Posted on 10/15/2008 5:34:18 PM PDT by steve-b
John McCain's presidential campaign has discovered the remix-unfriendly aspects of American copyright law, after several of the candidate's campaign videos were pulled from YouTube.
McCain has now discovered the rights holder friendly nature of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which forces remixers to fight an uphill battle to prove that their work is a "fair use."
However, instead of calling for an overhaul of the much hated law, McCain is calling for VIP treatment for the remixes made by political campaigns....
The only way we will get an effective overhaul of copyright laws will be by forcing politicians to suffer along with the masses. The minute a special set of rules are made for those in Congress, the incentive to fix the system will disappear. To drive this point home, consider the following:
During the confirmation hearings for Judge Robert Bork, the Washington City Paper obtained a copy of the Republican nominee's video rental records. Alarmed at the possibility that their own rental histories would be revealed by the press, members of Congress jumped to pass comprehensive privacy legislation for the video rental records of all Americans.... As a result, we are now all protected by the 1988 Video Privacy Protection Act.
Compare this to the horrible situation at airports. Americans are routinely harassed, prodded, poked and humiliated by employees of the Transportation Security Administration. While we stand in line like sheep, congressmen get to skip through the security lines, avoiding the entire process. Given the fact that they don't have to suffer at the hands of TSA, it's not terribly surprising that they have little incentive to fix the problems faced by the rest of us....
(Excerpt) Read more at news.cnet.com ...
The general point about the effects of special privileges for politicians is more important than the specifics of this particular incident, IMO.
I agree with the article, mostly. The DMCA is a bad law on many levels. This sort of “sampling” used to be considered fair use; the fact that it is not anymore is really a shame and undermines the very concept of fair use. When 90% of media becomes digital in the not-to-distant future, there will be no more fair use. There doesn’t need to be a special exemption for political campaigns—it has to be overhauled entirely for everyone.
Hmmm...makes me think of McCain-Feingold...ain’t that a bitch!
I seem to remember a political revolutionary who took over the House based on a list of reforms he planned to implement. Number one on the list of Gingrich's Contract With America was: "require all laws that apply to the rest of the country also apply equally to the Congress".
How far the Republican's have strayed from what won them the Congress.
>Number one on the list of Gingrich’s Contract With America was: “require all laws that apply to the rest of the country also apply equally to the Congress”.
Indeed. I wonder how the system would be different if our politicians were “forced” to deal with laws and life like every other member of ‘We the people’.
And why isn’t it that they ever get prosecuted. criminally?
McCain has a point. There is a lot of difference between political messages and commercial messages or entertainment.
Irrelevant. There is no case for favoritism.
Copyright represents the government granting legal monopoly.
However, we need to examine the *purpose* of granting legal monopoly.
Should it be for the purposes of:
1) Protecting property rights.
2) Stimulating innovation and the market.
3) Preventing private use of ownership for profit.
4) Preventing private use of ownership for non-profit.
We there is general agreement that *some* protection is needed for new ideas, is it the purpose of the federal government to intervene in favor of and against some of its citizens?
An interesting parallel is found in, of all things, historical US mining law. The General Mining Act of 1872 was intended to encourage mining, yet prevent interloping.
In essence, it said that anyone could stake a mining claim just about anywhere, even on another person’s land. That ownership of land did not necessarily mean ownership of what was under the land.
However, if you struck a claim, then by law, you had to “improve” that claim to the tune of $500 every year. That means either physical improvement or profitable production. Otherwise, you would lose your claim.
Now imagine if this same concept was applied to the music, movie and book industries? Right now, they own enormous libraries of copyrighted material that they refuse to sell. They have staked a claim but are just sitting on it, and copyright law says they can. They don’t sell it, but the government won’t let anybody else sell it either.
Importantly, unless they retailed it in the first place, nobody would even know it existed, so it wouldn’t need copyright, government monopoly protection. So they retailed it once, but they don’t want the marketplace to have it again.
If they are worried that someone else may make a profit from it, why don’t *they* try to make a profit from it? Or if they just don’t want anyone to have it, is it right that they can be “Indian givers”?
A good example is the Disney movie, “Song of the South”, that Disney will now only sell on Laserdisk in Japan, but in no form in the US. Should they have government protection to *not* sell it in a market that wants it?
“It’s their property, they can do with it what they want” doesn’t really apply, because they have sold and still sell it, just not to Americans and in a format Americans want. So why should they have government protection to *not* sell something, and at the same time, not let anyone else sell it?
Granted, Mickey Mouse is hugely profitable to Disney, so they should have all sorts of government protection for their market product. It fits the bill, being their property, that they are selling, and even if someone else buys it, they should continue to pay Disney to license it.
Just like a profitable mine. In production, it is an important part of our economy. But once it runs out, let somebody else make a go of it or let it return to the public domain. No reason you should have a right to keep anyone else from using it.
Indeed. The current gang operating under the name "Republican Party" is an undead husk, or perhaps a half-formed pod person morphing itself into a duplicate of the Democrats.
OMFG!!!! Politicians with MORE rights than humans? Politicians are a subclass who must never even be allowed AS MANY rights as the rest of us, their employers and contractual and moral superiors.
They shouldn’t have to deal with the SAME laws as the rest of us. When they want to regulate us or to restrict us in some way, there should be a trial period where the same regulation is enforced DOUBLE on them for two years or something. If they can’t live with it double, we shouldn’t have to accept it at normal strength. Then if they CAN accept it, after the trial period it should still be more harsh on them than on us, but maybe not double.
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