HBO Pwns The Inauguration Concert

As you may have noticed in posts below, HBO is scouring YouTube and removing all clips of the inauguration concert, claiming copyright infringement. Joe Sudbay at AmericaBlog objects:

Yesterday, I posted a clip of Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen singing “This Land is Your Land” at the “We Are One” Obama inaugural concert. Perhaps you’ve heard of the concert – it’s that amazing event down on the Mall set to kick off the inauguration of our next president. But that song is HBO’s song. They took down my video claiming copyright infringement. That’s the spirit, HBO. You own the inaugural concert at the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall which is is officially part of the swearing in of our next president. Nice.

I get that HBO has rights, but when they’re broadcasting news — and the concert was news — they need to relax. It’s not like I copied one of their stupid shows (and after “The Sopranos” and “Sex and the City,” most are pretty stupid.) And, the Presidential Inaugural Committee should have thought through the concept of letting a corporation own Obama’s inaugural concert. Again, it was at the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall and was an official event of the inauguration of our president. We all own that, not HBO.

Ben Smith at Politico expresses a similar sentiment:

There is something a bit intuitively objectionable about barring other networks and random citizens from pointing their cameras at a public event like this on the Mall, and effectively prevent the broadcast of a key public part fo the event, though the Inaugural Committee argues that selling the exclusive rights were the only way to pay for the extravaganza in tough economic times.