It turns out it wasn’t just us amen bloggers who got caught up in TVW’s imaginary copyright infringement dragnet. The Spokesman-Review’s Rich Roesler blogs on his own Keystone Kafkaesque run-in with TVW Security:
On Friday, the network started contacting bloggers, including me, who use excerpts from its recordings. TVW has long allowed TV and radio reporters to edit and use its content and apparently still does.
But the network, which copyrights its work, says it’s worried about its streaming-video clips turning up in campaign attack ads. That could presumably draw official ire that could threaten the goodwill and access the network has worked hard to gain.
It’s not hard to imagine the content being put to attack-ad use. TVW cameras and microphones have inadvertently caught lawmakers falling asleep at their desks, stammering foolishly in floor speeches and ranting at each other.
Which, um, you’d think would be things it might be in the public interest for voters to know. But Roesler continues:
As I mentioned to TVW, it seems like there’s a fair-use argument to be made here. The fair-use doctrine allows reviewers, reporters and so on to quote or broadcast short snippets of a copyrighted work under certain circumstances.
Damn straight. And to illustrate his point, Roesler joins IP pirates like me by embedding my reposting of the video clip that apparently kicked off the whole brouhaha.
(©2006 TVW. View full source here.)
Ahoy, ye matey! Way to hornswaggle those bilge-sucking scallywags at TVW! Aaaarrrrgggghhhh!
Roesler spoke with TVW President Greg Lane, who assures him that the “embed widget” Lane and I discussed earlier this week will be made available shortly, and function along the lines promised, allowing bloggers to set a start and stop time. That’s great, and I expect most bloggers to adopt the TVW widget if only for the sake of convenience, though I’m not exactly sure how that addresses TVW’s concern about political ads. And, there’s still a larger principle at stake here—our well established rights under the fair use exemption—and so I intend to continue to pursue my challenge of the YouTube pull-downs regardless.
Of course, I’ll keep you posted.
Gee, what is TVW’s problem. Fair use is fair use is fair use. If I am not mistaken, the Spokesman Review is not exactly a liberal rag.
For some awesome fair use, you might track down K.O.s Special Comment tonight. He ripped McCain about “context” in regard to his comments on Iraq. He had me, and I think himself at one point, in tears. NOTE: KO beat Bill-O straight up last week.
The Obama campaign has launched a new web site to debunk rightwing lies called “fightthesmears.com”.
First up: Debunking Rush Limbaugh’s lie that Mrs. Obama used the word “whitey” when speaking from the pulpit of Trinity United Church of Christ. The truth: Mrs. Obama has never spoken from the church’s pulpit.
My father spent most of his youth in Spokane. He says that the Spokesman-Review was considered the most conservative paper in the nation for a considerable time (no, I’m not going to cite anyone other than my dad for that). I think rightwingers are in trouble. Their own mouthpieces are starting to mumble that things ain’t right.
Goldy,
There’s also the issue of there not currently being a widget. Maybe we should start calling Mr. Lane Wimpy.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you blogger folks just knock off what you’re doing and we’ll get you an embed widget some time after the November election…
Wonder where the trolls went? They must realize that this one is a loser.
I still don’t believe TVW will have that widget when they’ve promised.
In addition, campaigns typically have better editing staffs that bloggers do, so they’ll be able to slice and dice video footage any way they wish regardless of what we do.
This reminds me that in TVW’s copyright, “bona-fide broadcaster” is even a more artificial construct than journalist.
I guess Youtube and the Spokesman Review website is less a broadcaster than King 5?
Notice how he says to wait till a NON-election year to act against these things???
Horrible!!!