Founding Bloggers Fights Back
At Copyrights and Campaigns, Ben Sheffner reports that the folks at Founding Bloggers are taking on CNN:
Founding Bloggers, the conservative web site that had its video critical of CNN’s reporting on a Chicago “tea party” removed by YouTube after the cable network sent a DMCA takedown notice, is not backing down. On Thursday, Founding Bloggers submitted a DMCA counternotice to YouTube, starting the clock ticking toward a possible re-posting by YouTube — or a lawsuit that could establish important legal precedent regarding the contours of copyright law’s fair use doctrine, especially as it applies to use of news video by political bloggers. “We’re not going to let this just go away,” Andrew Marcus of Founding Bloggers told C&C in an interview earlier today.
Nice.
Ben was a driving force behind this effort, and was the one who first told me about it, so he deserves a lot of credit.
Meanwhile, Founding Bloggers has uploaded a new in-depth report of the Chicago Tea Party, together with the offending footage:
More on that here.
Finally, Andrew Marcus of Founding Bloggers sent me a nice note, thanking me for my role in publicizing their fight with CNN. Happy to be a part of it, but the real credit goes to Founding Bloggers for their excellent video, and to Ben Sheffner for getting out the word and doing the legal analysis.
I’m not sure if I can articulate this in the way that I wish, but, I will give it a try.
I was just watching a special on my local PBS channel about the old “Smothers Brothers” show. It was interesting and it reminded me of when I was a kid and watched, although, at the time, I don’t believe I really understood what they were talking about. I simply thought they were funny.
Of course, since then, I know that Tom and Dick, especially Tom, were lefties. And there’s nothing wrong with that.
But what struck me was, they were speaking “truth to power” to essentially what was a Democrat government. LBJ was president, Congress was controlled by the Dems. Of course, the Vietnam War was the cause of the discontent, and, again, it was started by a Democratic president and supported by a Democratic Congress.
All understandable. But, here’s my long-winded point: There was a time when the left protested, rightly or wrongly, based on what they believe in.
Now, they only seem to protest for what the Party believes in. Any point, any argument has to toe the Democratic Party line, And, anyone who opposes that line is automatically “ignorant,” “bigoted” or a “mouth-breathing” “lunatic” with something wrong in their “limbic brain.”
I know they all want to speak “truth to power.” But, they are the power and have been almost all of my adult life. It seems to me they really are more interested in speaking “shut up.” And I can give evidence by the lefty trolls who post here.
Ag80 (b19e67) — 4/25/2009 @ 8:46 pmGee, the guy wasn’t chanting “fascist” with his kid, after all.
Who’d have thought DCSCA would have gotten that wrong?
No wonder he was too cowardly to post his video.
Steverino (1b3695) — 4/25/2009 @ 9:52 pm#2- And busy, too. By all means, go after them. All heal the lucrative joys of frivolous lawsuits for lawyers everyehere. This should be a great waste of time for conservatives while the house burns and voters continue to flee.
DCSCA (9d1bb3) — 4/25/2009 @ 10:13 pmDCSCA, another incoherent attempt by you to escape your own subterranean reputation. Keep digging.
SPQR (26be8b) — 4/25/2009 @ 10:15 pm#1- Funny you’d omit that in the same documentary was the big, bad, ‘liberal owned’ media, aka CBS, Inc., that felt public public pressure and government rumblings over show content to censor the Smothers Brothers and looked for any loophole to yank them off the air, which CBS eventually did.
Guess they werent so liberal after all.
And if memory serves, in the same program they nore the Smothers Brothers took CBS to court and won.
DCSCA (9d1bb3) — 4/25/2009 @ 10:24 pm#5 -nore = note. Sorry, typo.
DCSCA (9d1bb3) — 4/25/2009 @ 10:25 pm“On Thursday, Founding Bloggers submitted a DMCA counternotice to YouTube, starting the clock ticking toward a possible re-posting by YouTube — or a lawsuit…”
Good on them. But, if it goes to lawsuit-land, they better have some deep pockets.
Dave Surls (cde488) — 4/25/2009 @ 10:27 pmThe Smothers Brothers were Saturday Night Live almost a decade early, when tweaking the nose of the Establishment was a requirement for the radical left.
daleyrocks (5d22c0) — 4/25/2009 @ 10:44 pmAnd DCSCA, I’m sure if Fox News took down — or pressured Youtube to take down — a leftist blogger’s video exposing its shoddy and slanted coverage you’d also call the effort to re-post it and to face the music of fair-use “frivolous.” Right.
I’m trying to calculate how much contempt for free speech — for the laws and rights which assure ALL of us our inconvenient expessions — it takes to call this effort “frivolous.”
Every American owes a debt of gratitude to Founding Bloggers.
rrpjr (33591b) — 4/25/2009 @ 11:40 pmWilliam S. Paley’s CBS was much more conservative than CBS is today.
Hazy (4e0dda) — 4/26/2009 @ 12:03 am#9- Not at all. This is a great lucrative sport for media attornies on both sides and I’m all for keeping it up if it complies with copyright laws or posters pay for the right if that’s the decision of the courts. Silencing any voice perspective, no matter how mundane or extreme, diminished the discourse.
