Obama's YouTube "Cover and Taken Down as Copyright Infringement

Bogus YouTube takedowns haven't been news for years. Copyright holders abuse the ContentID system they have at their disposal and the DMCA to take down videos that are either obviously fair use or that are infringing if you go by the letter of the law, but which fail the common sense test, badly.

But, as videos of kids playing get taken down because of music playing on the TV in the background, there are far worse abuses to worry about these. And no one with the power to do anything will do something against the will of the powerful lobbying groups of Hollywood and the recording industry.

Maybe that's about to change, as both a political ad put up by US presidential candidate Mitt Romney and several videos of current president Barack Obama, all containing the same footage, have been blocked by YouTube.

You may be wondering what incendiary footage they contain to warrant this. Well, it's Obama singing the beginning of Al Green’s "Let's Stay Together." For a grand total of nine seconds.

Initially, Romney's ad was the only one taken down at the request of BMG which cited copyright infringement. This was ridiculous for several reasons. For one, it's a political commentary ad, therefore it's clearly protected.

What's more, the "music" lasted for only nine seconds. Going further, this was Obama singing what can be considered a "cover" at best, it's just a couple of lyrics, there's no background music for example.

It didn't stop there, while Romney's ad was taken down, there were plenty of other videos showing the president singing that were still live on YouTube. Realizing the ridiculousness of all of this, BMG tried to fix it, by taking down all of the other videos as well.

Of course, this left thousands of other covers, by other people, or even the full song up on YouTube. It's beyond ridiculous at this point. But the sad thing is, it's probably not going to mean anything and neither Obama or Romney will say anything about it, let alone tackle the elephant in the room, the misused and out-of-touch copyright laws.