Saturday, October 18, 2008
McCain seeks special 'fair use' copyright rules for VIPs
Just recently some of John McCain's videos were pulled off of youtube, due to copyright infringements. McCain has just discovered the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Which forces remixers to prove their work as a "fair use". McCain is now calling for VIP treatment instead of reforming the much hated law. He feels that there should be special treatment for the remixes made for political campaigns. He wants all campaign videos to be manually viewed by a human youtube employee before removing the remix. McCain sent a formal letter to youtube asking them to consider this new review policy. Larry Lessig made a comment on the letter saying that it was a "fantastic letter", adding " bravo to the campaign" which he stated in his blog. Since the sending of the letter, the tech press has been pretty supportive of McCain's idea. Now the question here is wether McCain realizes that fair use claims are an uphill battle or is McCain wanting special treatment for his campaign? Should congressmen and other politicians get special treatment in the area of copyright? They already receive special treatment by being able to bypass TSA security. Maybe McCain should call for the reform of the entire copyright world instead of just insisting on special treatment for politicians. This would benefit the entire remix culture.
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3 comments:
Special treatments should not even be given to significant "political figures". As much as we all would like to make an exception and see these infringement rights broken once in a while, maybe people with a higher voice such as McCain could do something about it by their own experiences. Very rarely do VIPs see life through the average prospective. By not making any kinds of exceptions for anyone, it'll force somebody to eventually make effort to change?
Because of McCains political power, he should be looking to make a difference in these areas, as opposed to simply looking for VIP treatment.
Although McCain's idea is a good one, the fact that he wants every single campaign video to be "manually viewed by a human YouTube employee" is a huge expenditure of time and money. In this sense, it is probably only the congressmen and other politicians that can afford to have this type of special treatment in the area of copyright, as unfair as that sounds. Ideally, if this personal reform were to be applied to the entirety of the copyright world, it would stop a lot of problems concerning mashups and remixes and the infringement strings that are attached.
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