Animated Parody Removed from Canadian Newspaper Website

A Canadian political cartoonist who works for the Vancouver Province newspaper says that his animated parody of oil pipeline company Enbridge’s ads was removed from the newspaper’s website, apparently due to pressure from the corporation.

According to a blog post from The Guardian, Dan Murphy’s video was removed by the paper’s owner, Postmedia News, which felt that its lucrative advertising contract with Enbridge could be threatened. Murphy says his editor, Wayne Moriarty, was also led to believe that his own job was in jeopardy as long as the spoof remained on the website.

Moriarty himself claims that the video was removed due to copyright concerns. Unlike in the United States, Canadian copyright law does not specifically protect parodies under its fair use/fair dealing provisions.

Enbridge denies pressuring Postmedia into removing the video but does say that it received an apology from the media conglomerate.

Murphy’s video, which criticizes a project to build an oil pipeline from the oil sands of Alberta to Canada’s west coast, can be viewed here.

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Maren Williams is a reference librarian who enjoys free speech and rescue dogs.