It's a sad Friday the 13th for the Legal Insurrection blog, for the conservative movement, and for free speech generally (thanks to Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds):
YouTube took down Legal Insurrection’s Channel without any prior notice based on “multiple third-party claims of copyright infringement,” but we never received any claims of infringement.The following will hardly come as relief for William A. Jacobson, but I figured out some basic rules years ago: For the past years, every video (and audio) that I have made and every TV show (or radio show) I have appeared in, I have duly downloaded to my hard drive—in addition to copying it to an external drive.
We have lost hundreds of videos, including a lot of original content on important news subjects. You now will see disabled videos in hundreds of our posts.
Besides that, we regularly — about once a month — copy the No Pasarán blog onto our hard drive as well (Blogger > Settings > Other > Back up Content).
From Legal Insurrection's comments section:
Comments
Sanddog | January 12, 2017 at 11:03 pm
No proof necessary, just the claims of left wing cry-bullies.
nyc | January 13, 2017 at 7:35 am
Whining–no one does it better than the liberal left.
Tom Servo | January 12, 2017 at 11:17 pm
You were obviously a bit too effective at tweaking the progs.
This is how faithful progs with power take their revenge.
The only consolation is that this is just a minor, minor taste of what the left would have done to all of us from now on if Hillary had won. Scratch a leftist and you will always find a vicious totalitarian hiding under the surface.
DINORightMarie | January 13, 2017 at 12:44 am
Twitter Gulag.
FB account suspension.
YouTube Channel shut down. Etc. Rinse, repeat.
You are hitting the right people in the right places.
And this is how they retaliate. Alinsky-tactics.
(My guess – BDS sees you’re effective, so you’re their target.)
Granny | January 13, 2017 at 1:20 am
Sadly, I am not in the least surprised.
Always keep a copy of every video you post.
RodFC | January 13, 2017 at 1:52 am
BTW. The videos may not be lost, but you should always have your own copy just in case.
Believe me, this is a painful lesson for a lot of people.
Chaosman | January 13, 2017 at 5:01 am
Best of luck. If/when your channel is restored, make sure to download your videos from the video manager and keep three copies of each video you want to save. Two copies on premises one copy off premises.
On Friday the publisher received notification from YouTube that the copyright claims were filed by the Modern Languages Association (MLA) based on audio posted of a recent MLA vote on a resolution to boycott Israeli universities. The boycott resolution at the MLA Delegate Assembly failed.
"Clearly this was a politically motivated move," he told FoxNews.com. "I never received any request or complaint from MLA. These were perfectly legitimate fair use excerpts with great news value."
"This is an attempt to silence our reporting on a matter of great public importance," added Jacobson, whose website reported on the vote. "We intend to pursue all available remedies, and call on YouTube to restore our account."
(*posting while conservative)