Be careful what you wish for. In this year’s U.S. and Canadian election campaigns, politicians discovered they are not immune from the laws they make.
In the U.S., a copyright controversy involved Republican presidential candidate John McCain and YouTube.
McCain accused YouTube of yanking his campaign videos too quickly to comply with infringement notices from copyright owners alleging the campaign videos unlawfully contained their content.
In 2005, McCain helped vote in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) that requires sites such as YouTube to remove material based on such allegations.
In his letter to YouTube, McCain complained about the site’s unwillingness to consider fair use in videos before taking them down and recommended the site commit to a full legal review of all take-down notices on videos posted from accounts controlled by political parties and their candidates. YouTube responded that it would not change its practices as that would be granting special privileges to the campaign.
The crux of the issue relates to the way the act is structured which, among other things, has led to the abuse of the take down process — a process that was endorsed by McCain. Many experts feel DMCA should be changed to comply better with fair use rules.
In Canada, for example, a notice-and-notice, rather than a notice-and-take-down rule, has been proposed.
In Canada, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Conservatives may have also been a victim of their own whim.
In the last parliamentary session, the Tories moved to introduce contentious new copyright rules to curb sharing of digital music and videos.
This year, the party ran into copyright troubles and embarrassment when Industry Minister Jim Prentice — who was overseeing a controversial plan to tighten Canadian copyright law — landed in hot water by using a video cut to a copyrighted song without seeking the permission of an unamused copyright owner.
During the recent election campaign, CTV was concerned the Conservative party may have taken CTV news clips and used them in their campaign ads. CTV does not license material to political parties during campaigns.
If Canadian copyright reform included broader fair-dealing rights — rights that many think should be adopted, but the Conservatives did not include in their draft bill — that kind of use would have been acceptable.
So, in both countries, the same politicians who enact or try to enact tough copyright laws, have exhibited the very behaviours they wanted to stop in others.
This shows how important it is for lawmakers to carefully think through the practical ramifications of legislation.
Hopefully, these examples will give Canadian politicians pause for thought when it comes time to bring forth a new copyright reform bill.
In both Canada and the U.S., the same politicians who enact or try to enact tough copyright laws, have exhibited the very behaviours they wanted to stop in others.
