To hell with the Simpsons

Joe had a post up about the Simpsons, but the Simpsons' show just had one of my YouTube videos deleted. Why? Because they claimed that a 36 second clip that I took of my television set in my hotel in Rome last year, where the Simpsons were speaking in Italian, was a "copyright violation." As a lawyer, let me just say that it is patently absurd that a 36 second clip of a 22 minute show, when the clip is a picture of my Italian television, substantially infringes on the Simpsons in a way that would make you no longer need to watch that episode, since you already saw my poor quality 36 second clip in Italian (that is the test, whether I've used so much of the original that you no longer would need to go to the original). There is no fair use exception to copyright law any more. The Internet killed it. As for the Simpsons, they can kiss our links and coverage goodbye.