On December 15th, 2007 Home Depot concluded a contest it was running that would award one person a $25,000 Home Depot gift card. The goal was for entrants to create a video that shows what you would do with said gift card, then submit it to YouTube via Home Depot's "group". The contest was advertised on Home Depot's web site, and there were articles written announcing the contest (more on that later). There were over 250 videos that entered the contest.
Home Depot was to announce the winner as scheduled, however their announcement came later than promised. They gave no official reason for the delay, but based on information after-the-fact it seems that the video they chose to win was disqualified when they found out the entrants were directly related to Home Depot staff members.
Thus, a new video was awarded the $25,000 prize. The Long's Rap, a family from Houston, Texas. It was a catchy, cute video to be sure. But soon after the announcement was made, there were several objections to the fact that it contained copyrighted material, which is a violation of the contest rules. Why disqualify one video for violating the rules, then award the $25,000 to someone else who also violated the rules, right? It seemed cut-and-dry... a giant frame of "The Right Stuff" movie poster.
So, Home Depot appeared to be doing the right thing when they came back with:
"Pending the resolution of this matter, we will be moderating comments. We are working to address this as quickly as possible. Thanks for your patience."
This is where things got ugly. Home Depot cut off communication for two days while they deliberated. When they came back, they stated:
"As backgound, we reviewed each video when it was submitted to ensure it complied with contest rules. When we found a submission that did not comply, we provided feedback to the submitter and gave them the opportunity to rectify. The winning video was selected because it was the best video and best represented the intent of the contest. Because we never identified any issues with the winning video when we reviewed it initially, we have recently given the winner the opportunity that all submitters have had - to make some minor adjustments to eliminated any potential compliance issues. The very brief image in question had no impact on the judging process. Please note that if you did not receive an email from us at any point after submitting your video, your video was not disqualified. Thanks again for participating and offering your feedback." (emphasis added)
Keep in mind that at this point, nobody else has come forward to say they were given the opportunity to change their video to comply with the violations Home Depot finds. But upon analyzing the newly-submitted video by the Longs, it turns out that it appears they made a change to not just one "very brief" image, but at least FOUR shots that violated the contest rules. They removed "The Right Stuff" movie poster, replaced a photo of an electrician, replaced a special effect shot of an explosion (copyrighted), and blurred the logo on the water heater. There may be more than this.
Then they allowed the Longs to resubmit their video, after the contest was over.
Once people found out about this, there was another uproar on the message boards on YouTube. However, this time Home Depot chose a different tact to deal with discontent... they started deleting messages that contradicted their own rationale. In fact, they had a staff member attending the YouTube site throughout the nighttime, who's task it was to delete "offensive" messages.
(LATE UPDATE: The "study room" shot was removed from this list, since it was unchanged from the original shot, so the total is now four confirmed violations, although the "study room" shot may still in fact be copyrighted)
(LATE UPDATE: The "study room" shot was removed from this list, since it was unchanged from the original shot, so the total is now four confirmed violations, although the "study room" shot may still in fact be copyrighted)
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