BP's Gulf Oil Spill - This Land Is Your Land - taken down at request of WMG

Update: So the good folks at Warner Music Group gave me a scare there have issued a DMCA take down notice for my video criticizing BP. For ~45 minutes, This video was is the subject of a DMCA take down notice regarding the use of Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land."

I immediately filled out a counter-claim on a form made available through YouTube, and emailed the EFF should there be any need for crack legal defense teams to protect my rights.

I received an email from YouTube stating the video was not taken down:

from  Copyright Service  to  journalsquaredblog@gmail.com date  Thu, Jun 3, 2010 at 11:05 PM subject  Re: [#652523809] YouTube Support mailed-by  trakken.google.com

11:05 PM (32 minutes ago)

Hi there,

The video you posted is live and has not been removed by YouTube. If you
are having trouble playing your video please look at our Help Center for
additional information: http://help.youtube.com

Sincerely,


The YouTube Team



Original Message Follows:
------------------------
From: journalsquaredblog@gmail.com
Subject: YouTube Support

The use of Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land" falls under fair use as specified in 17 U.S.C. § 107 of copyright law, as it is plainly non-commercial political criticism of BP's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico due to the transformative nature on the work, notwithstanding quantity of work used.

It was reinstated and I was able to play the video, however, as of 12:00 AM ET, it remains blocked. The same version of the song appears here, unblocked: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaI5IRuS2aE 

Woody Guthrie must be rolling over in his grave, for more reasons than I care to count.

Here is his original copyright notice for "This Land Is Your Land:"

"This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don't give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do.

There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me; 

Sign was painted, it said private property;

But on the back side it didn't say nothing;

This land was made for you and me.

Nobody living can ever stop me,

As I go walking that freedom highway;

Nobody living can ever make me turn back

This land was made for you and me.

I have followed up with a second video, here, set to "All You Fascists Bound to Lose."