Hitler clips take down

Constantin Films, owner of the copyright for the movie "The Downfall" has recently started using YouTube's Content ID tools to take down all of the Hitler "parodies" that have popped up over the past few years.

NPR's All Things Considered did a story about it today, though it appears in their The Two-Way blog a couple of days earlier.

There's questions about whether the use of this clip falls under "fair use." While Copyright allows for parodies, it's a little unclear whether these are really parodies in the strictest sense (someone call a lawyer!) One commentor in the original article makes the following point:
Most of these clips are not parodying the movie. Just because they are humorous doesn't make them a parody, and even if they are a parody of something, unless they are a parody of the movie itself, then use of the copyrighted material is not protected by fair use.
[...] Or if you wanted to make fun of a particular movie, in theory you could use part of it to parody it. But if you decide to use a video clip that has nothing to do with that which you are parodying, then that is no longer fair use. Most of these clips have nothing to do with this movie, and are just using the audio and video for free.
NPR: Hitler Rant Take-Downs Raise Fair-Use Questions

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