McCain Campaign Protests YouTube's DMCA Policy 597
Colz Grigor writes "It appears that CBS and Fox have submitted DMCA takedown notices to YouTube for videos from the McCain campaign. The campaign is now complaining about YouTube's DMCA policy making it too easy for copyright holders to remove fair-use videos. I hope they pursue this by addressing flaws in the DMCA."
Special Treatment (Score:0, Interesting)
Go ahead and mod this flamebait, I just don't think he should get special treatment just because he's a presidential candidate.
Checkmate (Score:5, Interesting)
If anything happens, they'll just see to it that the DMCA doesn't apply to political ads.
That would be perfect.
Since there does exist an actual http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_Party [wikipedia.org] Pirate Party. Now put a political message in the metadata of your files, and claim your exemption.
I'm certain that The Pirate Party would have no issue endorsing files so that they received DCMA exemptions.
(The Pirate Party of Podunk County has approved this message)
Want to end the campaign now? Ask this: (Score:5, Interesting)
I would love to have this question asked at tonight's debate.
"Senator McCain, your campaign is complaining that it is being unfairly censored by the DMCA. How do you reconcile your complaint when you yourself voted for this exact measure?
I'm no Obama supporter, but I'd love to watch him answer that question.
Re:We Can Only Hope the Same Happens to Obama (Score:2, Interesting)
A little of your own revisionist history?
Web Forms - So you can laugh at your Senator (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's a copy of an email I sent to my fellow Arizonan:
Ah, John. Your ill-advised vote back in 1998 for the DMCA has come back to bite you. It was with great pleasure that I read that Youtube was taking down your campaign videos due to a DMCA demand by Fox and CBS. You helped pass it. Sir, Barry Goldwater was a conservative. William Buckley was a conservative. A conservative wants FEWER laws, not more. LESS government regulation, not more. A conservative encourages a business-friendly environment - NOT a "business gets anything it wants" environment. You have forgotten the difference, and now you are paying the price. Your presidential campaign is all but over. You have lost the conservative base with your poorly-thought-out desperate attempts to please everyone. You had us, right until you took the supremely idiotic step of suspending your campaign - which was a clear political ploy that backfired. Capitalism is vital, but part of the price of capitalism is sometimes suffering failure. Bankruptcy, too is part of the failure process - entrepreneurs and other people need to know that they have a chance to start over if they fail. Your vote on the Bankruptcy Act of 2005, making it MORE difficult for all but the richest Americans to declare bankruptcy was another gift to business. And still, you persist in giving business whatever they want, at the expense of average Americans, with your recent idiotic vote on the "Copyright Czar" legislation. The record companies and motion picture companies have a broken business model that is being supplanted by new technologies, and like your ridiculous bank bailout bill you have chosen to give them what they want rather than letting them pay the price of failure. I will be voting for Bob Barr this election, not out of any hope that he will win, but rather in the hope that Republican political operatives will realize that increasing numbers of their traditional base can no longer stomach voting for so-called "Republicans" who don't seem any different from Democrats. I look forward to supporting your continued efforts in the Senate on behalf of Arizona, but your presidential campaign is over.
Re:We Can Only Hope the Same Happens to Obama (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What's good for the goose... (Score:1, Interesting)
Even if you "publish a video yourself", hosting providers have DMCA procedures as well. DMCA notices would still have to be processed, or the hosting providers risk losing their "safe harbor" provisions.
I guess that if you go the torrent route it's a bit more difficult to be served.
Re:We Can Only Hope the Same Happens to Obama (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, the US system is so much better where 15% of the population has no insurance at all,
and those that do have it are frequently trapped by it.
How many more entrapenures would we have if people were not tied to their insurance policy?
How many small businesses would be competative if access to insurance was a level playing field.
(Oh, and my last medical proceedure took a month and a half, four appointments, and a hundred dollars in co-pays to get a shot of cortesone that was obvious to everyone concerned was needed from the start... and national health will be worse? spare me.)
Re:We Can Only Hope the Same Happens to Obama (Score:3, Interesting)
I wish it was that easy.
While I will agree, there is more than enough blame to go around, we must also look at this from a factual standpoint. Yes, Republicans are partly to blame. However, the blame that rests with Republicans is largely one of inaction. IE: they sat there like a bunch of facking idiots with their thumbs up their asses. Let me tell you NOBODY is more pissed off about that than I. Fortunately, many of those inactive RINO's (for those wondering, RINO = Republican In Name Only. Leftist GOP members.) got booted out of office in 2006. Interestingly, Many of the RINO's were replaced with "Blue Dog" Democrats (Rightist Dems).
