Comments on: Bush Campaign Steals Intellectual Property

By: greg

greg — Mon, 28 Jun 2004 16:41:07 +0000

I also looked up what the Bush in 30 seconds commercials where licensed under. I found it was the Creative Commons License, which explicity FORBIDS derivative works.

You’re right about the MoveOn thing. According to the Creative Commons license, the original author needs to be cited and the CC license needs to be displayed.

All the clips are very short and are probably fine under fair-use rules. Sorry to disappoint. Moore probably wanted to include his entire speach, which would be too long to classify as a fair-use “clip”.

The AMPAS restrictions are pretty tight. Here’s section one :

The Annual Academy Awards telecast is copyrighted by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Any rebroadcast or other use of the program or any of its contents, except in accordance with the following, is prohibited.

There are only two exemptions : “broadcast programs and services that are recognized by the Academy as news entities” and obituaries for Oscar winners. Any other use is covered under this :

Permission shall not be granted for the use of clips from the Academy Awards Presentation for non-news ventures. Exceptions will be considered under unusual circumstances, and will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis by the Academy Board of Governors. An exception, if granted, shall not be considered precedential.

I see only three possible scenarios : the Bush campaign is in violation of copyright law, the Academy issued one of its rare exemptions, or the Bush commercial is protected by some copyright loophole that applies to campaign ads.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Mon, 28 Jun 2004 14:47:01 +0000

I’m pretty much as close to a layman expert on copyright law as you can get. Fair use when speaking of the Creative Common License would be using the clip for educational purposes or non commercial purposes. You could construe that the Bush campaign used it for non commercial purposes, however, they used it in a derivative work which is explicitly forbid by the license. Unless they got permission from moveon.org, or permission from the original author. I do not however know if the original author could even give permission. It depends on how the wording of the contest was. It may be that submitting the work placed it under the CCL and the author can’t license it under any other license.

By: Mark Spittle

Mark Spittle — Mon, 28 Jun 2004 13:25:06 +0000

All I know is that the American Nazi Party is PISSED about infringement of their copyrighted material.

By: travc

travc — Mon, 28 Jun 2004 05:51:20 +0000

All the clips are very short and are probably fine under fair-use rules. Sorry to disappoint. Moore probably wanted to include his entire speach, which would be too long to classify as a fair-use “clip”.

On the other hand, including the “moveon.org” tag may well be trademark infringement. Those are the rules (I think) that are used by Fox and Disney to keep anyone from even showing tiny clips of their characters. I know Fox actaully forced an educationaly documentary to edit out a scene where some kids were being interviewed becasue a TV in the background had the Simpsons on. Can’t show any of their characters…

Maybe MoveOn should sue on trademark grounds.

By: Pacific Views

Pacific Views — Mon, 28 Jun 2004 01:24:29 +0000

Sunday Reading

ACIG: Indonesia receives the first shipment of Su-27s from Russia. Interesting pictures of India’s 2003 aerospace expo. Ampersand reposts an oldie but goodie debunking the claim that domestic violence is an equal opportunity activity. Army Times: Soldi…

By: the eligible Ross Lincoln

the eligible Ross Lincoln — Sun, 27 Jun 2004 21:48:06 +0000

Tinfoil hat time:

Does anyone else suspect that those Bush = Hitler ads were created by Trolls seeking to discredit Liberals. much in the same way that Trolls post to liberal blogs’ comments expressing serverly disturbing opinions (Saw someone do it on Atrios last week).
Maybe the creators of the films let the republicans use it themselves.

No, that’s giving even them too much credit.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Sat, 26 Jun 2004 23:58:17 +0000

Just because the pieces used are in the public domain does not make the finished work public domain. See this court decision for an example of one such instance. But even if the you argued that the images were public domain, they were modified (color added, moveon.org superimposed, etc). I also looked up what the Bush in 30 seconds commercials where licensed under. I found it was the Creative Commons License, which explicity FORBIDS derivative works. You can read the license here.

In my estimation, you could EASILY sue for copyright infringement. Of course, usually that kind of case only reimburses you for lost revenue, of which there would be non here. However, you would get an injunction against further distribution of the work and a lot of bad publicity for the Bush campaign.

By: cs

cs — Sat, 26 Jun 2004 23:09:23 +0000

Well, I’ve sent my email to the academy. Must admit, that like Andrew, my first thought was about the clips from the MoveOn contest video, not the one of Moore. Without taking time to check the terms of the MoveOn contest, I assumed the disavowed contest entry must be considered public domain, because the images themselves must have been in order for the contestant to use them. But now that you’ve brought it up, it seems clear the Moore clip is quite another kettle of fish. I hope you suggestion to visitors to write the Academy does some good.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Sat, 26 Jun 2004 16:43:05 +0000

So, how did they get the permission to use the clip from the moveon.org commercial? I can’t imagine either moveon.org or the creators would have licensed it.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Sat, 26 Jun 2004 04:28:40 +0000

Again, no support for linux. Guess I shouldn’t be running that commie OS.