Ban Star Wars Kid Video from the Internet

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Author: Seth Dinkle

Started: February 20, 2007, 9:02:09 pm

Target: Everyone who thinks the Star Wars Kid video is funny

Category: Civil & Human Rights

Supporters:

Goal:

100,000

Goal Progress:

Status

Active

According to Wikipedia: On November 4, 2002 Raza made a video of himself swinging a golf ball retriever around as a fighting staff, usually interpreted as a Darth Maul-style light saber. The video was filmed at the studio of his high school, and the tape was left forgotten in a basement for a few months. On or around April 19, 2003, the original owner of the videotape discovered Raza's recorded acts and immediately shared it with some friends. Thinking that it would be a funny prank, they encoded it to a WMV file and shared it using the Kazaa peer-to-peer file sharing network under the filename Jackass_starwars_funny.wmv.

Within two weeks, the file was downloaded several million times. An adapted version of the video was created, adding Star Wars music, texts, and lightsaber lights and sounds to Raza's golf ball retriever. According to Waxy.org, this was done by Bryan Dube, an employee from Raven Software. Several gaming, technology and Star Wars-related sites began to host the video, further increasing downloads. Soon, people all over the world picked up the original and began making conversions of it, adding music, visual effects, and sounds, combining it with other well-known videos or scenes from films.

As of 27th November 2006 it has been estimated by the Viral factory that over 900 million internet users have viewed a version of the original video making it the most popular "viral video" on the Internet.

Raza reportedly suffered considerable embarrassment, in part because the video showed him to be overweight and not particularly graceful. Additional scorn was directed at his self-generated sound effects. The case raised privacy issues and was extensively reported in mainstream news media worldwide, including The New York Times, CBS News and BBC News. The boy underwent therapy and counseling. Raza became the spokesperson for an anti-bullying campaign in Ontario, but later changed his mind and the program was taken down.

An Internet petition to get Raza a cameo role in Star Wars Episode III received more than 178,000 digital signatures. Although George Lucas sympathized with the young man's plight, the film contains no such cameo and there were never any plans known to do so, nor is it at all clear that Raza himself would have wished it. At the height of the video's popularity, two webloggers (waxy.org and jish.nu) began a fundraiser to buy Raza an Apple iPod. In less than a week, they raised over $3,200 and shipped him a 30GB iPod and a $2,600 gift certificate.

In July 2003, his family filed a CAD $250,000 lawsuit against the families of four of his schoolmates. Legal proceedings against one family were quickly dropped. The three remaining defendants were alleged to have taken the video and put it on the Internet without Raza's consent. The family claimed that Raza had suffered harassment and derision from both his schoolmates and the general public because of the video. The lawsuit had been scheduled to begin trial on April 10, 2006; but on April 7, Raza and his parents reached an out-of-court settlement with the defendants. The settlement's terms were not announced. Previous court proceedings had included discussions about whether the defendants had liability insurance.