alternative hippopotamus

progressive cyberdadaism from our nation’s capital

November 9, 2006

Fair Use, Copyright, and YouTube

by AltHippo @ 5:49 pm. Filed under Uncategorized

As much as I trust the good folks at Americablog, I’m just a wee bit skeptical of this claim:

I just got a cease-and-desist letter from YouTube, see below, regarding my CNN footage I posted. The footage, you’ll recall, was from Larry King Live last night in which Bill Maher outed Republican Party chair Ken Mehlman as gay. It seems that CNN has suddenly decided that it no longer wants bloggers, or YouTube, posting any of its video, which is kind of surprising since I always thought we were doing a CNN a favor by constantly touting their network.

Really? You don’t think a cable network cares about how or where their copyrighted material is being used? While what is covered by “fair use” and what’s copyright violation is often not obvious, this is a pretty clear cut case. To use an exact quote from a book newspaper, TV show, etc., you need to be creating some new work. It can either be a work of commentary or a work of parody. Here’s one of the pertinent elements for “fair use”: (Standford Copyright and Fair Use)

1. The Transformative Factor: The Purpose and Character of Your Use

In a 1994 case, the Supreme Court emphasized this first factor as being a primary indicator of fair use. At issue is whether the material has been used to help create something new, or merely copied verbatim into another work. When taking portions of copyrighted work, ask yourself the following questions:

* Has the material you have taken from the original work been transformed by adding new expression or meaning?
* Was value added to the original by creating new information, new aesthetics, new insights and understandings?

Taping a show on tv and posting it to a website is not creating something new. However, taking that same clip and creating a piece about censorship in the media would be creating something new. It would be up to a judge to decide whether it’s fair use or not, but it would fall well inside the meaning of the transformative requirement.

Still, you could post that piece you created on censorship to YouTube, and they could refuse to air it. YouTube is not the Center for Constitutional Rights or some similar organization that promotes free speech. It’s a for-profit corporation that makes money by selling advertising. As I mention in an earlier post, YouTube is negotiating with CBS to be able to post some of their content, with the understanding that that content can be pulled at a later time. That sort of deal is potentially harmful to free speech, and makes the “new media” an extension of ABC, CBS, etc.

I certainly hope that John from Americablog takes the opportunity to create a video piece using the material he collected, and send it to, say, current.tv, where I’m likely to watch it.

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2 Responses to “Fair Use, Copyright, and YouTube”

  1. KathyF Says:
    November 11th, 2006 at 7:42 am

    I quit trusting the good folks at Americablog a long time ago.

  2. AltHippo Says:
    November 11th, 2006 at 9:32 am

    Oh, what happened?

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