Contentinople - Erin Barker - News Bits: McCain vs. YouTube

Written by Erin Barker

Wednesday, October 15. 2008 at 11:44 AM EDT 1 comment

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The Republican presidential campaign has recently been "raisin' McCain" over YouTube Inc. 's removal of some of its videos due to copyright claims.

In a letter to CEO Chad Hurley, John McCain's campaign general counsel Trevor Potter has asked that campaign videos be given special consideration -- a "careful legal review, including fair use analysis, to determine whether the infringement claim has substantial merit" -- before they are removed.

Both campaigns have had videos removed from the site due to alleged copyright infringement. For example, Barack Obama's campaign mashed up some NBC newscasts to create a broadcast from an imaginary future horrorland in which McCain was president. In another example, McCain borrowed "Can't Take My Eyes Off of You" without permission to bemoan "Obama Love."

The McCain campaign argues that political campaign videos fall under fair use, NewTeeVee reports, because "1) the uses are non-commercial and transformative; 2) they are factual, not fictional; 3) they are extremely brief; and 4) they have no conceivable effect on the market for the allegedly infringing works."

In other news:

Steve Jobs called Blu-ray a "bag of hurt," yesterday as the new Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) notebooks launched without Blu-ray capabilities, The Industry Standard reports. The licensing standard for Blu-ray hardware and software is too complex, Jobs said, and Apple is still waiting for the technology to "take off."

Spike TV is adapting Web series MoCap, LLC for television, Variety reports. Spike ordered six half-hour episodes of the show from Worldwide Biggies, which previously adapted Web series Worldwide Fido [ed note: Can I just say, this sounds awesome.] for TV for Nick at Nite. MoCap, which is scheduled to premiere in January, is The Office-like take on the inner workings of a video game company.

Tags: Apple, MTV, Technology, Video, Video, YouTube

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