The Des Moines Register Hates Flood Victims

On Sunday, Iowa blog Black Heart Gold Pants posted some stunning pictures and video of the floods currently ravaging Iowa and provided some links for anyone who wished to donate to disaster relief efforts. The next day they got this from the Des Moines Register, which was the source of the video:

It has recently come to the attention of the Des Moines Register that you have improperly posted a video, the rights to which are held by The Register. A copy of your unauthorized use can be found at www.blackheartgoldpants.com/2008/6/15/552422/the-flood.

As the copyright owner of that video, The Des Moines Register has the exclusive right to its reproduction and distribution. We therefore ask that you immediately remove the posted article from your website and cease any and all further use of the material. Any continued posting or use will be considered willful copyright infringement.

This seems an exceptionally bad time to go all AP and exercise stupid copy "rights" that probably aren't even rights, right? Well... how do you think Black Heart, Gold Pants got the video in the first place? If you've ever been to youtube, you know:

An embed video link ON THE DES MOINES REGISTER WEBSITE. We have a new leader in the "Mainstream Media Asshat of the Year" competition.

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

6-18-2008 @ 2:59AM

Dave said...

Are you the frontrunner for plain ol' "Idiot Blogger of the Year?" You've got to be a strong contender.

6-17-2008 @ 1:41PM

Andrew said...

Wait a second... Wasn't it some lady from Iowa that said that one couldn't "verify the voracity" of anything written in a blog? The internets must be slow to reach the cornfields...

6-17-2008 @ 4:25PM

Tim said...

In case you didn't see, some suit at the Register apologized for an overzealous employee's doings.

6-18-2008 @ 10:06AM

zane safrit said...

Funny. I shared a picture off their site a few years ago in a long blog post about how cool the DM Register was to share stories about the musicians in the area. Shared it, linked to the paper, stated explicitly that's what I was doing...stated explicitly their name...and got the same letter.

The lady was nice...she said I could continue to link to the DM Register as much as I wanted, ("you're free to continue to give us free advertising....") but I couldn't post a picture from their site. Copy text? Yes. Copy a photo? No.

If they retracted their request, then it's signs they're making progress.