[A2k] Fox News Tries Selective DMCA Takedowns: If Liberal Bloggers Use It, Take It Down | Techdirt

[Manon Ress]

http://techdirt.com/articles/20091113/1254186924.shtml

Fox News Tries Selective DMCA Takedowns: If Liberal Bloggers Use It,
Take It Down
from the the-dmca-is-only-for-the-embarassing-stuff dept

An anonymous reader alerts us to the story that Fox News has sent a
series of DMCA takedown notices to YouTube for a guy who's been
putting up clips that have been popular among the "liberal" blogworld.
Now, there's an open question as to whether or not these clips are
fair use -- but even if we assume that they are infringing, there's an
interesting element to this. They only targeted the guy who posts
clips that liberal blogs are using. There are tons of other clips that
conservative blogs use -- and those remained up.

In many ways, that shows how the DMCA is really being abused. It is
not being used because of any loss in revenue from these clips being
online. It's really being used solely to stifle opposition speech. I
don't care which side of the political spectrum you fall on, this is
an example of an attempt to stifle speech, not protect some sort of
business model. It's using the DMCA to take down clips that are being
used by people that disagree with the copyright holder, even while
they leave up tons of other clips used by people who agree. I can
understand why Fox News is doing this, but it goes way beyond the
intended purpose of the DMCA (while also suggesting that Fox News
apparently is way too sensitive about its critics).

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Manon Ress
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Knowledge Ecology International
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