YouTube Rejects McCain's Fair-Use Review Proposal

YouTube rejected a written plea from the McCain-Palin campaign to subject political videos to a more lengthy review process before taking them down for alleged copyright violations.

The McCain-Palin campaign sent a three-page letter to YouTube and Google after a number of McCain political videos were taken down from YouTube for alleged violations of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.

Trevor Potter, general counsel for the McCain-Palin campaign, in the letter sent to YouTube, argued that the clips in question in the videos were no more than 10 seconds long, and fell under the fair use doctrine. In the letter, Potter made this request:

"We fully understand that YouTube may receive too many videos, and too many takedown notices, to be able to conduct full fair-use review of all such notices. But we believe it would consume few resources -- and provide enormous benefit -- for YouTube to commit to a full legal review of all takedown notices on videos posted from accounts controlled by (at least) political candidates and campaigns."

Zahavah Levine, chief counsel for YouTube, sent a letter Tuesday refusing the McCain-Palin campaign's request, citing, among other reasons:

"While we agree with you that the U.S. presidential election-related content is invaluable and worthy of the highest level of protection, there is a lot of other content on our global site that our users around the world find to be equally important, including, by way of example only, political campaigns from around the globe at all levels of government, human rights movements, and other important voices. We try to be careful not to favor one category of content on our site over others, and to treat all of our users fairly, regardless of whether they are an individual, a large corporation or a candidate for public office. "