China Sends Tax Collectors Into Online Worlds

Weird Al File Sharing Censorship Was To Mock MTV

from the it's-all-explained dept

Mon, Nov 3rd 2008 8:30am — Mike Masnick

Last week we broke the story of Weird Al Yankovic's "Don't Download This Song" video being bleeped on MTV when the names of file sharing apps were mentioned. The NY Times thankfully got to the bottom of the story after a conversation with Weird Al himself. Apparently, MTV had told him two years ago (when the video was released) that they would not play it on TV without the file sharing names taken out. Yankovic himself added the beeps and tried to make them as extreme as possible to highlight the ridiculousness of it all:

Instead of subtly removing or obscuring the words in the track, I made the creative decision to bleep them out as obnoxiously as possible, so that there would be no mistake I was being censored.

He doesn't know if the video ever actually aired on TV, so it's likely no one even saw the bleeped video until MTV launched their online video site. He points out, as we noted, that the uncensored version is available on YouTube, but doesn't explain why embedding that video is forbidden as well.

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Filed Under: bleeps, music, videos, weird al
Companies: mtv

9 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 3 Nov 2008 @ 8:56am

Whatever You Like
But has anyone heard his new track?

Keep it up, Al!
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Tony, 3 Nov 2008 @ 8:57am

Good for him!
Great way to draw attention to stupidity. We need more artists to do this sort of thing.
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DMM, 3 Nov 2008 @ 9:47am

We need the ghost of George Carlin to come back and do a comedy routine of "Four words you can't say on MTV"

Way to go Weird Al, keep up the good work!
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proxy318, 3 Nov 2008 @ 10:43am

Music videos?
MTV plays music videos? Since when?
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Woodpecker with rubber lips, 3 Nov 2008 @ 11:22am

Michigan Woman Refuses Halloween Candy to Children of Obama Supporters
This thread is now about the fallacy of McCain "repudiat[ing] every statement made by any fringe person in the Republican party".

I'll start:
http://www.breitbart.tv/?p=211443
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Slip Knot, 3 Nov 2008 @ 12:00pm

[]-[]
mtv ... who cares.

No wood, no pecker
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Nov 2008 @ 2:04pm

Repudiate This
Shame on you, McCain.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/03/rnc-hits-obama-
for-visit_n_140553.html
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 3 Nov 2008 @ 2:08pm

Repudiate This
Shame on you, McCain.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 4 Nov 2008 @ 1:39am

hey Anonymous Coward

Fuck off
[ link to this | view in thread ]