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More on the McCain Campaign YouTube Letter: The Cynical View. And Debate.

October 15th, 2008
By JOE WINDISH, Technology Editor

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Yesterday I quoted Techdirt as “impressed” by the McCain campaign letter to YouTube defending Fair Use.

Today Chris Soghoian of the Berkman Center articulates a far more cynical view of the letter:

John 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.

In his piece Soghoian criticizes Stanford Law professor Larry Lessig, one of the foremost authorities on copyright, for saying “bravo to the campaign” and calling it a “fantastic letter”.

[T]he technology press has been pretty supportive, although the focus of the coverage seems to mainly be along the lines of “McCain realizes that fair use claims are uphill battle.” This is the wrong message to send, and as much as I respect Professor Lessig, I have to call him out here.

Lessig for his part agrees that it’s special rules but…

…isn’t it appropriate? For here’s the new game for politics in the YouTube age: complain enough to get an account shut down (according to YouTube testimony, 3 complaints gets an account shut down (pg 17 near the bottom), and ideally, do it at the critical time just before an election.

Of course, no one should be subject to this arbitrary game. But especially a campaign. Let’s start here and begin to build out from a clear example of bad incentives.



This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 15th, 2008 at 1:41 pm and is filed under Internet, You Tube, John McCain, Internet News Media, Technology, Law & Legal Matters. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

 
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