Free Speech Under Siege: Obama’s Nazi Goons Censor Romney’s Dumb Ad

Sayyyyyyyyyyyy, you know who else had their books published by a German publisher…

YouTube and this publisher aren't actually arms of the government, so free speech doesn't apply to them; and YouTube is already notorious for pulling down anything a copywriter holder complains about even if it's covered under fair use.

Here's some eleven dimensional chess. Romney needed some cover to pull his embarrassing tribute ad to Obama off the internets and BMG provided cover by agreeing to make a complaint on copyright grounds. Ka-ZING you didn't see THAT coming!.

Noel Sheppard is an insufferable ass. NewsBusters is a cottage industry stocked by otherwise unemployable idiots living off the lie of the left-leaning American media.

Their stock in trade is "Imagine" – as in "Imagine if a Democrat (or Liberal) (or any other group they hate) had done/said/thought/felt…" Because such a claim has no basis in fact it has no limit to its applications.

They use "Imagine" more than John Lennon.

This is a double fake, as what REALLY happened is that the Romney-bot campaign realized is that even that brief footage was causing too many wiminz to squeal in girlish glee over Barry O's soulful crooning, and they were screwing themselves outta votes, I think.

Dok, not to harsh your otherwise brilliant post, but fair use has nothing to do with how widespread the violations of copyright are by others. No one has to sue every potential infringer to protect their rights (although the defendant might argue abandonment or implicit licensing from widespread use, those are distinct affirmative defenses whereas fair use is a statutory defense). It also isn't all that concerned with how the artist is viewed or claims of false affiliation (other countries protect those sorts of things better than we do, although fair use will consider the impact of the use on the value of the work – not the artist's reputation). The major considerations in a fair use defense are why, how and how much of the work you are using – is it for criticism (of the work, not general commentary or every ad could run audio they felt illustrated a point without paying), education (in a classic nonprofit education sense, not issue ads or again campaigns would never pay for music) or in some other way with a transformative step (like satire); how much of the work is appropriated and whether the use is commercial or non-commercial. It is a nebulous defense, incapable of precise definition, but the best argument for Romney is that the snippet is so small compared with the entire work(albeit a hugely recognizable hook) that it amounts to too little content to amount to infringement. The counter to that is that there was no effort made for it to convey a repurposed message like when music is sampled (mainly because the Romney team was so badly prepared they didn't take the time to massage the work well). Plus this is complicated because the rights of Al Green are to the song, but all Romney cares about is Obama's performance of that snippet. But that's the kind of thing that lawyers can fight about in Mitt's "quiet rooms" for years from now.

Far as I can tell, BMG is the leader in having videos taken off YouTube, followed closely by the Zappa Family Trust.