Almost a year ago, Bob linked to a segment from The Tonight Show in 1973 in which professional "spoon bender" Uri Geller was exposed on national television by Carson and frequent Carson guest and professional debunker James Randi. The clip, via YouTube, was part of a larger documentary about hoaxes.

Recently, citing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Geller's company, Explorologist Ltd., demanded the clip be removed for violation of copyright. YouTube suspended the account of the user who posted the video.

I remember seeing this the night that it happened, in 1973: Uri Geller trying to perform some psychic "feats" on The Tonight Show, and host Johnny Carson (a magician himself and someone with a low tolerance for hucksters and hoaxes) making sure he can't fool anyone with a trick by changing the items on the table. This is a slightly edited version, but it's very telling. Geller actually gets a little irritated at Carson, at one point even mentioning that Carson was supposed to ask him the questions they agreed on before the show. Doc Severinsen sits there waiting for Geller to do something amazing, but it never comes.

That's magician and professional debunker James Randi narrating the clip. I think this is part of a larger documentary that was show on television several years ago.

[via Boing Boing]