Warning: Rant Ahead...

Unbelievable. A couple days after posting the video of Tim and Faith singing their song “I Need You” on Oprah that I found on YouTube, the video has now been taken down and no longer available. Double clicking on it leads to a YouTube page with this announcement. “This video has been removed at the request of copyright owner The EIP Group because its content was used without permission” Curious, I Googled the EIP Group. How they are the owner of this boggles the mind. Apparently they’re some (mafia ;-) lawyer group specializing in bad marketing tactics…oops, I mean ‘intellectual property’ of film, television and other stuff. Clients include a list of television shows. I couldn’t find a direct mention of either Faith or Tim’s respective camps or Oprah. However, the TV station WTTW, a Chicago public TV station, is listed. I couldn’t find Oprah listed on the WTTW website, but Oprah is out of Chicago, so could there be a connection? Getting more curious and bemused by this ridiculousness, I went back to YouTube and did a search that I had done before that had produced other Tim and Faith clips from the same Oprah show. To no surprise, they’re gone too. Then I did a search for any Oprah clips, and found none. I think its safe to say this BS is logically coming from Oprah’s camp or a television station out of Chicago that broadcasts it. I can turn my TV on to find Oprah yammering away five days a week, but put clips from the same shows broadcast on basic cable tier TV onto the internet, and the Gestapo descends. Idiocy, to the nth degree. Who was hurt from this? It’s free publicity for Tim and Faith (though I doubt their camps are involved in any of this) and a song that isn’t even available on any album yet. I’ve heard it might be on the next Tim McGraw album, so having people hear it now only gathers more support for it – as in, “where can I buy that song?” And I don’t think it hurts Oprah either – it shows she has some interesting guests that may appeal to (cynical) non watchers of the show that may start to make up for her unleashing Dr. Phil onto an unsuspecting public. This looks like legalistic, pencil-necked, bean counters getting in the way of common sense yet again, and it provides one more reason (as if I needed any) to NOT WATCH Oprah.