Prime Miniister Harper's video with the wonderful young lady Ms. Maria Aragon has been mostly taken down from YouTube.
Imagine - it included a few bars from "Imagine" by John Lennon.
The copyright lawyers are not amused.
Above is was a quite delightful duet with the PM and the young lady.. Watch it while you can You can't watch it anymore because the music industry lawyers are doing what they do best - which is to take good things down and/or kill them off.
Whatever one's political stripe - this is really touching and delightful. It won't hurt anyone or any corporation in the music industry. If this can't be on YouTube or similar sites, then copyright law is seriously sick.
"You may say that I'm a dreamer - but I'm not the only one" who thinks it would be a real shame if people can't see and hear things like this in the future.
Imagine - a world without excessively greedy corporate copyright owners, collectives, and their excessively zealous copyright lawyers.
Imagine that - whoever is the next Prime Minster - will lead a government that will amend Canada's copyright laws to "let it be" for things like this.
Imagine all the people - who would be happy about this - and maybe even vote for it.
This could yet be the copyright election...
This could yet be the copyright election...
HK
PS - as of Friday, April 8, 2011, the above video is no longer available "due to a copyright claim by Lenono Music." Although the DMCA doesn't apply in Canada, it has effectively reached out to Canada in this and countless other instances.
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I read somewhere (can't find the link anymore unfortunately) that the takedown of the video came from Yoko Ono, who owns the rights to Lennon's repertoire. I believe that all the other YouTube videos of people covering the song are still up, including the one by former USA President Bill Clinton.
ReplyDeleteYes, it's a blow to freedom of expression that the video with Harper was deleted, but I'll tell you something: Harper singing Imagine scared me, because that man doesn't stand for anything that this song stands for. Lennon must have been twisting in his grave!
Got the link:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/video-of-harper-singing-imagine-with-maria-aragon-pulled-from-youtube/article1974209/?from=sec368
Imagine all the people sharing all the world.
ReplyDeleteWas just blocked from sharing your post - it has been marked by Facebook as "abusive or spammy" - FYI.
ReplyDelete