Fair Use Flaw Impacts Presidential Campaign

Posted October 17th, 2008 by Robert Cox

Back in 2004, when my site was shut down over a bogus DMCA complaint by The New York Times I pointed out that given the way DMCA works, it could be used to suppress political campaigns in the days before an election.

Looks like the chickens have come home to roostfor the McCain campaignh.

The McCain campaign complains that its ads and web videos posted to YouTube have been removed on the complaint of news organizations whose footage was quoted:

[O]verreaching 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 taked"