Mitt Romney’s new web video, featuring audio of President Obama singing a few lines from Al Green’s, “Let’s Stay Together,” has been pulled down from YouTube via a copyright claim of BMG Rights Management.

According to a release, the video, titled, “Political Payoffs and Middle Class Layoffs,” used news reports to demonstrate that “[i]nstead of working to restore [our] economic security, President Obama is too busy rewarding his biggest donors.”

Perhaps ironically, BMG and Crown/Random House (which published both of Obama’s books, his campaign plan, and Michelle Obama’s new book) are — despite Obama’s concerns about “outsourcing” — all owned by German conglomerate Bertlesmann AG, which bills itself as “the world’s most international media company.”

So it is interesting that the company that pulled down Romney’s web ad shares a German parent company with Obama’s publisher.

According to their Wikipedia entry, “During World War II, Bertelsmann was the biggest single producer of Nazi propaganda.” The BBC reports that “German media giant Bertelsmann has admitted it lied about its Nazi past and that it made big profits during Adolf Hitler’s reign in Germany using Jewish slave labour.”

Crown/Random House does good work, and nobody should blame Obama for making millions off of his writing. But just imagine what they would be saying if Romney’s turnaround book had been published by a multinational conglomerate with ties to Nazi propaganda.

What is more, one wonders if an Obama ad featuring Al Green’s song would have also been pulled down?