Beginning Friday night, viewers who tried to watch the video at its original link were greeted by a message stating that “This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Warner/ Chappell Music, Inc.”
The removal was first discovered by journalist Caroline Glick, who edits the Hebrew language Latma website, which originated the video. According to Youtube, the video violated the copyright of the companies that own the rights to the “We Are the World” video, produced in the 1980s to raise money for hunger in Africa.
While it's true that the copyright to “We Are the World” is owned by Warner/Chappell, says Glick, “Copyright experts we advised with before posting the song told us in no uncertain terms that we were within our rights to use the song because we did so in accordance with the Fair Use Doctrine. The Fair Use Doctrine stipulates that it is legal and permissible to use copyrighted material under the fair use doctrine for purposes of parody,” she wrote.
Youtube has not yet commented on the video's removal, but there were numerous campaigns on social media sites, like Facebook, to force the site to remove the video. There is no record of Youtube's removing the numerous anti-Israel videos put up by Arab groups.
Meanwhile, as word has gotten out about the removal of the video, dozens of sites on the internet have been reposting it, and in fact, doing a search of “We Con the World” at Youtube will yield dozens of links posted by other people that still work at this point.
One site where the video can still be seen is the WeJew site. Glick says that the video's removal has not dampened Latma's attempts to get Israel's truth out to the world. “Despite these obstacles, we at Latma have no intention of crying Uncle. By tomorrow, we will repost our song on blogs throughout the world.”
Meanwhile, she wrote, “stay tuned for our next video next Thursday night.”
Good video!
ReplyDeleteThese aid boats remind me of those strapping explosives to kids in war time.
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