Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
This is more of the same, "Infringe on someone else's freedom to protect mine? Sounds good! Infringe on my freedom to protect someone else's? Hell no!"
Are all freedoms equal? Do my freedoms hold more weight over yours?
NBC: Mitt Romney, tear down this ad. Yet NBC keeps running it, getting paid
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
This doesn't stop them from passing laws that would make their own actions illegal...
That totally ignores the fact that when we were backing down politicians from SOPA it's mostly Republicans that responded.
Hollywood and the MPAA has a FAR greater influence over the Democrats than they do Republicans (though yes, there are also some Republicans who are bought with MPAA money too). The difference is that thanks to the Tea Party, Republicans are actually starting to be afraid of the voters. The Democrats are only afraid of Hollywood...
Vote for the future you prefer, those afraid of you or Hollywood. Over the next few years the direction you choose will be crucial.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Even more hypocritical is the fact that NBC keeps running the ad and getting paid for it.
"Sufferin' succotash."
First off, "I only used X seconds" is almost never a complete argument for fair use. How much is too much? Sampling a fraction of a second of music for a new song is enough to cause a lawsuit in some cases; likewise, having a few seconds of music in the background of your unrelated YouTube clip can get it pulled. A few seconds of a copyright work in a movie can lead to a 6 figure settlement (12 Monkeys). There is a concept of the "heart of the work" in copyright law (e.g., publishing a book review of Ford's memoirs that included only a page or two of quotation was not fair use, because those pages were the most interesting part). In the case of the broadcast clip, it'd be quite easy to argue that the lead story is the heart of the work.
Second, fair use for what purpose? It's not current news, it's not parody, the work is not transformative. Maybe you could argue it was "educational," but that's a stretch, and usually only applies in an actual educational context, not in a political ad during campaign season.
Other factors... did they take only what was necessary? In this case, no... why do all the other campaign ads only need to use excerpts of broadcasts, rather than the whole thing? And, aside from copyright, Brokaw may have an argument based on personality rights, although I don't know how being a newscaster would affect that argument.
It find it ironic that despite all the Congressional rhetoric surrounding piracy and copyright infringement, these campaign folks (who are of course being advised by lawyers) simply rip off 30 seconds of copyrighted work and then cry "fair use."
Note that personally I believe this kind of use should be allowed, but from what I see of how current copyright law is actually applied in practice, it is not allowed.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
Bullshit. If you think Republicans will raise a finger to defend your rights, then I have to wonder what rock you've been living under for the past few decades.
Neither party cares much about copyright, because outside of Slashdot, not many people care. On literally every other issue, it's the Democrats who have tried (meekly) to defend individual rights.
You're right about one thing. Our direction over the next few years is hugely important. If you want more corporate money in politics, more rights for corporate persons, fewer civil liberties, war with Iran, the privatization of Social Security, the elimination of Medicare, and even lower taxes on the top 1%, then vote Republican.
It seems obvious to me. They didn't have to use NBC's content to make their point, and Mitt Romney can certainly afford to license this or similar content that would make the same point. They WANT to be sued. That makes controversy you can't get any other way and makes BIG MEDIAâ the enemy of the Romney campaign.
That's red meat to the Republican base. Also, later when negative stories about Romney inevitably hit the press, the campaign will have poisoned the well.
Maybe that's because they were largely for it? You can't change your mind to against unless you were for it. I don't have numbers, but here's a picture with a source attached. It doesn't look all that clear to me.
What is clear is that Democrats are typically not on the censorship bandwagon that Republicans have to be to establish their evangelical bona fides and get the Good Christian vote. So Hollywood supports Demorats, California Republicans (and CA has a lot of Congress people), and people like Reagan and Arnie who have been part of the entertainment industry. That's the only reason Hollywood supports one side, and if that side fights back the support dries up.
Republicans did not flip due to support, they flipped because someone got it through their heads that they were passing a law that would really piss off a lot of their voters. Not the ones who contribute this time, but people who would go register to vote in order to save their WikiPedia so they could copy and paste college assignments.
http://s3.amazonaws.com/propublica/assets/images/sopa-opera-count.png
And if ACTA, SOPA, etc. are passed, then Mitt Romney's campain website, and anything else, can be shut down!
Yes, I am not an American.
I once had a candidate (for Mayor of Baltimore) lift an op-ed piece I'd written for the Baltimore Sun and use it, full-length, as a campaign flyer without asking permissions I billed her. And after a little screaming, she paid -- once she realized that I was a freelancer and had sold *only* first publication rights to the Sun.
Back in 2006 a democratic candidate ran a similar ad, using a 24 second clip of Fox News anchor Chris Wallace to attack her opponent by showing Wallace questioned his ethics. Fox sued the candidate in 2011, but eventually gave up: http://www.firedupmissouri.com/content/fox-backs-down