Canadian conservative commentator Aaron Gunn has had a viral video taken off of Facebook due to a copyright claim. Since December 14, episode three of Politics Explained has been unavailable on the platform. Politics Explained is Gunn's first stab at a full series and episode three racked up over a quarter of a million views, prior to it's deletion.
The episode remains available on YouTube, but Aaron's following is still largely congregated on Facebook. The episode itself addresses the topic of pipelines in Canada, one of many topics covered in Gunn's series.
According to Gunn, Facebook removed the video due to a copyright claim from a "radical left-wing" activist named Michael Toledo. Toledo has previously claimed copyright on two of Gunn's viral videos. In both cases, Aaron appealed and won the claim. This activist then did the exact same thing and Aaron was once again, forced to appeal the same claim. He allegedly won again, but the videos never appeared to be public again on Facebook. According to Facebook, these older videos could not be restored due to technical difficulties.
Fast forward to December 14, the same activist claimed copyright on Gunn's 2o minute documentary, in which Gunn used 15 seconds of footage shot by Toledo. Toledo made this claim after he allegedly emailed Gunn, demanding money in return for using his footage.
As clearly identified in Section 107 of the Copyright Act, “the fair use of a copyrighted work… for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.” Gunn's documentary falls within this category, yet was removed from Facebook nonetheless.
Furthermore, Gunn never received any notification to appeal the removal. In other instances, a Facebook user receives a message, giving you the chance to appeal. This is used commonly as removal of content is often done by an imperfect bot.
Gunn also states in an email that "The purpose and character of the use in this video is squarely for 'non-profit educational purposes' as described on Facebook’s help centre – as is all my video reporting."
As of January 18, the video remains taken down, but the rest of Gunn's series is still available on his Facebook page.
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