Campaigns Should Expose Improper Demands to Take Down Videos

Once the election has passed, the presidential campaigns should publicly expose specific incidents in which overaggressive copyright claims have stifled political expression during this campaign cycle, CDT said in a letter to both campaigns today. The McCain-Palin campaign recently complained that campaign videos containing less than ten seconds of broadcast footage have been removed from YouTube at the demand of media companies who own the footage. Such “takedown” requests are improper because the use of brief clips of footage in political commentary is generally legal under the “fair use” provision of copyright law.