Don’t Blame YouTube For Pulling All Those Ranting-Hitler Videos

One of the hottest YouTube memes of the past few years has been to post the big Hitler tantrum scene from the 2004 film Downfall with subtitles showing the Führer screaming about – oh, Kanye West cutting off Taylor Swift, or the US healthcare debate, or anything else irksome. Last week the movie’s distributor asked YouTube to remove all those videos, fair use doctrine notwithstanding. That wasn’t a wise decision.