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Well, well, well, isn’t this interesting. The National Organization for Marriage is bristling at Perez Hilton‘s request for YouTube to remove a NOM ad (above) which features footage of Hilton calling Miss California Carrie Prejean a “dumb bitch.” Hilton claimed that NOM had violated copyright laws by lifting “about three seconds of footage” from his video blog. NOM’s lawyers have appealed the video’s removal to the video sharing site.
It’s no surprise that NOM would fight to keep the video up—-Perez Hilton is probably wrong here, as the clip is short enough to constitute fair use. The interesting part is the way NOM executive director Brian Brown has characterized Hilton’s request.
It seems like only yesterday that NOM was working exhaustively to remove YouTube copies of the leaked audition reels to its now-infamous anti-gay “Gathering Storm” ad. And yet, In an interview with Bloggasm, Brown painted Hilton not just as a copyright law novice, but as a coward.
“I don’t know people’s motivations, but it seems pretty clear that Perez is embarassed about the fact of what he said,” Brown said. “There’s no other reason of why he would try to take it down. . . . it doesn’t look good for him. So clearly it’s not that hard to figure out. He doesn’t want it up because he’s embarrassed by it.”
Really, Brian Brown? There’s no other reason? Let me throw another possibility out there: Perez Hilton is gay, you run an organization that works against gay people, and he doesn’t want his image used in your anti-gay advertisements. I’d even venture to say that he probably knows that he’s not going to win any copyright action, and wants to do whatever he can to be a huge pain in your ass, because anytime anyone takes action against NOM for anything they’re guaranteed to make headlines.
Perhaps the reason Brian Brown thinks Hilton is ashamed of calling Prejean a “dumb bitch”—-has Hilton ever been ashamed of anything?—-is because the theory works so nicely with Brown’s own YouTube take-down campaign. Did the National Organization for Marriage ask YouTube to take down its leaked audition videos because it wasn’t “fair” for other people to use their material—-they were totally going to use those hilarious videos of actors stumbling over their homophobia? Or was it because the tapes made them look completely and awesomely ridiculous—-in short, they were “ashamed.” I’d say the answer is “not that hard to figure out.”