Anonymous satirists created NYTimes-se.com, a website which parodies The New York Times. It included an obviously satirical advertisement for the diamond conglomerate De Beers, which read in part: "Your purchase of a diamond will enable us to donate a prosthetic for an African whose hand was lost in diamond...

In the heat of the 2008 presidential election season, the McCain campaign posted a satirical video that included a clip of CBS News anchor Katie Couric commenting on sexism in the campaign. CBS News issued a DMCA takedown notice and had the video removed from YouTube. The McCain campaign subsequently...

NBC issued a takedown for this satirical Obama campaign video, which used archival footage of Tom Brokaw to announce the "bad news" that Senator John McCain had been elected president. Intended to motivate Obama supporters to "get out the vote," it was taken down days before a critical voter registration...

As part of its campaign to raise awareness about the treatment of animals at rodeos, nonprofit group Showing Animals Respect and Kindness (SHARK) posted a series of videos of rodeo events to YouTube. In response, the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA) filed takedown demands for 13 of the videos under...

New York City activist Savitri Durkee created UnionSquarePartnershipSucks.org, a website parodying the official website of Union Square Partnership (USP), a group backing extensive redevelopment of the Union Square area. In response, USP sent Durkee's Internet service provider a notice pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act improperly asserting that her...

EFF filed suit against Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG) after the music publisher issued a baseless DMCA takedown on a YouTube video of a baby bouncing along to a Prince song on the radio. The incidental inclusion of Prince's "Let's Go Crazy" in the video is clearly non-infringing and a...

Like many other inductees to the Takedown Hall of Shame, Peabody Energy simply can't handle a bit of sharp criticism. Peabody, a member of a university-industry research partnership called the Consortium for Clean Coal Utilization (CCCU), decided to kick off 2010 by attempting to shut down a parody site that...

In 2007, conservative blogger Michelle Malkin took on hip hop artist Akon in one of her video podcasts, calling him a "misogynist" and decrying his behavior as "vulgar and degrading." To help argue her point, Malkin incorporated excerpts from Akon's music videos and concert footage into the podcast.
Reacting...

After gossip blogger Perez Hilton recorded a video in which he called Miss California Carrie Prejean a "dumb bitch" in response to her public opposition to same-sex marriage, the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) incorporated a clip of his tirade into an advertisement called "No Offense," depicting same-sex marriage opponents...

Uri Geller -- the "paranormalist" famous for seemingly bending spoons with his mind -- got bent out of shape when a critic from the "Rational Response Squad" posted a video with a segment from a NOVA program called "Secrets of the Psychics," which challenged the performance techniques of Geller.
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Two weeks before a statewide vote on legalizing same-sex marriage initiative, Stand for Marriage Maine (SMM) created an ad criticizing same-sex marriage that excerpted a brief portion of an All Things Considered interview. Although the ad's use of the content was clearly necessary to its critical political message, NPR sent...

During the 2004 Presidential Election, the Internet animation company JibJab produced one of the most notable viral hits of the season -- an animated video of candidates George Bush and John Kerry singing a song to the tune of Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land." After the JibJab founders...

Of all of the sources of baseless and ill-conceived takedowns in the Hall Of Shame, one stands well above than the rest: Warner Music Group.
In January 2009, after a behind-the-scenes spat with YouTube over advertising revenue, WMG began (mis)using YouTube's Content ID (i.e., audio fingerprinting) tools to remove...

The National Organization for Marriage produced an advertisement in which various actors posed as individuals scared of gay rights. Another organization found video recordings of the dismal auditions for the ad, and responded by posting the audition videos online. MSNBC's Rachel Maddow later played the audition tapes on her broadcast...