CNN was manually abusing youtube’s copyright system to order take downs of commentators covering last night’s DNC debate (resulting in 90 day livestream bans for those channels).

by AssuredlyAThrowAway

 

One of CNN’s VPs suggested that fair use of such content, for the purposes of news reporting or commentary, was “piracy”.

I’ve seen CNN do some pretty shady things over the years, including telling their viewers it was illegal for anyone but the news media to read wikileaks source documents, which were easily obtainable online, cutting off an interview with a member of congress (using a seeming fake “technical problem”) when that representative mentioned wikileaks and the Clinton campaign emails, or threatening to doxx a reddit user unless the indvidual agreed to abide by conditions laid out by the news outlet.

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This wanton display of disregard for the public forum, however, is perhaps the most damning reflection of the danger “news” outlets such as CNN pose to this Republic. While some of their reporting may well be news, their corporate structure induces them to turn our system of democracy into a tool for profit (something which should be resisted at all costs).

This is also not to say that other news networks do not have equally as sordid pasts (Fox News was initially conceived when Roger Alies was in the Nixon administration as a wing of the GOP), but CNN has taken corporate greed to a level I don’t imagine even Ailes thought possible. Monetizing democracy itself, while demanding the public not provide any commentary on that process, is a disgusting abdication of the principles of equality which define this Republic. Shame on CNN for issuing those take-down notices for primary debates of interest to all Americans (not just those that can afford a subscription to corporate news channels), and shame on youtube for indulging such sordid practices in the context of the political system.

 

 

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