TheAgitator.com
McCain Wants Special Copyright-Breaking Privileges for Politicians
Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008John McCain’s presidential campaign has discovered the remix-unfriendly aspects of American copyright law, after several of the candidate’s campaign videos were pulled from YouTube.
McCain has now discovered the rights holder friendly nature of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which forces remixers to fight an uphill battle to prove that their work is a “fair use.”
However, instead of calling for an overhaul of the much hated law, McCain is calling for VIP treatment for the remixes made by political campaigns.
McCain’s proposal: complaints about videos uploaded by a political campaign would be manually reviewed by a human YouTube employee before any possible removal of the remix. The process for complaints against videos uploaded by millions of other Americans would stay the same: instant removal by a computer program, and then possible reinstatement a week or two later after the video sharing site has received and manually processed a formal counter-notice.
I’ve never understood why you shouldn’t be able to excerpt a video or song for discussion the same way fair use allows you to excerpt a piece of print material protected by copyright. As I understand it, it’s not really clear if you can or can’t. The problem is that the DMCA presumes against fair use, in favor of the copyright holder and against speech. It also makes it illegal for you to rip copyrighted digital media to excerpt for fair use purposes in the first place. I wonder if McCain is suggesting politicians get an exemption from that portion of the law, too.
Whatever the case, it’s unfortunate that McCain wants politicians to be able to use copyrighted material to promote themselves, but he’s okay with continuing a prohibition on people who might use a song or piece of a movie to criticize those same politicians.
No real surprise, given his history. I think that it’s time you learned to respect your betters, Radley!
Radley,
The difference is that fair use is a statutory, affirmative defense to copyright infringement. Although scholars, such as Larry Lessig, have argued that fair use ought to be interpreted to be a constitutional requirement under the First Amendment, the SCOTUS has yet to adopt that view.
There is an open question as to whether, and how, the copyright fair use defense applies to violations of the DMCA. The confusion comes because people assume that a DMCA violation is copyright infringement, when that just isn’t true. Although related, there are different legal standards that apply (e.g. the DMCA anti-circumvention provisions).
Because most (all?) music and video is in digital form, so-called “remixing” they are protected by both copyright and DMCA. Print media is not digital.
The better question to ask the lawmakers that created DMCA is whether this disparate treatment between traditional and digital media was an unintended consequence …
Radley, it’s about time you get with the program.
Public officials are in their positions because they are better.
They deserve special consideration.
Also, quit calling it unintended consequences. Most of them are predictable results of incompetence by.. er.. I did say they are better, didn’t I?
[...] McCain wants to overhaul the DMCA! What? Just for politicians? Jesus, why am I even surprised [...]
IANAL, but last I heard fair use is not a safe harbor. You have to show that your use falls within that catagory and that is open to interpretation. Keep this in mind next time you want to excerpt something. Chances are you’ll be fine, but if somebody wants to press the issue you could find yourself in a legal mess.
I guess McCain thinks he deserves better treatment than the rest of us. There’s a word for that kind of thinking…it’s on the tip of my tongue…begins with an “e”…I’ll think of it in a minute…
“empty headed”…….?
Oh, that’s just Windypundit…….
Not to mention the fact that the entire copyright scheme passed by Congress does not follow the Constitution. In the original 1790s legislation, copyright was for 14 yrs with a possible 14 yr extension. That was it.
The key words of the Constitution are: “to the author or inventor for a limited time”. An author or inventor is a human being. A limited time for a human being is less than a lifetime. Current law provides for more than a lifetime of protection which makes the current copyright law unlimited with respect to the author/inventor and anyone contemporaneous with the author/inventor.
Of course, Sonny Bono made the biggest change just before he skiied into a tree. But the law has been in place since 1978 extending the copyright beyond the lifetime of the author/inventor.
Now maybe the Framers were considering geologic time but I have my doubts about that.
I don’t believe this is completely correct. I believe the DMCA makes it illegal to circumvent copy protection mechanisms for almost any reasons (including fair use). I’m not supporting this, I just want to make clear what I (and presumably Radley) oppose.
:wq
I work in IP, albeit here in London, but I’m American and I understand the laws in the US as I deal with them daily.
Short summary of the law: Fair use still exists, of course, for legitimate reasons (news, critique, parody for most things, and so on) and not even DMCA can stop your fair use rights. The trouble isn’t all about the law (there are some serious issues with DMCA, obviously) rather it is the overly aggressive tactics employed by IP attorneys, some firms and businesses, and it’s a lack of knowledge of IP and copyright law on the part of website owners, governments, and other business owners.
Even if a case is complete bullshit (most are, except for some habitual infringers overseas and the occasional accidental infringement), firms will send out notices and letters to A) scare you (and hope they get lucky and you’ll take it down), and B) if the case goes to court they can eventually settle (i.e., hope they get lucky). Most people and business end up settling.
The worst part is the “ambulance chasing” that some patent and trademark agents do. They’ll try to convince their clients that everyone is infringing your IP, just so they can bill you for what is obviously a loser case.
Anyway … it’s all crap. Not sorry to say it, but IP is shit job most days.
Free speech for me, but not for thee!
Copyright infringement is your best choice for entertainment.
It’s a tradition. Congress always exempts themselves from laws that inconvenience them. Employee discrimination, DC traffic, etc. Why not copyright?
Harley