According to Joe Rogan ("Fear Factor"), Carlos Mencia's ("Mind of Mencia") entire career is based upon the stealing of other comics material. Apparently a norm of the industry that everyone knows is happening but does nothing about. Well Joe had enough and decided to confront Carlos directly about it. Oh and he recorded it.
You can see the video here or here or here.
In the edited confrontation, notice that Carlos doesn't really so much as defend against the accusation as basically just call Joe an ass for confronting him on stage. In and of itself, not exactly damning but Joe did do a comparison of Carlos jokes to other acts jokes to prove his point. Wish he had done more of that during the video but it does help to make a convincing case.
You would think the story would end there, but nope. Carlos Mencia is clearly pissed at the online embarrassment has returned a few volleys back by getting Joe banned from the comedy club and costing him his agent.
On top of that, Carlos has decided that the video of the confrontation is infringing his copyright. In what can only be the move of a moron, he forced YouTube to take down the video and probably will have emails sent to other sites therefore guaranteeing this video pops up anywhere and everywhere since preventing the online community from seeing something is a sure fire way to make sure they will see it. Its also is the behavior of a guilty person.
In addition, I don't even know what makes him think he has copyright ownership of anything in the video. To my knowledge jokes can't be copyrighted. The footage used came from other sources not under the ownership of Carlos (did he buy Comedy Central recently?). Maybe he thinks his name or his face is copyrighted. He would be wrong, but its the only explanation I have for attempting to enforce his non-existent copyright.
At this point I am not sure who is winning the war. Carlos is still getting paydays from Comedy Central for his shows and probably will continue to do so but has gotten a major online embarrassment. Joe remains more or less unemployed with no hangout and no agent. In the end, I am going to call it a wash as I doubt this will effect either career's since the Carlos will continue to do what he wants due to other comedians he has stolen material from are doing nothing about it.
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