Talk:DMCA

I'm confused about the lament against liberals use of DCMA for copyright violation. Aren't conservatives against copyright violation (stealing)? Or are we claiming that his videos didn't have copyright violations? As written, the article isn't clear on this point. HelpJazz 13:51, 19 October 2008 (EDT)

I think it's wrong to paint this as a liberal-conservative issue. It's not even about whether or not copyright violations are bad. DMCA abuse happens to trample fair use, period. And both sides of any political spectrum are doing it. As one of the new sources shows, the Christian Broadcasting Network and Fox News are among those who sent out these bogus claims, and the Obama campaign also was targeted (you probably read less about them because they didn't sent a letter to YouTube asking for special privileges for political accounts). --AlanS 14:29, 19 October 2008 (EDT)

How is the removed section "incoherence "? I thought it was pretty coherent. Can it be rewritten more clearly? HelpJazz 18:46, 19 October 2008 (EDT)

I didn't write or remove it (for the log, the sentence in question is "Organizations that request the removal of such videos do so because the McCain campaign does not have permission to use their video, also known as breaking the DMCA law."), but here are my two cents, anyway:

In reference to the McCain issue, this sentence is hobby-lawyer speculation without a source. In general, such a sentence would not really be correct and kinda sides with DMCA abusers since you don't automatically break copyright law or owe money to a station if you just use a short clip for your YouTube video. Likewise, just look at several of our images which technically belong to someone else for example. It's called "fair use". (I'm not saying that you can simply grab everything and just throw around "fair use" as the ultimate excuse, either.)

It's not really well-mapped ground, but copyright holders (and trolls) simply send bogus DMCA notes to sites in the hopes to achieve a take-down. Prominent abuse cases were Crook and Viacom for example. That article is worth a read even beyond those examples because it highlights the problem behind these DMCA letters and why YouTube and others obey them so mindlessly.

So in closing, and to return to the question, I'd say that it was correct to remove the sentence. I wouldn't have called it "incoherence", but it was slightly misinformed because it completely ignored any fair use aspect. Any statement about whether or not the McCain campaign was right or wrong would need an authoritative source (a court ruling, for example). It's be a lot safer (and easier to source) to simply present the reasoning of both sides and to state that there was/is a dispute. --AlanS 18:59, 20 October 2008 (EDT)