Romney Invokes Fair Use In Dispute With NBC Over Campaign Ad

An anonymous reader writes "Mitt Romney's campaign is airing an ad that is basically 30 seconds lifted from an NBC News broadcast and NBC is trying to stop them from using the ad. I found it interesting that the Romney campaign is invoking fair use to defend the ad. Romney adviser Eric Fehrnstrom said 'we believe it falls within fair use. We didn't take the entire broadcast; we just took the first 30 seconds.'"

Comments

This Is Not New

[guttentag]

NBC News apparently makes a practice of this, particularly when it comes to presidential elections:

• 10/31/2008 - NBC News demands that Obama and McCain pull ads it alleges violate its copyright
• 02/11/2004 - NBC News demands that Bush ad it alleges violates its copyright
• 11/03/1990 - NBC News demands candidate Jane Brady pull ad containing video of Sen. Joe Biden's aborted 1987 presidential campaign that it alleges violates its copyright

I'm sure there are many more, but I didn't want to spend my entire Sunday listing them. The point is: they've been doing this for many, many years.

Re:Not 'fair use' but no sympathy for the news med

[swalve]

Although I agree with most of your points, in this case I have to disagree. Fair use comprises these four standards:

1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

1- The ad is not using Brokaw's reputation to sell a candidate, rather (pun intended) it is just repeating some factual reporting he did about another candidate. And I'm pretty sure campaigns are NFP organizations. Nor does the use as far as I can tell change the tone or character of the original work.

2- The nature is news reporting, not some kind of creative work whose value might be diminished by others copying it.

3- This they might be in trouble for, as I doubt the 30 seconds versus a 30 minute program metric will apply. More likely, it will be how much of the story about Gingrich they played. If that was the whole piece, could be problematic. If it is the first 30 seconds of a 6 minute piece, it's probably OK.

4- Same as #2. Brokaw and NBC aren't diminished by simply repeating what they said on a newscast from 15 years ago. It's not like they are selling "Best of the Nighly News" DVD box sets.

Re:Fair use? "Not comfortable with..."

[Anonymous Coward]

I would strongly argue that cartoons of Mohammed to not impinge anybody's freedom of religion.

Freedom of religion doesn't force the world to conform to your views, it only allows you to have them.