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Universal Music Group is at it again: Another heavy-handed crackdown on a YouTube user.

Melting.

What is fair use?

The Hot Air video report on Akon that Universal Music Group didn’t want you to see is now back up on YouTube. That’s right. The music giant and the video-sharing site (who happen to be “strategic partners“) have backed down:

We originally posted the Hot Air report to YouTube on May 2. On May 3, after [...]

Gone.
This morning, I linked to the YouTube version of our Hot Air show exposing hip-hop misogynist Akon.
The YouTube version is no longer available.
This is the message you will now see: “This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Universal Music Group.”

We believe our commentary and criticism of UMG “artist” Akon [...]

Lesson learned by Kevin Rose and the Digg folks who tried to play whack-a-mole with users who posted the code to unlocking copy-protected High Def movies: You live by user-generated content, you die by user-generated content. Michael Arrington cheers on the mob: “Until today, it seems, even Digg didn’t fully understand the power of its [...]

Here’s the latest development on the anti-war, anti-conservative Facebook stalker who targeted college Republicans in Fredericksburg, VA:
A man whose anti-war expressions attracted widespread Internet attention received a suspended sentence yesterday in Fredericksburg General District Court. Andrew J. Stone, 23, pleaded guilty to two counts of assault and battery. A third count was dropped. Judge John [...]

The Internet rumor mill, chasing down leads on the identity of the Virginia Tech shooter, has been grinding all day. Allah debunks one of those rumors, which Hot Air received, investigated, and debated this afternoon and evening:
He’s not the shooter.
Here’s his LiveJournal page. And his Facebook page.
He’s gloating about making the Drudge Report. Lovely.
Update….He [...]

David Sifry reports.

Look what happened to John McCain’s MySpace page.
Whoops. Lesson learned.

You’ve already seen the stories about the Obama-linked video consultant who was unmasked as the creator the anti-Hillary Big Sister ad.
Here’s his confessional at HuffPo, “I made the ‘Vote Different’ Ad:”
Let me be clear: I am a proud Democrat, and I always have been. I support Senator Obama. I hope he wins the primary. (I [...]

Brian Turner is a part time professor at a Bay Area college and a published poet.
He’s also a soldier.
Words written by the light of a red-tinted flashlight offer a poet’s-eye view of American soldiers’ life in Iraq: the fear, the loss, the heartache, the uncertainty and the rare moments of calm and beauty in an [...]

Comparing notes with Blackfive today, it appears we’ve both been infected with the same “sock puppet” troll. So, as a public service to bloggers and bulletin board moderators everywhere, I’m publishing the details on the troll I call “Punk.”
IP addresses:
68.33.185.185 — Rockville MD (work?)
66.160.120.185 — Washington DC (home?)
68.62.72.192 — Auburn Hills MI (Mom’s [...]

Hi, I’m Ben, a 25-year-old white guy from rural Virginia. I used to be a directory assistance operator, but now I work at the Wal Mart in Waynesboro. I still live with my parents.

Sometimes, I like to go to the big city and play in the streets. My favorite game is to [...]

Well, this is an interesting twist. YouTube, known in these parts for banning those who insult Islam, is now being banned for carrying videos that insult Turkey:
A court in Turkey on Wednesday ordered blockage of all access to YouTube, the popular video-sharing Web site, over a video deemed insulting to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder [...]

Via the BBC:
Internet site Wikipedia has been hit by controversy after the disclosure that a prominent editor had assumed a false identity complete with fake PhD.
The editor, known as Essjay, had described himself as a professor of religion at a private university.
But he was in fact Ryan Jordan, 24, a college student from Kentucky [...]

A Florida reader sent along a news item about the memorial service for U.S. Army PFC Branden Cummings:
About 1,000 people crammed into the Brevard Memorial Funeral Home and spilled into the parking lot for the funeral of U.S. Army PFC Branden Cummings of Titusville.
Cummings, who died, Feb. 14 in Iraq, was remembered by family members [...]

