Bob Hope Enterprises claims the Feds' Bob Hope Christmas Special is under copyright

Cory Doctorow 11:23 am Thu Dec 19, 2013

Rogue archivist Carl Malmud writes, "In 2009, I wrote to Boing Boing to kick off our FedFlix program. The headline was The next year, Brian Stelter wrote this up for the New York Times, writing "Dust off a disc. Maybe it's video of a Bob Hope Christmas show, or maybe it's the Apollo 11 moon landing. Insert a blank disc. Duplicate."

Since then, we've put over 6,000 government videos up on the Internet Archive and YouTube, with over 50 million views.

So, imagine my surprise when Bob Hope Enterprises did a Copyright Strike on our YouTube account. They're insisting that the government cataloging records are wrong. Bob Hope Enterprises didn't go after the government, and they didn't go after Amazon, which sells a copy in a joint deal with the government.

Nope, going after the big guys is tough, so they're going after the Internet, saying “When viewers can stream entire shows to their smart TVs it kills demand for the DVD.” So much for patriotism and so much for Christmas. We made the video private on YouTube :( and dark on the Internet Archive. :((

Merry Christmas to everybody! Even to the grinches at Bob Hope Enterprises. Bah, humbug!

This video is private.
(Thanks, Carl!)

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