Truth in Advertising Vs. Censorship - Fair Use the Loser

[Spock]

The background .....

Congressman John Kasich put out a commercial featuring a man dressed as a steelworker discussing Governor Ted Strickland's record, Strickland's campaign folks apparently realized that the 'steelworker' was really a paid actor, Chip Redden and put together their own video, mixing in clips of some of the actor's other work to make fun of Kasich.

This is what I have a problem with .....

One of the clips came from a film by Arginate Studios, LLC, which then used the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) to send a take down demand to YouTube. YouTube removed the video.

While the use of copyright to take down political speech in the weeks before an election is hardly new, this is a particularly egregious example. Why? Because the reuse of a few seconds of Aringate's video to illustrate a political point is such an obvious fair use.

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/10/cop...r-election

Isn't it time that Fair Use was codified in law with adequate sanctions for those who try and use it to silence criticism.

YouTube has now restored the video.

Political affiliation of the parties involved has been omitted in an attempt to avoid diverting debate from Fair Use abuses.

[Doc]

Spock wrote:
Isn't it time that Fair Use was codified in law...

Actually, the problem is precisely that fair use was codified in the 1976 Copyright Act.

Before then, fair use was an equitable principle broadly applied in the interest of justice and fair play.

Once it was codified, it became subject to rigid interpretation and it could be weakened by amending the language of the section or by other subsequent legislation such as the DMCA.

It's way too late to let the cat back out of the rapidly-submerging bag, but striking fair use from the copyright code has been on my wish list for many years.

[Gutenberg]

I would think the copyright owner should have some control over how his property is used. For instance if he feels that the "fair use" distorts and misrepresents his property, he should be able to sue to have his content removed. It is still his property after all.

[Spock]

Gutenberg wrote:
I would think the copyright owner should have some control over how his property is used. For instance if he feels that the "fair use" distorts and misrepresents his property, he should be able to sue to have his content removed. It is still his property after all.

So you don't believe in Fair Use as an absolute defense against censorship?

[Doc]

Gutenberg wrote:
I would think the copyright owner should have some control over how his property is used. For instance if he feels that the "fair use" distorts and misrepresents his property, he should be able to sue to have his content removed. It is still his property after all.

Actually, it's not "still his property."

Once the creator has sold a copy, that copy belongs to the new owner. The principle is called "first sale" and it's present in the Copyright Act. It's also, incidentally, the basis of civilization.

The new owner can do almost anything with his copy, except make further copies. Fair use spells out the limited circumstances under which the new owner can copy portions of the original.

If you think about it, you may see that any restriction on your ability to do any damned thing you want to (short of causing physical harm or maybe willful/reckless severe mental anguish) with something that you lawfully purchased and own makes absolutely no sense. It gives the seller a new and completely arbitrary property right to sell in something that he's already sold once before. Such restrictions do nothing but create artificial markets built around state-created monopolies and monopolies are almost never beneficial to anyone except the monopolist.

And that's copyright law in a nutshell.