NBC Claims Copyright over YouTube Content They Don’t Own

An aspiring pair of comics named Brian Kamerer and Travis Irvine once made a promotional video for Daniel Kosh, their town’s mayoral candidate. The video was a tongue-in-cheek video that pimps their buddy to be the new hope for their town. Well the video was featured one night on Jay Leno, poking fun at the silliness they created.

While that brief national exposure might have been worth the smile and chuckle it gave Brian Kamerer and Travis Irvine, three years later when NBC took down this very same video on YouTube Kamerer was less than impressed.

Kamerer wrote an open letter to Jay Leno attacking their decision to claim copyright over this segment that was used on their show WITHOUT permission. Kamerer and his partner Irvine were flattered that their video was used on his show and didn’t take offense, but they were never contacted to let them know Leno was about to use it, nor were they asked for permission. Still it was all in good fun.

It’s all fun and games until someone loses copyright.

Apparently since it was used in the show someone decided in their infinite wisdom that it was an infringement of copyright that a portion of the show was being used on YouTube without their express permission. That might just be the very definition of irony.

So while Jay Leno gets all the attention and laughs for presenting this clip on national television, the very content creators that filmed and produced – even SANG on that silly little video, are not allowed to show their clip on YouTube. It is not theirs anymore.

Since when is it ok for the producers of Jay Leno’s show to take content online and pretend it now belongs to them because they used it?

You can read the open letter here where Brian Kamerer goes (quite rightfully) off the deep end about this violation.

You can see the original video below – now hosted on Funny or Die.