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Oscar-nominated filmmaker uses copyright to censor criticism

by on June 6, 2011

Here we have yet another example of copyright used to censor speech (Doctors, Censorship, Copyright; Howard Hughes, Copyright, and Censorship; The Patent, Copyright, Trademark, and Trade Secret Horror Files):

Oscar-nominated filmmaker tries to ban critical video

By Red Nek Engineer

We wanted you to be the first to know that Josh Fox has responded to valid journalistic questions about his documentary Gasland by stifling the freedom of the press.

As you probably know, I traveled to Chicago for a Q&A where I forced Fox to admit the documentary hid facts that contradicted his scaremongering about drilling for natural gas.

And Fox’s response when we posted the video on YouTube – he got his lawyers to have YouTube pull it down.

That’s right – he has tried to use lawyers to silence a journalist from asking difficult questions and putting his answers on the Internet.

Fox’s excuse is a breach of copyright. In a video that is 3:10 minuntes long, we used 26 seconds of Gasland only to show how Fox was being unethical and misleading. It is a classic case of “fair use” of someone’s work for the purpose of criticism and is totally legally allowed if not encouraged under fair use law.

But Fox does not want any criticism. He does not want any freedom of speech.

We now have to hire lawyers to try and have our journalism restored to our own YouTube channel. In the meantime we have put the video up on Vimeo (a YouTube rival). You can see it here until Fox and his lawyers try to force Vimeo to pull it down.

We will fight all these attempts to silence our journalism. We have been here before. The Society of Environmental Journalists turned off my mic for asking Al Gore tough questions. The UN used armed security to try and stop me asking difficult questions of a scientist and a politician at the UN climate conference in Copenhagen. And environmentalists attacked me on live television for daring to question the orthodoxy.

And the makers of the Age of Stupid, another eco-disaster fantasy, had me removed from their press gallery for asking the “wrong questions”. They also took legal action to have the blog showing their behavior removed from the internet.

They did not succeed and Josh Fox will not succeed.

You can watch my questioning of Josh Fox here. Please send it around to as many people as possible. It needs to be seen before Fox and his lawyers try to crush journalism again.

Thanks!

Ann & Phelim

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The Center for the Study of Innovative Freedom (C4SIF) is dedicated to building public awareness of the manner in which so-called “intellectual property” (IP) laws and policies impede innovation, creativity, communication, learning, knowledge, emulation, and information sharing. We are for property rights, free markets, competition, commerce, cooperation, and the voluntary sharing of knowledge, and oppose IP laws, which systematically impede or hamper innovation. IP law should be completely and immediately abolished.

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