Teacher's Nightmare: Ogling Video on YouTube
She got 'Hot for Teacher' clip pulled, but incident raises Web privacy issues.
Aug. 26, 2007 — -- The scene was a fifth grade graduation ceremony in Charlotte, N.C., and the star of the amateur video was not exactly the student body, but a teacher's body.
"The video was three and a half minutes of me. It would go to my face, to my butt, to my face," said former elementary school teacher Keri McIntyre. "And then he had his fun zooming in to my butt."
McIntyre said she only recently learned of the video's existence and that it was posted on YouTube, set to the Van Halen tune "Hot for Teacher."
"I had no idea until last week. My student teacher, who I had last year, e-mailed it to me," McIntyre said on "Good Morning America Weekend Edition" Sunday. "When I saw it I was furious."
Even though YouTube almost immediately pulled the clipped from its site, nearly 200,000 people had viewed the clip.
"We do not comment on the specifics of individual videos. However, the video in question has been removed as it violated our terms of use," YouTube said in a statement.
Also, the video has resurfaced on the popular social networking site, MySpace.
Now, McIntyre is on a mission to find out who was behind the camera because she said someone turned a simple, innocent act into something disgusting.
At any given moment, millions of people are watching videos online. Some of the people featured in the videos are unaware they're on the Web.
And the ever increasing popularity of amateur videos online has raised serious privacy concerns.
YouTube pulled a video of Beyonce Knowles tripping during a concert, citing reasons of copyright infringement.
But it's not only the rich and famous which have to worry about suddenly finding their images plastered across the Web. Average people like McIntyre also have found themselves starring unwittingly in online videos.
McIntyre's quest for the person's identity behind the video may be no easy task. Even if she is able to track down the person responsible for the video, her legal action may be limited.
"An image that you may not like, or an image that seems not appropriate, is not likely to get you a legal award in a United States court," said Electronic Privacy Information Center executive director Marc Rotenberg.
