Another stupid deletion from Youtube

As some of you already know by now, my videos were deleted from you tube yesterday. I can’t say that it came as much of a surprise. As a matter of fact I found it surprising that I was able to get 400 videos uploaded, and just this side shy of two million viewers before the account was deleted. Since I began putting the Olbermann clips up on Youtube on a daily basis my subscribers to my videos had increased at a rapid pace. From just over two hundred subscriptions, I had shot up to over six hundred subscribers in a matter of just a few weeks. So there would seem to be a lot of people out there wanting to watch Countdown who cannot do that for one reason or another, such as that they are either overseas, their cable company does not carry it, or you have to pay extra to receive it if they do.

As for the Youtube deletion, I knew it would be coming sooner rather than later. They have some rather iffy criteria for video deletion not all of which has anything to do with copyright infringement. In fact, you can have videos deleted for the most innocuous of reasons sometimes. When I began posting the Olbermann Videos on a daily basis just over a month ago, I already had two strikes on me at Youtube and its a three strikes and you’re out law, regardless of whether it's right or wrong, fair or unfair, or if any of the deletions were fair or not. I suppose you can also challenge them on some of these decisions, but sometimes it's just not worth the hassle when there are so many other avenues you can explore and still get the job done.

I now know the reason for the deletion and it has nothing at all to do with most of the clips being Olbermann, because as you know there are a gazillion clips of Countdown on Youtube none of which are being deleted. I would think that MSNBC knows that much of Keith’s recent popularity is being driven by the internet and the proliferation of clips on sites such as Youtube. I wouldn't think they would want to piss off a bunch of viewers in the way that Viacom did when they began arbitrarily removing Daily Show and Stephen Colbert clips without warning, something that I believed hurt their target audience more than they are willing to admit. I for one seldom watch the show as religiously as I once did and although I have used their clips on occasion, it generally was more to fill up space than any particular need to do so. And honestly, I have promoted Countdown as much as the next person and would hope that anybody able to receive the program would tune in instead of depending on me and my clips. But again, I know that is not always possible.

To understand how these deletions come about, all you have to know is how I received my first two strikes and to also understand how silly and inconsistent the rules are at Youtube. I received strike one because Olbermann did a story on former American Idol Candidate Antonella Barba, and some American Idol fans got their tidy whities in an uproar and flagged it as obscene. So the video was removed for “improper content” even though the homemade video that I have posted here, was far more racier than Keith’s commentary came closer to being. Both video clips are shown here for your comparison. After youtube removed the Olbermann/Barba clip I had simply placed it elsewhere.

But Keith did talk about the fake “oral sex” pictures and showed them heavily redacted just as they do in my homemade video. But I found it all to be rather silly, pointless and quite goofy.

My second strike came because of Clear Channel. Late last year Keith did a report on Rush Limbaugh shortly after the election, whereas Lumpy went on the radio and admitted that he was pretty much a liar carrying water for the right wing in order to keep his dunderheaded clueless listeners walking in goosestep to his Republican talking points. In the report, Keith used about a ten or twenty second clip of Lumpy stating this fact. It wasn’t the first time that Keith had used clips of Lumpy on his program, but it was the only one of any of the Limbaugh commentaries that Keith did which were deleted from my you tube account. This deletion was done at the request of Clear Channel, because of the 10 seconds of Lumpy included in Keith’s commentary. I probably could have and should have fought that one under fair use, but I really didn’t consider it worth the effort. I guess they (Clearchannel) wanted to bury it as quick as possible so that only a minimal amount of Limbaugh’s dunderheads would find out that they are indeed real true honest to god lemmings in every sense of the word, simply being strung along by their own personal faux demigod. So that was strike two.

So what was strike three and why did the videos get removed? For the same silly crappy reasons, this one coming courtesy of your friendly idiotic conglomerate known as Major League Baseball and it shows once again how totally silly and ridiculous some of these things are when it comes to their overwrought copyright protection.

The clip, which you can see included in this article and is now covered under the fair use doctrine so that I can comment on it in relationship to how it pertains to all of this, had Keith commenting on the World Series and Alex Rodriquez’s decision to leave the Yankees. Of course, in order to comment on the game there generally has to be a few seconds of baseball clips. But to MLB, who likes milking fans for every penny they can get, it wouldn’t matter if it were one second of clips or ten seconds of clips or for what purpose they are being used. Rulz are rulz but then again this is only one of many reasons why I think professional sports are pretty much a waste of time unless you play in fantasy leagues or are a consistent gambler. Take away those groups and who really gives a crap. Strike three and I was out. All I know is that there once was a day that I could listen to baseball games streamed over the internet for free, and a year later MLB seeing another cash cow it could milk wanted to charge me for what I could get for free if I happened to live in the right town. Screw that. I haven’t listened to or watched a game since. And when Bud Selig and company get their tits in an uproar over a few seconds of clips used in a news broadcast, maybe we should be taking up a collection for all those impoverished owners and players like Alex Rodriquz.

But I should haven known better. Hell hath no fury like MLB when they aren’t getting what they perceive as their share of the loot. Way back when, in my first you tube account, I had posted an eight or nine minute clip of a game I had taped back in 1984 when Pete Rose returned to manage the Reds in a game against the Cubs. I thought a few people might find it interesting and the tape is just here collecting dust out in California anyway. And it wasn’t like the video quality was particularly good.

Of course, MLB found it and it was counted as a strike against that particular account because after all there is such a huge demand for a few highlights from a game played 23 years ago that people would pay a fortune just to buy it on DVD (although it’s doubtful that MLB would want to promote anything with the name Pete Rose attached to it). At any rate, I just chalked it up to one of life’s little learning lessons the same way I did when they shitcanned the brief George Carlin political video I uploaded because some company who owns the rights to Ed Sullivan had it removed. Ed Sullivan? Hell, that little Carlin clip probably had a lot of views and one would have thought they could have used the publicity to sell some of those really big shoes on DVD. But again, logic does not always enter into these corporate decisions.



In all honesty, when I did put up that particular segment from Keith’s show, the thought that MLB would crap themselves did occur to me because of my previous experience with them. But I had not censored any of my Olbermann clips up until then, and it wasn’t the first time that he had used sports clips of baseball or football.. In earlier clips where Olbermann had commented on baseball or football, I had simply left any reference to those sports out of the title, description or keywords and that had kept them away. But on that particular one, Oct. 29, 2007, I decided that I was tired of that silly game and I was going to comment on the video for what it was, and use the proper tags. If they wanted to be that idiotic about it (which they were) let them take the damn things down. The fact that they never bothered the clips where I had not mentioned MLB, or any player or any sports team in the title, description, or key words, just proves that if I had simply done that again this time, the videos would still be there and they would be none the wiser. It also shows how stupid and arbitrary the whole process is and how easily those same inconsistent and idiiotic rules can be sidestepped.

But for those who have read anything I have written, the worst thing you can do is try to put the hammer down on me. Do that, and I become even more obstinate and persistent.

So at a time when I was weaning myself away from both this blog and the videos because my new job was making it difficult to balance all of those and still have a private life, I may have just been convinced to stick around a while longer.