We've been jabbed

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on January 15th, 2008

The Female Half Googled her name yesterday. Coming up fifth in the list was her “JibJab video.” She was not aware that she had a JibJab video, so she clicked on it and discovered that someone using the screen name “Zattaz” had found her video somewhere and uploaded it to JibJab, where it resides (along with another two-minute chunk of her set) in the site’s Joke Box section. The Joke Box is hailed as “The largest joke-sharing community in the universe.”

This Zattaz character, if he does indeed exist and is a real, live person, is a sexagenarian from the United Kingdom who has uploaded 1,154 items to the site. Two of those are clips of the Female Half, one is a clip of the Male Half. It is difficult to determine the origin of the clips. We suspect it was poached from our YouTube clips or from one or two other sites which are authorized to run our clips. But, they seem to have been excised from longer clips.

Each of our YouTube clips have a provision for embedding– if a blog or a website (a comedy club, for instance) wants to embed the clip, they very easily can. But these clips seem to have been wrenched from their original mother clips and presented, with no context and not other information, in a shorter format, on a site that is generating traffic and revenue for the host. (In this case, JibJab.)

And, perhaps most disturbing, the clips that Zattaz has uploaded invite viewers to vote, giving the clip either a “Jib” (a positive rating) or a “Jab” (a negative rating). We have a similar option on some of our clips on YouTube, but it is by our choice on our terms and under our control.

The Male Half registered on JibJab and immediately sent an email to Mr. Zattaz, asking him to take down the clips in question. (And we’re not sure, but, since the Male Half received $5 in free JibJab credits just for signing up, we suspect that Mr. Zattaz has been receiving those same JibJab credits for scouring the web and providing content for the Spiridellis brothers. And we assume he can use same toward the purchase of JibJab mugs, stickers, t-shirts, etc.)

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