Hate group gets MSNBC clip yanked from YouPube

The right-wing culture warriors are often merely a distraction from this blog's mantra of economic populism. But when they start censoring those who disagree with them, I have to take notice. Censorship is one of the gravest enemies of hard-working Americans.

The misnamed National Organization for Marriage is a hate group with ties to noted right-wing big shots. It appears to me as if they're not just against gay marriage: They're against gays, period.

And the organization suppresses opposing views.

The National Organization for Marriage had an unintentionally hilarious audition for some dumb commercial they put out. Rachel Maddow's MSNBC program got access to the audition tapes, and Maddow played 40 seconds of them to show how ridiculous they were.

Someone promptly posted this segment from Maddow's show to YouTube.

Almost immediately, however, the clip was hit with a DMCA takedown notice - not from MSNBC, but from the National Organization for Marriage.

Did the National Organization for Marriage even copyright its audition tapes? Some have argued that once a work is created, it's automatically copyrighted, but if that's the case, why won't Google make it easier for people to remove their own years-old Usenet posts?

Even if the audition was copyrighted, wouldn't the way it was used on Maddow's show be considered fair use? Out of 15 minutes of audition footage that exists, showing a mere 40 seconds isn't too much to be called fair use.

If it's not fair use, wouldn't the National Organization for Marriage's real complaint be with MSNBC, not the person who uploaded the segment to YouPube?

Since when is a TV commentary called a copyright violation just for criticizing an organization?

It's pretty bad when a group is so right-wing that it wants an MSNBC segment suppressed. To hear some folks talk, you'd think MSNBC was exclusively a left-wing organ. However, MSNBC's coverage during the presidential campaign was so biased to the right that (as with Fox News and ABC), this blog doesn't even use it as a source anymore.

Everyone knows that YouPube will remove a clip almost on demand. As soon as a video hurts someone's feelings, it's gone. YouTube accepts even fourth-party DMCA complaints from parties that don't own the copyright on anything in the clip and aren't even mentioned in the clip.

I think it's time to repeal the DMCA.

(Source: http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2009/04/anti-gay-rights.html)