

BMG abused the law by issuing a takedown request of a Romney YouTube ad - coconuts2314
http://thedc.com/OWJiJm

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revelation
I like how people turn this into a conspiracy against Romney.

I don't believe that it is; its just the normal madness on YouTube, where they
ban, delete, restrict and plaster with ads anything resembling something in
their huge database of copyrighted stuff.

Where they create smoke barriers using strong words around "DMCA", but when
you want to make a counter claim, there was never any claim and YouTube did
this all by themselves.

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Mystalic
Regardless of the politics, the ridiculous lengths that BMG and the other
labels are willing to go to in order to take down content that clearly falls
under fair use simply boggles my mind.

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saddino
Just to play devil's advocate, there is no such thing as "clearly falling
under fair use." Fair use is always arguable and it's up to a federal judge to
make that finding.

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adjwilli
Using a song to parody something besides the song isn't fair use. If the song
is used to parody the song itself or the artist, yes, but not to parody
something completely unrelated. If that were the case, rappers could parody a
police commissioner in a song which also happens to have samples George
Clinton, and claim that because they were parodying the police commissioner
the George Clinton sample is perfectly legit. Fair use just doesn't work like
that.

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dtparr
While you're correct that it's not a parody, parody is not the only form of
fair use. From 17 USC § 107[1] "...purposes such as criticism, comment, news
reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use),
scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright....".

1- <http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/107>

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adjwilli
Was this video critiquing, commenting on, reporting news about, teaching or
researching the song? No. It still doesn't qualify as fair use.

~~~
dtparr
A work need not target the original in order to be considered fair use, you
have to apply test all the §107 factors. As Justice Souter put it in Campbell
vs. Acuff-Rose Music[1]:

"By contrast, when there is little or no risk of market substitution, whether
because of the large extent of transformation of the earlier work, the new
work's minimal distribution in the market, the small extent to which it
borrows from an original, or other factors, taking parodic aim at an original
is a less critical factor in the analysis, and looser forms of parody may be
found to be fair use, as may satire with lesser justification for the
borrowing than would otherwise be required."

Given that it seems fairly unlikely that there's a chance of consumers
preferring this video to the original version of the song, the noncommercial
use, and the length of the clip, I'd say it's got a pretty strong shot at
being fair use.

1-<http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/92-1292.ZO.html#FN14>

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protomyth
You would think, just as a self preservation mechanism, some manager would
have thought that they should alter their automatic takedown process to avoid
taking down politician videos. Right now, not a big deal, but come late
September or November, this process will get a lot of attention if it keeps
doing this. I would bet that attention will not go well for BMG.

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larrik
I hope this continues, and I hope it gets worse. That way the politicians get
to see how stupid the process really is, and to see that the big content
companies aren't their friends.

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ash
Auto-playing video, beware.

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mtgx
I don't like Romney (nor Obama) but taking down political ads because of
alleged (not proven in Court) copyright infringement is ridiculous.