The Jerusalem Post follows up:
Over the past few weeks, those who track the use of media by terror groups have noted a strong trend among Iraqi insurgents to distribute their propaganda movies and violence footage not through fringe, hard-to-find websites, but by uploading them directly to popular video sharing sites such as YouTube.
Many of the [...]

***bumped to the top…updated with police report summary***

This is Richard Reed Pannell. He’s a student at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, VA. On Saturday, he was minding his own business, taking a shower in this house he shares with classmates…

…when an unhinged stranger–a raving leftist who had tracked him down on social [...]

Please correct the record on our yanked anti-jihad videos. They were not “removed by the user.” They were removed by you.

Discussion at Hot Air.
***
Previous:
Dhimmitude at YouTube, again
YouTube: Time’s invention of the year
YouTube and the cyberjihad
Google plus YouTube equals…
YouTube’s slippery slope
Fighting jihad at YouTube
Banned on YouTube
YouTube goes Dhimmi Pt I/ Pt II

The immortal words of 2LT Mark Daily live on. The Los Angeles Times has picked up the story: “Mark Daily wrote on MySpace that he joined the Army to help the suffering people of Iraq. In death, his words have become a call to service.”
A small sample:
In a 2005 videotape of his officers’ commissioning ceremony, [...]

There’s a new member of the Banned By YouTube club. He’s Nick Gisburne, an atheist who posts videos criticizing religion. He had no trouble uploading anti-Christian monologues to YouTube. But when he criticized Islam by quoting the Koran?
YouTube account deleted. (You can seen the banned video at his site.)
Here’s Gisburne’s latest video (not yet banned) [...]

I still get a dozen e-mails a week expressing outrage about the sophomoric Google bomb linking President Bush with the phrase “miserable failure.” In case you haven’t heard, you’ll all be happy to know that Google has now addressed the issue (via NYT):
Google announced on Thursday on its official blog that “by improving our [...]

Army 2nd Lt. Mark J. Daily, 23
A reader e-mails that 2LT Mark Daily was killed in an IED attack in Mosul along with three other soldiers. He was named the ROTC’s outstanding cadet for 2005 and also a Distinguished Military Graduate, the highest ROTC award. The OC Register profiles him here.
This was his MySpace post [...]

Zeroing in the mortars in Basra:
Soldiers from the Royal Green Jackets based at the Basra Palace base said they had considered suing Google Earth if they were injured by mortar rounds that had been directed on the camp by the aerial footage.
“Even if they did blank out the areas where we are based it is [...]

Under no circumstances should anybody even imagine, even for a nanosecond entertain the notion, that this post is by our dearest Michelle (who is either in Iraq or in next-door Okinawa, as I understand it, but I’ve never been either place, so what do I know?) Rather, this post is by Dafydd of Big [...]

A broken window is seen behind the emblem of the U.S. Embassy in Athens, Greece. (AP)No injuries, thank God, and minor damage.
The blast smashed glass in the front of the building near the U.S. emblem of the embassy. Police did not report any injuries and embassy officials could not immediately be reached for comment.
“This [...]

Leni Riefenstahl’s 1935 film “Triumph des Willens” (Triumph of the Will) went a long way toward making the Nazis look cool, or at least, rather less like a bunch of pasty sausage-gobbling dorkozoids.
Now, consider this “promotional” film for the radical Muslim group Hizb-ut-Tahrir (more about them here and here). Although [...]

Continued from previous Lizard post…
This post is by Big Lizards (mostly Sachi), not by our dearest Michelle; the host is on holiday somewhere — I couldn’t quite make out where she was, but she shouted something that sounded remarkably like “earache.” Faugh; earache, my eye.
You put your left foot in…
If the mainstream media has [...]

Mystical Nativity by Sandro Botticelli
For unto Us a Child is born
Unto Us a Son is given
And the government shall be upon His shoulder
And His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor,
The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.
- Isaiah 9:6
Merry Christmas, dear readers. Hope your day is filled with joy and love. A few [...]