Anti-Gay Organization Attempting To Scrub Leaked Audition Videos From YouTube (VIDEO)

By now, you're likely familiar with the festival of unintentional hilarity that is the National Organization for Marriage (or NOM). But in case you're not up to speed, here's the story. There are a bunch of people for whom everything and everyone they ever loved or held dear was ruined, utterly and forever, because of gay marriage.

So, they launched a campaign against gay marriage, and made some commercials about chasing tornadoes, and rainbow coalitions, and gay thunder. And mostly, people laughed, because WTF? Well, as it turns out, whatever remained in these peoples' lives, spared from ruin by all the gay marriage, ended up getting ruined by leaked videos of the terrible actors giving terrible auditions for their terrible commercial. So, naturally, NOM is now against anyone seeing those audition videos, ever, and has launched a campaign against them, as well.

Last week, the Washington City Paper's Amanda Hess reported that NOM was going hard at removing their audition videos from YouTube in a desperate attempt to keep them from going viral, and Wired's Threat Level blog detailed what was being done to thwart the thwarting:

The audition videos, uncovered by the Human Rights Campaign, seem too good to be true. But NOM has helpfully authenticated them by sending DMCA notices to YouTube to get them pulled down. Vimeo.com hosted the banned videos for a while, but now also appears to have folded like an umbrella.

So internet rebels are saving the videos with keepvid.com, and then uploading them back to YouTube when they're pulled.

Now, NOM is upping the ante by pulling down OTHER PEOPLE'S content from YouTube, specifically, a clip from The Rachel Maddow Show that discusses the audition videos. From Threat Level:

The clip was previous available on YouTube, but now the page says "This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by National Organization for Marriage."

MSNBC, of course, would have been well within its rights to demand the clip be removed. But NOM asserting a copyright interest to have a critical newscast scrubbed from the net? That sets an extraordinary precedent.

Anyway, that clip is still available on MSNBC, and now it's available here, as well! (NOM segment begins at 2:15)

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

And here's a clip of Rachel Maddow talking about having the show's clips removed:

MADDOW: Come now, anti-gay marriage people! I know your campaign is about how we should all be scared of gay marriage. But now you're scared of people talking about your stance on it?

And you can still see the audition videos and the NOM actors' struggles to pronounce the word "coalition," right here.

[Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not? Also, please send tips to [e-mail] -- learn more about our media monitoring project here.]

Comments

[Artemis34]

01:27 PM on 05/03/2009

Love Rachel Maddow!

[jugganaut]

06:04 PM on 04/29/2009

LOL @ "a rainbow collision".

[egaeus]

09:52 PM on 04/14/2009

Two issues here.

First, our laws for fair use protect a news station's right (and out individual rights) to use copyrighted material for education and critique. You can't just post someone else's work in its entirety, but you can use segments as part of a news show or other work that seeks to educate. For some reason, companies forget about fair use.

Second, although it's legitimate to question the group's stance on gay marriage, it is irrelevant to mock people who are simply attempting to get an acting gig as if their poor reading for that particular audition says something negative about the organization. Our media are far too ready to mock and humiliate individual citizens.

[nico89]

08:15 AM on 04/15/2009

The problem wasn't with the posting of the work - the problem was with NOM's forgetting to have the actors who appeared on the audition tapes sign a release form. Now they're scrambling to keep themselves from getting sued.

Also - the two paragraphs in your comment negate one another due to conflicting statements.

[jfrisco11]

05:40 PM on 04/14/2009

if ur married really is strong, what's the matter if 2 people got married? Is God ever went down to MA, CT, Iowa and Vermont yet? Oh no, the hurricane is in midwest. Got the picture? God nothing to do with it. God presnt when ur heart full of LOVE.

[mercury613]

05:22 PM on 04/14/2009

Bigots hiding underneath their white hoods.

[Matt Wilstein]

03:20 PM on 04/14/2009

NOM is starting to get scared of all the youtube spoofs. Here's the one I made, Gathering Twister:
http://gotchamedia.blogspot.com/2009/04/gathering-twister.html