For the Democrats from that era though, the problem is more serious. Many of them, including Chris Dodd and Barney Frank, were ACTIVELY blocking ANY reform of the banking system. There are ethical issues as well, as it turns out Barney Frank was actually DATING the head of Fannie and Freddie during that time. Chris Dodd, the head of the House Banking committee, received more money than anyone other than Barack Obama from Fannie and Freddie. Unlike the Republicans, the Democrats have DEEP ethical and corruption problems surrounding the financial meltdown. This is NOT a partisan issue, but an Ethics and Legal one. That transcends party loyalties. Or, at least, it SHOULD.
Unfortunately, it appears that, rather than honestly accept responsibility for their active blocking of needed reform, many of the Democrats are playing the CYA game, and trying to shift responsibility to the Republicans. Not only is this disingenuous, it belies the factual history of the meltdown. This is what gets so many Conservatives up in arms. Yes, Republicans should have done more, but the Democrats were the ones actually BLOCKING a fix. A fix proposed and supported by none other than John McCain.
This is why I'm voting for McCain. He saw this problem coming, and tried to stop it. Prescience is a quality we need in a President.
Re:We Can Only Hope the Same Happens to Obama (Score:2, Interesting)
I fucking hate Bush, but statements like this are the reason we end up with crappy presidents like him.
We haven't had inaction on energy policy. We've had destructive action instead. Bush has agreed to subsidize all sorts of crazy energy stuff. He had even sent the military to the Persian Gulf region, so that we can protect the oil companies operations at taxpayer expense. If we ended the subsidies and left energy prices to the free market, we might not be burning oil any more. The last thing you should be asking for, is a president to "do something." Presidents doing things is what causes problems.
And as for education and healthcare, if you don't think you can afford more inaction, then write your state legislature and governor. WTF does any of that have to do with presidents? If you ask a president to deal with this shit, then you're just going to end up sending more tax money to Washington and hoping that your state meets are the bizarre and arbitrary requirements for getting a portion of it back. Telling presidents to fix education is the most anti-education thing you can possibly do, unless you tell them to fix it by butting out. Send your money to your state capitol or better yet, your city government, and your chances of it being spent on education, and being spent in a sane manner, are maximized.
Think about who represents you. Who can you realistically fire? The president answers to 300M citizens. How many citizens does your state district House member represent? About 28000 in my case. It's pretty clear who should have the power to "do something."
Re:We Can Only Hope the Same Happens to Obama (Score:5, Interesting)
The real blame lies with the 1990s president who repealed the Glass-Steagall of 1933 w
The majority of this can be put onto bad lending practices and the bundling and selling of these loans.
Actually both of you are right. The market deregulation that passed in Nov of 1999, and was signed by Clinton, allowed these financial institutions to speculate with near unlimited leveraging in the derivatives market (particularly the credit default swaps). That is what built the house of cards which is currently falling on our heads. The totally insane lending and even crazier repackaging of bad loans as AAA rated securities is what lead to the bottom level of cards being yanked out.
Incidentally had the 1999 market deregulation not passed that year, it would have reared it's ugly head again the next and it would certainly have been full of even more deregulation madness.
Watch your heads, there are something like 60 trillion dollars of impossible to value credit default swaps hanging out there waiting to come crashing down on us. Makes the $0.7 trillion bailout seem paltry. And that's nothing compared to the over one half quadrillion market for derivatives, that is equally shaky. Most of those derivatives are leveraged to the tune of 60:1. Leveraging in the range of 10:1 to 20:1 is what lead to the stock market crash of 1929. This ain't anywhere near being over with.
Re:We Can Only Hope the Same Happens to Obama (Score:1, Interesting)
An aside: I should have been more clear before, when I said that it took me two months to get an appointment, I am thinking particularly about a situation in which I had taken a fall and possibly torn my rotator cuff. It wasn't quite an emergency (I was definitely at the end of the queue after going through triage at the ER), and I would have really preferred to wait a day or so and see my PCP. I've heard similar from friends. (Of course, anecdotes ain't data.) Two months for a normal check-up appointment is more than reasonable; some might even consider that a rush.
Re:We Can Only Hope the Same Happens to Obama (Score:3, Interesting)
they remember the idiocy that is the DMCA and reform it?
It is naive of you to hope for this part, though. Good luck with that.
No it's not naive, in fact it's naive to think that any problem will get fixed in a timely manner when it doesn't directly affect the politicians in charge of making the laws. As the author of this article points out [cnet.com] it was exactly such a process that led to the passage of the 1988 Video Privacy Protection Act. It won't be so much specifically "remembering the idiocy of the DMCA" that results in any changes though, it will be looking forward to the next election cycle and realizing that they'll have to deal with it again in two or four years when internet media will probably be an even more effective (and necessary) medium for campaigning.
But as also pointed out in the article, that will only happen if we don't let the politicians get away with trying to craft special rules for themselves that don't apply to everyone else.