Campaign videos--Fair Use, not infringement

Political campaigns have been busily clipping out snippets of news coverage and building them into campaign videos. And the TV networks have just as busily been sending demands to YouTube and other video sites to remove those videos as violation of copyright. Only problem: they’re not violations of copyright. They’re fully within the umbrella of Fair Use—the right to use copyrighted material without permission or payment in some cases. Learn more at the Center’s Fair Use site. In fact, when makers protest such demands to take down their videos, the videos go right back up. Now the Center, along with the Washington College of Law and others, has joined with the Electronic Frontier Foundation to send letters to the networks and to Youtube suggesting that they recognize the law and even use resources such as the Center’s Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video to help them understand it.