YouTube rejects McCain request for DMCA takedown fix

YouTube has rejected a request from John McCain's presidential campaign for a legal review of political videos that are the subject of deletion requests.

The Google-owned company said Tuesday evening in a response to McCain's organization (PDF) that it could not give campaigns special treatment and that it was "not in a position to verify" whether infringement complaints made under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act were legitimate or not.

The McCain camp is upset that some of its political ads and videos, which used brief snippets of news broadcasts and other copyrighted material, have been the subject of DMCA takedown requests after they appear on YouTube. Often, the McCain-Palin campaign's general counsel said, those videos are "immediately" removed for 10 days, which is a long stretch of time during a presidential campaign.

The campaign sent a letter to YouTube on Monday asking for a "full legal review" of DMCA takedown notices sent to "political candidates and campaigns." Here is an excerpt from the response from YouTube Chief Counsel Zahavah Levine sent a day later rebuffing the request:

While we agree with you that the U.S. presidential election-related content is invaluable and worthy of the highest level of protection, there is a lot of other content on our global site that our users around the world find to be equally important, including, by way of example only, political campaigns from around the globe at all levels of government, human rights movements, and other important voices. We try to be careful not to favor one category of content on our site over others, and to treat all of our users fairly, regardless of whether they are an individual, a large corporation or a candidate for public office.

The real problem here is individuals and entities that abuse the DMCA takedown process. You and our other content uploaders can play a critical role in helping us to address this difficult problem...You can file counter-notifications. You can seek retractions of abusive takedown notices. You can hold abusive claimants publicly accountable for their actions by publicizing their actions...

We look forward to working with Senator (or President) McCain on ways to combat abuse of the DMCA takedown process on YouTube, including by way of example, strengthening the fair use doctrine...

One example of what upset the McCain campaign would likely be CBS News' successful DMCA takedown request to YouTube over the McCain campaign's lipstick-on-a-pig ad. It used a brief video clip featuring CBS News anchor Katie Couric to make a point about sexism. (Disclaimer: CNET News is published by CBS Interactive, a unit of CBS.)

[ballssalty]

It would be interesting to see if the Obama campaign gets hit with these DMCA notices from the major media outlets as well or is there a bias in the media and they are only targeting McCain?

[Sbell42]

Seeing that one of the DMCA notices they're upset about came from Fox News, I don't think the old "liberal media bias" excuse is going to fly. My guess is that both campaigns have been hit by DCMAs, but it's a bigger deal for McCain, since he doesn't have as much campaign money and could really use the free marketing to get his attack ads out.

[JoeF2]

Yes, Obama campaign ads have also been taken down.
Unlike the McCain campaign, the Obama campaign doesn't whine about that, though.
Guess who shows more intelligence?
McCain voted for the DMCA... Now he sees for himself how bad of a law that was. Why should he get better treatment than everybody else? You could introduce a bill to scrap the DMCA for everybody. THAT would be the right thing to do...

[bluemountain]

Obama is not using any media information without their permission, that is the difference between the two. McCain is also using songs in his rallies without the artist permission. He should know better than that.

[sythara]

Targetting Obama would make you a racist, so yeah only McCain is the target here.

[bo747]

McCullagh's response is full of opinion. Professional journalists today will say it's acceptable to mix "brief snippets" of opinion with the news but where does the news begin and the opinion end?

[cshander]

While it would be interesting to find out if both campaigns are having this issue, can you not appreciate the irony? The DMCA was passed by a unanimous vote in the senate, which must mean that McCain voted for it!

[jyakimowich]

Actually, unless you look at the voting records, he may have not been present for the vote, as is common for many senators or members of the House, especially Senators McCain & Obama during this time of their campaigns. I'm not saying that he wasn't there or that the bill was before the Senate during the campaign (which of course, it wasn't), but I'm just saying that he might not have been, but it's a matter of public record, I might just look it up, out of curiosity. If you're interested, or anyone else here is, I suggest that you check for yourself as well, it's most likely easily accessible.

[Galaxy5]

Whaaaah. Whiny Republicans who don't get what they want. For the party that supposedly stands for self-sufficiency, they sure do whine a lot. Maybe someone should call the waaahmbulance.

[jeolmeun]

Someone call the waaahmbulance because Galaxy5 is whining about whiny Republicans.

[jyakimowich]

What would you say if it were Senator Obama confronted with this issue?

[bsarte]

I am 100% certain that NO Obama videos will be removed. 100%!

And the legal counsel from YouTube/Google said it perfectly. The problem is individuals/groups abusing the current system. Which means that if the system is flawed to the extent that it can be abused in this way it needs to be revisited and changed. Any good administrator knows that. The McCain campaign has every right to make the request, the DMCA sucks and always has -- unanimous vote or not!

Maybe we should all go watch all of Obama's videos -- make sure he isn't using ANYTHING that was ever on TV anywhere... hmmm... can you say "never gonna happen"?

[geolemon]

Oh man... it's like freaking Men in Black... or the movie Wag the Dog maybe..

Something pops up that is less than flattering to the McCain/Palin campaign, and the next thing you know you've got a man in a black suit, sunglasses, and an earpiece ready to put his arm around your shoulder and change your perspective...

"Just visit our website - view our ads! Nooo... they are completely neutral, unbiased ads. Promise."

Spam.
First, ***** enlargement. Then, "unclaimed winnings". Then, cheap Viagra and Cialis. Now, McCain and Palin.
All spam. "click here now!"

This certainly does nothing to reverse my impression of their campaign as a carefully managed manipulation attempt.