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Cru Affirms Homosexuality

Cru, Preston Sprinkle Retaliate Against Protestia For Publishing Leaked Footage

The fallout of exposing Cru, the most famous college campus ministry, for affirming homosexuality is making some waves. Unsurprisingly, Cru is not happy that information they tried to keep secret was leaked on the internet by a staffer. And Preston Sprinkle is especially mad, claiming his copyright was violated. The result was a DMCA takedown on Protestia’s YouTube video. This resulted in a copyright strike.

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The video was published on other outlets, according to David Morrill who responded by stating:

Publishing the removed content is protected under the Fair Use doctrine enumerated in the Copyright Act of 1976, 17 U.S.C. § 107, which protects the reuse of copyrighted material without the rights holder’s permission for the purpose of “criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research.

Applying the federal courts’ 4-part test to the use of this material, its use was (1) education/criticism, and Protestia did not monetize the video, (2) the original material is educational in nature, (3) the portion reused amounts to approximately 7% of the material, and (4) the portion reused reasonably has no effect on the market value of the copyrighted work, particularly since the participants routinely make similar educational statements in free public posts and videos.

Additionally, the federal courts have consistently found fair use to be an affirmative defense against copyright infringement claims. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has held fair use to be an expressly authorized right, holding that a copyright holder (CRU, in this case) must affirmatively consider whether the complained of conduct constituted fair use before sending a takedown notice under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, rather than waiting for the alleged infringer to assert fair use. 801 F.3d 1126 (9th Cir. 2015), stating, “Because 17 U.S.C. § 107 created a type of non-infringing use, fair use is ‘authorized by the law,’ and a copyright holder must consider the existence of fair use before sending a takedown notification under § 512(c).”

Pursuant to the above legal standards, Protestia Ministries LLC is prepared to take legal action in response to this fraudulent takedown request, which was clearly perpetrated by CRU to censor criticism and critique.

Essentially, Protestia is making the same copyright claim that an organization like Media Matters or Right Wing Watch would make, that posting selected clips is transformative by its nature. By disputing the copyright strike, Protestia is escalating the situation to the courts, where Cru will have to file a lawsuit against a believer in order to censor the video. Otherwise, YouTube will reinstate the video after some time.

It will be interesting to see if Cru and Preston Sprinkle also go after Evangelical Dark Web or Jon Harris who also published the same clips as Protestia.

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One Response

  1. Cru is a very weak organization, the leadership is butt hurt for something that they did. The leadership just needs to quit and go over to the ELCA.

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