Romney Invokes Fair Use In Dispute With NBC Over Campaign Ad 242
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.'"
Fair use? "Not comfortable with..." (Score:5, Insightful)
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!
Re:Fair use? "Not comfortable with..." (Score:5, Insightful)
Not 'fair use' but no sympathy for the news media (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Not 'fair use' but no sympathy for the news med (Score:2, Insightful)
Are you kidding? Political speech is at the *core* of First Amendment protections. If Fair Use should cover *anything*, it's political speech. Mitt Romney's a douchebag, but he's a douchebag who's right on this one (just like McCain was, in 2008).
Re: Are all freedoms equal? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Fair use? "Not comfortable with..." (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyone else thinking... Oh so exploitable?
Re:Fair use? "Not comfortable with..." (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh... (Score:4, Insightful)
Because it's not included in a news program aired at 6:30 PM over a decade ago?
If Romney wants to say that Gingrich was found guilty of ethics violations, then Romney can get in front of a camera and say it.
He can't steal footage of Brokaw saying it and use that.
The only reason he's using the footage of Brokaw is to imply an endorsement from Brokaw. That's not legitimate. He can convey the facts without using the likeness of someone else who doesn't want to be used in that manner.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fair use? "Not comfortable with..." (Score:5, Insightful)
Are all freedoms equal? Do my freedoms hold more weight over yours?
That depends, are you rich?
Re:Don't you get it? Republicans only ones DEFENDI (Score:4, Insightful)
You are correct that Democrats, by and large, stand on the wrong side of this issue because of their allegiance with Hollywood.
You are incorrect in asserting that Republicans are afraid of the electorate because of the Tea Party. "Tea Party" is just a replacement term for "neo-con" because, after eight years of GWB, the majority of Americans finally figured out that "neo-cons" are the scum of the fucking earth.
I'll tell you what Republicans are afraid of: Black people. All those black people who rushed out to vote for Obama in '08. Those same black people who didn't vote in the congressional elections in 2010 because Obama wasn't up for reelection. Most importantly, the same black people who will make 2012 another record for voter turnout, reelecting Obama and kicking the Republicans out of congress. And the scariest thing of all for the Republicans has to be, from 2012 - 2016. If Obama can deliver better education, health care, and redistribute wealth; then all those black voters will realize the difference they've made and will likely vote in every election for the rest of their lives.
Personally, I'd rather fight the Dems on copyright issues than let the Republicans back in. It's pretty weak-sauce of the Democrats to allow Hollywood to hold this much control over them, but that doesn't SCARE me. It pisses me off. Republicans starting a war with Iran scares the shit out of me. Their economic policies scare the shit out me because I'm not rich (and even if I was, I would still be morally opposed to them). And their opposition to socialized medicine is indefensible.
Re:Fair use? "Not comfortable with..." (Score:5, Insightful)
Copyright owners want to do away with fair use.
That's exactly the point. These media companies have been expanding their "rights" for years while shrinking ours. If the copyright system was anything like it is now back when these companies started doing business, they would have been sued out of existence before anybody knew who they were. They want to make it big playing by one set of rules, but then change the rules to prevent others from doing the same.
Re:Fair use? "Not comfortable with..." (Score:3, Insightful)
Atheists are generally fine with religious people having their own views, just not with them pushing them using public resources.