Michael Moore’s controversial documentary Planet of the Humans has been removed from YouTube. The documentary, executive-produced by Moore and written and directed by his friend Jeff Gibbs, had snagged up over 8 million views on YouTube since its launch. It was pulled from YouTube over a copyright claim attributed to four seconds of footage.
The documentary has been condemned as misleading by climate scientists, Toby Smith, who filed a complaint with the Google-owned video platform. Smith claimed that several seconds of footage were used in Moore’s documentary from his Rare Earthenware project detailing the journey of rare earth minerals from Inner Mongolia.
Gibbs said in a statement “This attempt to take down our film and prevent the public from seeing it is a blatant act of censorship by political critics of ‘Planet of the Humans’. It is a misuse of copyright law to shut down a film that has opened a serious conversation about how parts of the environmental movement have gotten into bed with Wall Street and so-called ‘green capitalists. There is absolutely no copyright violation in my film.”
A YouTube spokesperson when asked, stated that “When we receive a valid legal notification regarding content copyright issue we are required by law to remove it. The platform is not in a position to mediate copyright issues between the parties involved. If an uploader feels that their content is covered by a fair-use exception, they can file a counter-notification.”
Michael Moore’s YouTube channel for the documentary now says “Video unavailable”. This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by a third party.
