link: http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/10/mccain-campaign-feels-dmca-sting
October 13th the McCain Campaign sent this letter to Youtube.
"Overreaching copyright claims have resulted in the removal of non-infringing campaign videos from YouTube, thus silencing political speech. Numerous times during the course of the campaign, our advertisements or web videos have been the subject of DMCA takedown notices regarding uses that are clearly privileged under the fair use doctrine. The uses at issue have been the inclusion of fewer than ten seconds of footage from news broadcasts in campaign ads or videos, as a basis for commentary on the issues presented in the news reports, or on the reports themselves. These are paradigmatic examples of fair use..."
The EFF is glad to see that at least presidential candidate sees the importance of freedom of speech on Online communities and the remix culture. The Obama campaign has also had problems with video takedowns by large companies, indicating this is a bipartisan problem. The EFF, Citizen's Media Law project and the Fair Use Project have all realized these problems years before and have been striving to fix them.
Although McCain has realized the problem he does not offer a solution that the online community likes:
"We believe that it would consume few resources--and provide enormous benefit--for YouTube to commit to a full legal review of all takedown notices on videos posted from accounts controlled by (at least) political candidates and campaigns."
The problem is the McCain campaign wants Youtube to take priority over everyone else's problems to fix their problems. As a public source of opinion the most exciting and useful videos are of the voters themselves expressing their views, not a large campaign with the financial funds to just as easily put their videos on TV while the common user has no other public outlet.
The bad guys are the major news media outlets. They send false takedown notices for videos which only contain a few seconds of the media's footage. They need to give free use a wide birth and realize the online communities' freedom to express themselves. The EFF and both campaigns are looking to sue these major news media outlets under the DMCA for their biased takedown notices.
Recently the McCain campaign has identified the news outlets of being: CBS, Fox News, and CBN.
I am angry that the news media outlets would try and limit our expression, while they express themselves constantly. It's like they think only they can express themselves, because they're the news and that the common man shouldn't think, but just listen to the news and believe it. Also I am concerned with the McCain campaign. They should realize that non-funded everyday citizen need an outlet as well and that they trying to take priority over one of our only outlets to speak and be heard by more than the people in the room.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
McCain's campaign letter to Youtube
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2 comments:
How can the EFF talk about McCain like he's innocent in all of this? They make it sound like he's some kind of crusader for digital rights, when he's always been the opposite. McCain fully supported the DMCA. If he truly understood the importance of fair use and the remix culture, he wouldn't have voted for the act in 1998. If he had thought harder about what's "fair" back then, maybe he wouldn't be in this mess.
The only reason he voted for the act is, like a lot of people, he didn't care about the act until it came back 10 years later to bite him in the butt. And as far as him wanting youtube to put his problem on highest priority, its sort of understandable because the election is nearing fast, but that doesn't necessarily make him more or less important than other people on youtube, who may be facing serious consequences because of material that was posted by their account.
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