The clip, entitled "Vote Different," was posted to YouTube by "ParkRidge47" on March 5, and has been viewed nearly four million times since then. Gina Rosenblum, the president of Rosenblum Productions, said that the YouTube video is a copy of "a prior commercial infringement of our copyright."

"We recognize the legal issues inherent under the First Amendment and the copyright law as to political expression of opinion," she continued, "but we want the world at large to know that we take our copyright ownership of one of the world's great novels very seriously."

Defending '1984'

Although George Orwell (the pen name of author Eric Blair) died in 1950, his popular novel is still protected by copyright and will not enter the public domain until at least 2044. Rosenblum said that she purchased the rights to "1984" from his estate and his wife, Sonia Orwell, in 1981. She and her company, she said, are currently in negotiations to create a new motion picture based on the novel.

Part of the legend surrounding the Apple "1984" ad, directed by Ridley Scott and routinely named as one of the top product pitches of all time, is the fact that the ad was shown just once, during the 1984 Super Bowl. Rosenblum said that she was responsible for the ad's brief run.

"When the Apple 'Big Brother' television commercial was aired during the 1984 Super Bowl telecast," she said, "we immediately objected to this unauthorized commercial use of the novel, and sent a 'cease-and-desist' letter both to Apple and to its ad agency. The commercial never aired on television again."

In 2001, Rosenblum Productions sued Orwell Productions, CBS Television, and Viacom over the reality program "Big Brother." The suit was settled out of court.

Antithesis of '1984'?

Since the YouTube mashup was released, it has sparked a debate among political observers and operatives about its potential impact on the nascent 2008 presidential campaign. Beyond the impact of the advertisement itself, the video clip also is seen as the start of a new era of gonzo political ads that might reshape American politics.

In a blog posting to The Huffington Post on March 21, Phil de Vellis (aka "ParkRidge47") took credit for the mashup, which he said he created on a Sunday afternoon using (of course) a Macintosh. He uploaded it to YouTube, he said, and then sent the link around to some blogs. The rest is history.

De Vellis said that he has resigned from his job at Blue State Digital, a company that provides technological support to several presidential campaigns, including that of Senator Barack Obama. But de Vellis said that no one at the Obama campaign -- or any other campaign, for that matter -- was aware of who made the mashup.

"This ad was not the first citizen ad," de Vellis wrote, "and it will not be the last. The game has changed."