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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 great!
Big Media Outlet: Waaah, we're the only ones allowed to exploit fair use, not other people...
Tom Brokaw was, "extremely uncomfortable with the extended use of my personal image in this political ad. I do not want my role as a journalist compromised for political gain by any campaign."
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!"
Bullshit...
The funny thing is, we'll be seeing more and more of this type of hypocrisy as copyright becomes more powerful and media becomes easier to catalog for the average person.
Information needs to be free to prevent tyrants and dictators from using our ignorance against us. /paranoia :) Cheers!
"Helping to keep you two steps ahead of the Thought Police!"
I support fair use and I love that people don't need to wade through paperwork or legalize to use something in academia, analysis, or news reporting.
Fair use is supposed to cover things like media criticism, allowing the entertainment media to show clips of television shows or films and offer constructive commentary or feedback. "Two thumbs up for Tropic Thunder" or whatever. Movie and film reviews are not always protected under fair use though and there are many times that YouTube channels with film reviews are axed. The way to get around that is usually to only use clips from the freely released movie trailers. Big media love to use clips themselves but they'll hound sites or video sharing services that allow for clips coinciding with negative reviews.
Fair use is also to cover academia, using clips for education purposes. Showing someone how a movie scene is made or why this film's scene is iconic or so on. My professors didn't need to obtain a license from whatever studio to show a hundred of us Goodfellas and The Godfather in college.
Fair use is even for news reporting, if a story needs to have a clip that might be copyrighted, and it benefits the public and actively augments the news story, then invoking fair use to use a clip with copyright might be appropriate.
But claiming 'fair use' for a political advertisement? I don't think so. There is nothing academic going on here. There is nothing being analyzed for the sake of teaching. And there is no objective news reporting occurring here. This is simply a politician taking a reporter out of context to create an artificial soundbite to further his political career. It's pathetic. It is not fair use to use a news report in a political advertisement.
That being said the news media should not be surprised. Between the shows like 'Crossfire' or the O'Reilly Factor where nothing is objective at all, and newspapers endorsing presidential candidates, the news media has been directly involving themselves in politics for years by getting involved with ideological arguments and directly supporting candidates. Now the candidates have figured out that they can just bypass the media and use the reporters words, even out of context, to help them campaign.
I just can't wait until a reporter deliberately says "I support what X candidate is doing" because he has an under the table deal to be featured in a campaign. It would be easy. Get on TV, say you "want this candidate's ideas to become realized in America", and then wait until that clip is featured all over in a major campaign because of fair use. Most of these "journalists" and "reporters" care more about fame than objectivity so they'd likely welcome the attention.
This is not fair use but the media is so worthless and corrupt that it's almost impossible to care when a politician fucks them over. The media has been screwing America for the last decade with no sign of slowing down. Now if you'll excuse me I need to watch the fifth season of The Wire.
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
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.
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.
Freedoms come in levels.
Your innate Right to exist is of a higher level than someone else's assumed freedom to kill you, morally-speaking at least.
That being said, if they have a gun and you don't; then you are really trusting this other person's moral compass and/or incentives.
The key being that example is a direct dispute between an innate Right versus an assumed Freedom;
Innate Rights are something which no legitimate government may strip from you; in very rare circumstances Freedoms must be curtailed to protect other's Innate Rights, but these are limited in scope (i.e. you aren't allowed to experiment with radioactive isotopes in your basement or aren't supposed to yell fire in a crowded theater) by definition.
Classical liberal economists (Suggested reading being Locke, Hobbes, etc.) would argue that your freedoms extend to a certain social contract into which governance and the governed enter and wherein specific rights and/or freedoms must be protected by government - namely security, labor opportunity, and a certain amount of self governance & expression. Going even further, FDR and other 'New Deal'-era politicians wanted to re-define these contracts to include an assurance of economic opportunity - so that High School graduates could go get a job and live well enough to raise a family, College Grads would be hired into the workplace in an equivalently skilled position, and total overall productive work would continue to grow; manufacturing, innovation, resource development and nation-building. For a look at how exactly this didn't work out and some of the numbers proving it, with sources, I recommend Jacob S. Hacker & Paul Pierson's - Winner Take All Politics - How Washington Made the Rich Richer and Turned its Back on the Middle Class.
Back to your question though,
Freedoms and Rights shouldn't get confused, especially in the case of corporate entities who are virtually infinitely wealthy when those corporations claim their Assumed Freedom to limit that which is actually the Innate Right of a real person and therefore precluded from their ability to limit.
My fear is this will only worsen as technology continues to outpace the judiciary.
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.