Presidential hopeful John McCain has written a letter of protest to YouTube, after several of his campaign videos were yanked from the site.
The videos showed clips from news broadcasts, violating the terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and incurring the wrath of the US’s major networks, including Fox, which presented YouTube with takedown notices.
YouTube’s decision to acquiesce has incensed the McCain camp which sent an open letter to the site claiming the “overreaching copyright claims have resulted in the removal of non-infringing campaign videos from YouTube, thus silencing political speech.
“Nothing in the DMCA requires a host like YouTube to comply automatically with the take-down notices, while blinding itself from their legal merit,” it continues.
The letter goes on to suggest that Google considers a full legal review of all takedown notices to assess their merit, claiming “surely, the protection of core political speech and the protection of the central role of YouTube has come to play in the country’s political discourse is worth the small amount of additional legal work our proposal would require.”
YouTube has dismissed the suggestion arguing “that performing a substantive legal review of every DMCA notice we receive prior to processing a takedown is not a viable solution.”
Obama guns for gamer vote
However, technology has been kinder to rival Barack Obama, who is set to place the first presidential campaign advertising in online videogames.
The videogame ads will feature in 18 online games available through the Xbox 360’s Live service including Guitar Hero 3 and The Incredible Hulk. They’re designed to connect with young adult males, a demographic that’s proved difficult to mobilise in recent elections.
The ads will be targeted at 10 key swing states and appear in games as billboards and banners, with an image of Obama and his campaign slogan “early voting has begun”, which a link to his “VoteForChange.com” website.
Click here to read our feature on how Google is changing the face of political debate
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