands how time works. Me sharing a video of Bobby May with his widows blessing does not make me responsible for 30 years of him being a jerk.
Dick Franco has decided he owns all the rights to the name and all likeness of Bobby May. He has tried to forcibly take control of juggler.com and have it shut down. He has filed more legal claims demanding any use of the phrase Bobby May be removed from my website. Fortunately we live in the USA and all his attacks directly on juggler.com have failed and he has not taken control of this website.
Dick Franco has also been sending false legal claims to YouTube using the Digital Millennia Copyright Act. These have very specific rules including a sworn statement that if your claim is challenged you will prove your case in court. Dick Franco filed one of these claims with YouTube. That combined with Andrew Conway claims and some of my mistakes had the entire DampRabbit YouTube account, with hundreds and hundreds of subscribers, 100 videos and more than half a million views, shut down.
Since formally asking Dick Franco on more than one occasion to demonstrate in any way his ownership of the rights to Bobby May and having him refuse to provide any evidence, I filed a counter claim. YouTube accepted it and restored my account and all the videos. According to the DMCA rules Dick Franco now had 10 days to file in a real court or concede his claim. Since he had no claim he conceded.
But Dick is a total Dick so he simply filed the same claim again and YouTube shut the account down again removing all the juggling videos. I of course wrote to YouTube telling them he already filed once and lost and they apologized for their mistake and said they have sent him a letter asking him to stop abusing the system by re filing claims he has already conceded. A few weeks later Dick Franco filed the same claim for a 3rd time and the videos went down again. I contacted YouTube, they apologized once more and restored the account and reaffirmed Dick is abusing the automated system. I thought that would end things but Dick Franco has now filed the same claim he conceded months earlier for a 4th time triggering once again the automatic deletion. This time YouTube has not been getting back to me so it Seems Dick Franco has personally managed to hide juggling videos from jugglers once again.
So Dick Franco has decided that the public should not see great jugglers like Rastelli, Cinquevalli or Bobby May (unless Dick Franco sells it) but he has decided to share some videos with us. Here is one of Dick Franco's YouTube videos.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbxvbBvV3gk
While this is not as impressive as some of the juggling videos he is so proudly hiding it does have some interesting moments. For example at the 3 minute mark you can see a 5 year old boys penis in the transition to the shower scene and at the 3 minute 14 second mark you can see the same 5 year old's naked butt as he dances while urinating. Dick Franco made a modest attempt at "censoring" the second scene but the child's penis is only hidden by the speed at which it goes across the screen. Dick Franco has removed comments on this video complaining of it's content so I have to assume he is aware of it's content.
Many of the juggling videos have been removed from the juggling community at Dick Franco's insistence. I am slowly working to restore most of them but am not looking forward to repeating the many hours of work wasted posting them the first time.