Thanks to United with Israel and other sites that published this blogger’s story, YouTube has now reinstated his documentary on Nazi propaganda.
A few days ago I wrote a piece on this blog about my battle to have my documentary, You don’t know Hitler (2005), reinstated to my YouTube channel. BR Enter Music, a German company, claiming to represent the German National Library (DNB), said that DNB owned the “sound recording” rights to the Nazi Anthem (the Horst Wessel Song) and that I had used it without permission in my film.
I completely disagreed with the removal of my film because I do not believe that anyone has the right to own Nazi Propaganda; these items are criminal records, not marketable commodities. However, if you do believe these horrific things should be protected by copyright, there is still the question of Fair Use. I have the right to show historical material when commenting directly on it and the times in which it was created.
Thanks to United with Israel, TorrentFreak, and other websites who told my story, the DNB finally made a public statement on Twitter denying that BR Enter represented them. After that, YouTube did reinstate my film, but several questions remain unanswered:
1) Why did BR Enter make this claim against me if they did not feel they were representing DNB?
2) Why did DNB ignore my emails and the emails of others inquiring about this matter?
3) Why is YouTube’s system for handling these matters so biased in favor of those making a claim and so uninterested in the right of filmmakers to tell our shared history?
4) Why is YouTube, or anyone, entertaining the idea that Nazi Propaganda should be protected by copyrights?
At this point I suspect I will not get an answer to any of these questions, but at least my film is back up for people to enjoy and learn from. I hope you will check it out!