Bartholomew's Notes

Just weeks before the 2008 Christians United for Israel “Washington-Israel Summit” with John Hagee and Joe Lieberman (Walid Shoebat is also on the bill), Bruce at Talk to Action reports that YouTube has removed videos containing extracts from Hagee’s controversial sermons:

Last week, on July the 1st, I received notice from YouTube that eight of my videos on YouTube’s website had been taken down, allegedly for copyright violations. The videos included the notorious “God Sent Hitler” video which caused sufficient scandal, because it got shown widely on American and international TV, to force John McCain to renounce the political endorsement of Pastor John Hagee. JHM Ministries also targeted videos from Max Blumenthal, from People For The American Way and even from a Christian fundamentalist ministry critical of Hagee’s “Prosperity Gospel” teaching. According to a Huffington Post story just posted by Sam Stein, in all over 120 videos were taken down at the request of John Hagee Ministries.

Stein himself tells us:

…as Blumenthal and Wilson note, claims that this was merely an effort to combat copyright infringement contain several, glaring holes. For starters, Hagee had complained but never sought legal recourse for past publication of his sermons. Moreover, Blumenthal’s work, while filmed at a Christian United for Israel event, was his own, not Hagee’s. “There was no copyrighted material because it was me reporting on a public event,” he said.

Even [Hagee PR man Juda] Engelmayer admitted that he didn’t know how Blumenthal’s particular work “fit the criteria” that the lawyers used. “But if he puts it up [on YouTube] again, I’m almost positive it won’t be challenged.”

Hagee certainly doesn’t have a case: the clips appear in videos created for the purpose of criticism, and so amount to fair usage. Back in March Michael Savage lost a copyright suit against CAIR after CAIR used some of his anti-Muslim ramblings for its own purposes; in 1986 a court agreed that none other than Jerry Falwell could use material copyrighted to Larry Flynt.

One Hagee sermon has slipped through, though, in this video made by someone else:

PS: Note on Juda Engelmayer (sometimes spelt as “Juda Engelmeyer”): he works for a PR firm called 5WPR. According to The Jewish Week:

Fearing an onslaught of protestors, kosher meat giant Agriprocessors hastily changed a meeting planned for Tuesday afternoon in Midtown into a conference call….AfgriProcessors  took on the New York-based firm 5W, which also represents evangelical televangelist Benny Hinn, controversial Pastor John Hagee, the Trinity Broadcasting Network, the Zionist Organization of America and Israel’s Ministry of Tourism, among others, after the bad publicity following [an] immigration raid.

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