Comments on: McCain/Palin seeks "special rules"?

By: حبيبي يا عراق

حبيبي يا عراق — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 18:12:29 +0000

How is a political campaign any different from all the other people who get their messages shut down by overzealous opponents? In fact, this should be used to draw attention to the DMCA as a whole (that McCain voted for).

By: zach

zach — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 23:39:46 +0000

Regardless on whether you agree or not with the request, I think it is quite instructive to see politics in action. What you see here is another example of "what's good for the ruled is not good enough for the rulers." These guys have no problem passing disastrous legislation to satisfy their lobbyists, and no intent of fixing said broken legislation, no, instead what they want is their own personal private loophole so they don't have to suffer like the rest of us.

This reminds me of the HOV lane debacle we had in NJ years ago. It was fine and well for the population to suffer. But then one day the governor got stuck in an HOV induced traffic jam. Lo and behold, no more HOV lanes!

Not that I expect McCain to go back to the senate after losing the election, but if he did, how many of us honestly expect him to introduce or even support legislation to fix the DMCA? Anyone?

By: vince

vince — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 11:20:39 +0000

If youtube were the ONLY hosting service on the planet, asking them to take a longer look at a takedown might be worthy...

But they aren't.

The service is reacting appropriately to a request from the copyright holder.

Some of the situations cited by the campaign do seem to qualify as fair-use, like using a snippet of an interview and/or reporting focused on the candidate or the candidates opponent. Other are clearly outside the realm of fair-use, like using copyrighted materials as background music to a commercial.

Some have raised the question of... shouldn't the Obama campaign be subject to the same rule? The obvious answer is Yes. But, under the system set up by the DCMA, the copyright holder gets to decide which uses are fair and which are foul. If the Obama campaign has friends that make music and publish other content and decide to not use their power to demand a takedown... they are lucky.

Or... maybe, the Obama campaign is actually obeying the law and doing things like getting a license to use content... before they publish it to youtube?

By: Adrian Lopez

Adrian Lopez — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 04:51:53 +0000

McCain is a senator. If he doesn't like what YouTube must do to comply with the DMCA at a reasonable cost, he should work to amend the law such that it doesn't lend itself to abusive claims.

By: Will

Will — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 03:26:54 +0000

I can understand a distinction between political speech and non-political speech just before an election (although I'm still doubtful it is the best approach in this case). e.g. Maybe the US should treat a political mashup differently to a dancing baby a week before an election.

I don't believe that political speech by a campaign should be treated preferentially over political speech by any other citizen. If anything I can see arguments for the reverse: the campaign already has govt matching funds to pay for their message to get out by other means. Isn't that enough special assistance?

By: Rasmaestro

Rasmaestro — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 02:24:19 +0000

As I understand it (going by the recent Wired article), McCain has a fair counter-DMCA action, that can get his content up again. Of course, processing time makes this problematic when it comes to news and works that are critical-by-the-hour, so to speak (eg. political campaigns).

But is this not an example of "guilty until proven innocent"? Couldn't you just have the first 3 DMCA-claims trigger a direct notice to the content uploader, asking whether a counter-claim is desired (and only AFTER a certain deadline take the content down)? That would be more in line with "innocent until proven guilty", me thinks.

Of course, I don't know what a counter-claim requires to be accepted. If it's 250 pages of legal documentation, short deadlines would be meaningless anyway :)

By: Phillip Rhodes

Phillip Rhodes — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 01:57:59 +0000

I don't believe political candidates should receive any special consideration, personally. And I say this as a current political candidate (Libertarian candidate for Lieutenant Governor of North Carolina). And if we strictly limited government to it's proper roles (protecting property rights, providing "rule of law" and enforcing contracts) politicians would have a lot less power and influence over our lives, which would make part of this discussion moot.

By: M. David Peterson

M. David Peterson — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 01:34:25 +0000

I assume you've seen YouTube's official response, but just in case: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10066738-38.html

By: Cabalamat

Cabalamat — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 01:27:30 +0000

Of course, no one should be subject to this arbitrary games.

I agree.

But especially a campaign.

So politicians should be insulated from the negative effects of laws they force on everyone else? I don't think so. Instead, give them an incentive to fix broken laws.

By: Dan Miller

Dan Miller — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 00:18:24 +0000

I agree with the above commenters, this arbitrary threshold of who gets fair treatment and who does not is unfair and unacceptable. Instead pick views or some similar metric of popularity, regardless of who's speaking, to minimize the damage done to the fair use rights of all people.