Anyone who grew up watching Canadian television knows the animated-short “The Cat Came Back” (1988) produced by the National Film Board of Canada. It’s a silly, 7-minute cartoon that would air on CBC in-between programming.

This morning I was looking at “20 of the most amazing short animations you need to see before you die”, and I followed the link to “The Cat Came Back” on YouTube only to find “This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by National Film Board of Canada”. Seriously?! The NFB, who is constantly desperate to grow an audience, is removing their short films from YouTube? They are spending money on lawyers to shrink the size of their audience?

Obviously, they want you to watch the video on their site. From the look of their fancy Flash video player, they must have spent a lot of their my money (they are publicly funded) on their website. But I still can’t believe they don’t want to get their films out there. Did anyone ask the public if we mind if the short-films we financed appear on YouTube? Instead of setting their lawyers lose on YouTube, why don’t they negotiate the rights to get their films out on the web?

Luckily, the video has already popped up on MetaCafe