On Tuesday, I wrote about how YouTube (as reported by Matt Lewis of the Daily Caller) had removed a campaign ad by Mitt Romney over a copyright complaint by BMG. The Romney campaign had used audio and footage of Barack Obama singing a portion of an Al Green song in a web ad. As that link shows, and as Politico reports, YouTube has restored the ad, "concluding it did not infringe on Green’s copyright to the song." In addition, YouTube had "also removed video posted months ago of Obama’s riff by the Associated Press and ABC News," and those copies of the video have been restored as well.
However, as I had reported on Tuesday, there was no mention of the version posted on the Obama campaign's Tumblr site that was posted six months ago. At no time during the past two days when I checked had this version been disabled. I speculated Tuesday that perhaps the Obama campaign had licensed the song, but I have no direct confirmation of that. The question then remains: How did YouTube determine which versions of Obama-sings-Al-Green were copyright violations and which were not? However, now that all versions of the footage apparently have their (and presumably BMG's) blessing, we may never know the answer.
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