Snarkastic

The Des Moines Register hates flood victims.

By now, you've all heard about the record-shattering floods that put about the entire state of Iowa underwater last week. Property damage is in the millions. Tens of thousands have been driven from their houses. The waters reached the hometowns, though thankfully not the homes, of the authors of Black Heart Gold Pants. These comedy and sports writers, in addition to assisting with prevention/rescue efforts in their areas, posted an entry last week with updates on the flood, a donation link to the local Red Cross chapter, and a video from the Des Moines Register's vault showing aerial footage of the disaster.

Today BHGP's parent network received a C&D letter from the paper, demanding that they remove the video within 24 hours or face legal action. They complied.

Here's why the Des Moines Register is out of its fucking tree:

• The original post on BHGP cited the Register as a source, and linked back to the paper's website when they posted the video.
• THE EMBED CODES FOR THE VIDEO IN QUESTION ARE PROVIDED ON THE PAPER'S WEBSITE, RIGHT NEXT TO THE VIDEO, UNDER THE HEADING "EMBED THIS VIDEO."
  

Now check this out: Here's the video the paper threatened to sue BHGP over. How'd I get it? By copying and pasting THE CODE PROVIDED ON THE PAPER'S WEBSITE, RIGHT NEXT TO THE VIDEO, UNDER THE HEADING "EMBED THIS VIDEO."

Peter has already weighed in with some fancy lawyer talk, as well as a link to the paper's contact information. I encourage you today to write strongly-worded letters to the Des Moines Register and express your relief that their legal staff is holding down the homefront while a bunch of sports bloggers stack sandbags to keep their homes from going underwater.

[UPDATE] The paper's apologized to BHGP through assistant managing editor Chris Snider, like so:

This was a misunderstanding. I apologize on behalf of The Des Moines Register. Simply an employee trying to do their job but not completely understanding our new technology (we recently got embed code on our videos). I take full responsibility for not making this clear to everyone on staff.

Their response time was admirable...once the story got some traction. And I feel for the guy. He had to run around hitting all the sites that picked this up this morning, and he didn't even write the damn thing. Hopefully "Kathy" is spending her day in training classes. And hopefully the attention to this story has made a few more readers pause to watch the video, see exactly what they're dealing with on the ground in Iowa, and send some money their way. Stay dry, boys.

Posted by Nastinchka at June 17, 2008 12:53 AM