Snopes Debunks Fake YouTube Video; Video's Creator Responds With A Bogus DMCA Notice

from the pressing-the-shut-up-button dept

Nothing But the Truth Films (NBT) has a credibility problem. Oh, the irony, I would normally say, except for the fact NBT deals mostly with this sort of "truth."

We present the black and white facts about the geopolitical climate which include Islam, Illuminati, Freemasonry, Cults and more. See how your freedoms are slowly eroding and spread the message with the help of our channel.

So… that's the kind of "truth" we're dealing with, often pronounced "conspiracy theory." J.K. Sheindlin is the person behind NBT Films and the author of a book that has supposedly blown minds of Islam adherents everywhere, resulting in them renouncing their faith on camera.

One popular video on NBT's YouTube channel shows a supposed Islamic man angrily and bitterly decrying the religion after having his eyes opened by Sheindlin's book. But the video isn't what it seems: it's actually footage taken from somewhere else, dealing with an entirely different issue, but with NBT's fabricated subtitles giving the impression Sheindlin's book has unconverted another follower of Islam.

It made the internet rounds enough that Snopes picked it up and debunked it.

While the video purports to tell the “black and white facts” about someone renouncing his faith because of Sheindlin’s book, the clip in reality does not capture an Arab’s reaction to a controversial book, nor does it capture that person renouncing his faith on live television. Sheindlin added fabricated captions to the video (while pledging to tell “nothing but the truth”) in order to generate buzz for his book The People vs Muhammad.

This footage is dated 2 July 2013, when Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi rejected the military’s ultimatum to leave office. Opposition activist Ihab al-Khouli, the “Arab guy” in the video displayed above, was reacting to Morsi’s speech…

Having been caught out, Sheindlin did what any self-respecting truth-seeker huckster would do: he decided to get Google involved. The invaluable Dean Sterling first spotted the bogus DMCA notice:

Last month, the conspiracy channel filed a DMCA copyright complaint requesting that Google delist Evon’s article from its search results. That’s according to the Lumen Database, which archives online takedown requests.

And here's what the bogus takedown notice says:

The copyrighted work is a video that our company produced, and has been embedded on the following website without our permission. You can see the video embedded on the page, under the section ‘Origin’. We did not give any authorisation for the website ‘Snopes’ to use our video for their news. Therefore, the company Snopes has infringed our copyright.

First off, no one needs permission to embed a YouTube video. If someone wants to prevent others from embedding their videos, they can always turn that option off. Second, Sheindlin's complaint about someone else using "his" video is especially rich considering he's using footage created by someone else without acknowledgment and, on top of that, adding his own subtitles to misconstrue the content of the footage he "borrowed."

It appears Sheindlin is now warning people about his bogus subtitle work (he has more videos purporting to be people denouncing their Islamic faith after reading his book). This annotation has been added to the beginning of the bogus faith rejection video.

If you can't see it, the text box says: "SUBTITLES CHANGED FOR PROMOTIONAL PURPOSES."

At long last, Nothing But the Truth Films finally engages in a close approximation of honesty. Refreshing. And once again, someone looks at a tool created to stop copyright infringement and sees a way to silence a critic.

Finally, for comparison purposes, here's the legitimate, unaltered video with the correct translation:

And here's NBT's "promotional" garbage bullshit version:

Filed Under: censorship, debunks, dmca, free speech, takedowns
Companies: nothing but truth films, snopes