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Update on BNN Copyright Clips

By Howard Knopf, Esq.

I've just learned from Michael Geist's update that there is an important follow up to a story about take downs from YouTube at the behest of Canada's Business News Network ("BNN") of clips concerning the Canadian copyright debate, in one of which I was a participant. This was based upon an original posting by the Canadian Coalition for Electronic Rights ("CCER"), on June 30, 2008 noted by Michael Geist. BNN has since denied any censorship intentions.

CCER has now revised and updated its original posting and notes as follows:

UPDATE: Rose Noonan of the Business News Network has provided CCER with clear evidence that BNN is indeed targeting all YouTube content and not just that relating to the Canadian copyright debate. While this is a reassuring development it is at the same time troubling that in a time when many broadcasters are forging partnerships with YouTube BNN has chosen the forced removal of content. Detailed post to follow.

Zeropaid has a report which includes quotes from a BNN spokesperson:

?When it became evident that numerous unauthorized BNN clips were posted on Youtube, a request was made that they remove all of the clips. This process involves finding each individual URL and sending them to Youtube to request that they be taken down. Attempts were made to find all the clips, but if there are still some there, that is an indication that a few may have been overlooked. There was never any intention to target clips of any topic.? Noonan said.

?In total,? Noonan said, ?over 193 BNN clips were removed from Youtube ? less than 3% of these clips were related to copyright. They were clips covering numerous topics and certainly not limited to copyright issues or anything else.?

Also, Jesse Hirsh has updated his blog on this issue and says:

Update: Rose Noonan from BNN promptly got in touch with me to clarify that in fact they are removing *all* BNN videos from YouTube. So this is not an example of censorship in Canada's copyright debate, and that they are not discriminating against a particular topic, but rather are removing the items regardless of the topic.

While I still disagree with their actions I acknowledge that they are not targeting copyright in particular nor do they wish to curtail the debate on this subject.

I'm happy to read BNN's side of this story and relieved that it has indicated that censorship was not afoot in this instance. Accordingly, and since I was in a sense a part of this story, having been a participant in one of the interviews in questions, I have taken down my own blog entry on this subject from July 1, 2009. And I have not been contacted by BNN.

Full post as published by Excess Copyright on July 04, 2009 (boomark / email).