Yesterday we blogged about the request by the McCain-Palin campaign that YouTube respond to takedown notices less automatically. YouTube has responded in the negative, stating (as I did) that the problem is the law, not YouTube’s manner of dealing with the opposing parties. Here is YouTube’s response; I find it pretty reasonable. The Electronic Frontier Foundation wishes YouTube would show a bit more willingness to ignore obviously spurious takedown notices, e.g. ones where the contested material is a few seconds of a news show.

An interesting question is whether political campaign ads should get some special treatment. McCain’s campaign argues that because of the time sensitivity of campaigns and the importance of the free flow of information to the electorate, there should be a higher standard for taking down a campaign ad. YouTube doesn’t agree. Neither does Chris Soghoian in a well-argued, passionate post: Stand in line, he tells McCain, along with all the other people who are being abused by inappropriate DMCA takedowns.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 16th, 2008 at 7:19 am and is filed under Open Access, Owning bits—copyright. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.