Thursday, February 15, 2007

Two Crazy Copyright Stories

The first is that Nancy Pelosi started a blog and posted C-SPAN clips of House activities. Far right Republicans called her out for violating C-SPAN's copyright. How dumb is that? Isn't it fair use? How can CSPAN copyright Congress? Turns out they can't for the House floor but can for Committee hearings (for 100 years!). The Republicans retracted their release within the day. Now if Congress will retract C-SPAN's monopoly and copyright over what our representatives are doing.

The second is dumber.Wendy Seltzer, a law professor, trying to show how copyright holders claim more rights than they actually have, posted the NFL's copyright claim of the superbowl. "This telecast is copyrighted by the NFL for the private use of our audience. Any other use of this telecast or of any pictures, descriptions, or accounts of the game without the NFL's consent, is prohibited." Turns out they can't do that. You have fair use claims you can use it for and you can use it for educational purposes and (I believe) you can show clips to review it. Guess what, the NFL sent her a takedown notice; demonstrating exactly the point she was making.

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