f13.net

You may have seen this when it was all over TV and the internets during the US election:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65I0HNvTDH4

If you didn't, it was a clever piece of editing a well-researched series of clips to make Barack Obama say "Never gonna give you up, Never gonna let you down ..." etc, with the Rick Astley original played at lower volume underneath. Even Rick Astley said he liked it.

Sony has made YouTube remove the audio track, nullifying the joke eight months and 6.5 million views after it was made. The video maker posted his response: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avCFctD6tS4

Surely there's gotta be some room for fair use in a harmless piece of internet humour? What a ridiculous thing for Sony to do.

The McCain version, where he's Barrackrolled at the convention, is way funnier and apparently they didn't take that one down.

Corporations are all corporationey.  News at 11.

Though, that, in turn, did lead me to this :

The Dark Bailout (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1X6RQLZtoA)

Um was the first link supposed to be muted?  Cause it worked fine for me.

I never saw it before, good stuff :)

Yea, looks like it's back.

It's not back for me. Underneath the video on YouTube it says "This video contains an audio track that has not been authorised by Sony ATV Publishing. The audio has been disabled."

There's no sound. Maybe you got some kind of cached version?

EDIT: Wow, you get sound if you play it in the F13.net pop-up player. Go through to YouTube and play it on their site, and there's no sound plus the text I quoted. Looks like the muting is done in context on their website, not on the actual video - that's a pretty serious omission!

Delete this thread lest Sony/YT find out about our 'sploit