Fair Use?

Yesterday I wrote a rather lengthy post about Michael Schumacher's reaction after having rammed his car into Bruno Senna.

A few hours later, I received the following in my Gmail inbox:

Dear lbthomsen01,

This is to notify you that we have removed access to your video,Schumacher the Idiot (Slow Motion), as a result of a notification byFormula One Management claiming that this material is infringing.

Please Note: Accounts determined to be repeat infringers may be terminated. To avoid this, please delete any videos to which you do not own the rights, and refrain from uploading infringing videos.
For more information, please visit our Copyright Tips guide.
If you believe this claim was made in error, or that you are otherwise authorized to use the content at issue, you may file a counter notice.Please note that under Section 512(f) of the Copyright Act, any person who knowingly materially misrepresents that material or activity was removed or disabled by mistake or misidentification may be liable for damages.

Sincerely,
- The YouTube Team

I actually received two emails both send at approximately the same time.  The other read:

Dear lbthomsen01:

We have disabled the following material as a result of a third-party notification from Formula One Management claiming that this material is infringing:

Schumacher the Idiot (Slow Motion)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfls8VLYZr0

Please Note: Repeat incidents of copyright infringement will result in the deletion of your account and all videos uploaded to that account. In order to prevent this from happening, please delete any videos to which you do not own the rights, and refrain from uploading additional videos that infringe on the copyrights of others. For more information about YouTube's copyright policy, please read the Copyright Tips guide.

If one of your postings has been misidentified as infringing, you may submit a counter-notification. Information about this process is in our Help Center.

Please note that under Section 512(f) of the Copyright Act, any person who knowingly materially misrepresents that material was disabled due to mistake or misidentification may be liable for damages.

Sincerely,

— The YouTube Team

For some odd reason, the link to the video appear to still be working, so I'll try to link it here too:



So it would appear that the Formula One Management is seriously pissed that I used 4 seconds of their footage to prove a point (and does that footage actually belong to them since I lifted it of ESPN/Star Sport broadcast - which I paid for).

Let us examine what I have done here.  Out of a 1 1/2 race that was broadcast on ESPN/Star Sport, I have "borrowed" exactly 4 seconds of footage.  I have then removed the sound track (since having Steve Slater babble makes no difference whatsoever) and I have reduced the frame rate to 25 % of the original.  I also did blur the logo and in hindsight that might have been a mistake, but at the time I was editing the video it seemed like the right thing to do (just because I could).

Is this copyright infringement?