Another thread on this same blog hailed the layoff of a leftist cartoonist from his gig. Which is rather sad. Muting his voice is no less a loss than pulling down the clip. They really should have just let it go. It’s old news.
DCSCA (9d1bb3) — 4/26/2009 @ 12:40 am#8- Apparently you never caught NBC’s TW3 in the early 60s.
DCSCA (9d1bb3) — 4/26/2009 @ 12:42 amSilencing any voice perspective, no matter how mundane or extreme, diminished the discourse.
nk (4b5c8a) — 4/26/2009 @ 12:52 amI hate it when I agree with DCSCA. Unless speech threatens imminent violence it should be left for judgment in “the market place of ideas”. Let the kids work it out between themselves.
#10- Not that much. But it was a different era. Story goes that Paley use to say revenue from one entertainment show paid for his entire news division, which was a loss leader and not restructured as a profit center until the 80s. CBS Entertainment was pretty progressive in that era, though. See ‘All In The Family’ as just one example. That show as written then could never get on network television today. CBS News pushed the envelope as well, with Murrow, Friendly, Hewitt et al, into Cronkite’s era, but Paley did reign them in from time to time. Paley worried most about pressure from sponsors over content constricting revenue.
DCSCA (9d1bb3) — 4/26/2009 @ 1:02 am#13- Thanks. It really made CNN look petty and says more about the internal turmoil they’re in than the actual content of the clip. Reporters and opinion babblers on all sides and venues cross the line from time to time. Point it out, laugh, run the clip and move on. CNN just made two day story into a blogosphere virus by picking at the scab.
DCSCA (9d1bb3) — 4/26/2009 @ 1:10 amDCSCA, go here. If that’s not a post to separate the sheep from the goats ….
nk (4b5c8a) — 4/26/2009 @ 1:45 amI don’t understand this, legally. The “offending” video was taped BY Founding Bloggers, right? Then FB owns the copyright, right? CNN has ZERO ownership of the footage, even though their “talent” is on camera…right? And any CNN footage used by FB in this case falls well within “fair use”…right?
Patterico…please weigh in.
Roger B (fd8c20) — 4/26/2009 @ 4:02 am#17 Roger B: Start here.
EW1(SG) (e27928) — 4/26/2009 @ 5:53 amASPCA knows stuff. It worked for SeeBS.
JD (6e32db) — 4/26/2009 @ 5:59 amNice all-white crowd there.
Andrew (eb353f) — 4/26/2009 @ 7:01 amAndrew shows his continuing idiocy on every subject he opens his blowhole to comment upon.
Dmac (1ddf7e) — 4/26/2009 @ 7:05 amAndrew shows his continuing idiocy on every subject he opens his blowhole to comment upon.
Leftists are more obsessed with race than the KKK. Andrew just proved it.
Another Chris (a3bb8f) — 4/26/2009 @ 8:53 amBlack & Right has a thing or two to say about race.
John Hitchcock (fb941d) — 4/26/2009 @ 9:00 amRACISTS !!!!!!
JD (72cf0d) — 4/26/2009 @ 9:00 amDCSCA said:
#1- Funny you’d omit that in the same documentary was the big, bad, ‘liberal owned’ media, aka CBS, Inc., that felt public public pressure and government rumblings over show content to censor the Smothers Brothers and looked for any loophole to yank them off the air, which CBS eventually did.
Guess they werent so liberal after all.
And if memory serves, in the same program they nore the Smothers Brothers took CBS to court and won.
I have no idea what this comment means or how it relates to my post. But, thanks for the note.
Ag80 (b19e67) — 4/26/2009 @ 11:04 am#1, Ag80 wrote: “But what struck me was, they were speaking “truth to power” to essentially what was a Democrat government.”
The thing you have to remember is that the Democratic Party up until that time was a fairly conservative party (by today’s standards, anyway). It was right at the time you’re talking about that the Party was being taken over by hard leftists, and the Smothers Brothers had hard left sympathies. So in criticizing the government, they were simply carrying the same signs, so to speak, on t.v. that the lefty hordes were carrying in the streets: “Hey, hey, LBJ. How many kids did you kill today?” etc.
danebramage (700c93) — 4/26/2009 @ 11:14 am#20, Andrew wrote: “Nice all-white crowd there.”
Except that it wasn’t. There was a black guy very prominently featured in the video. So what’s your point? That black people weren’t allowed? Even though they obviously were?
If so, that makes you a liar.
danebramage (700c93) — 4/26/2009 @ 11:26 amIt’s nice to see the good guys as the activists for a change. The CNN and google punks will fold now, proving that they are just bullies.
j curtis (6c1c88) — 4/26/2009 @ 11:35 amTo “Roger B” #17:
The Founding Bloggers video at issue included about about 1 minute, 20 seconds of CNN footage, as well as about 2 minutes, 30 seconds of footage shot by Founding Bloggers. CNN owns copyright in its own footage; FB owns copyright in the footage that it shot (even though that footage depicts Roesgen). And yes: I think FB’s incorporation of the CNN footage into its video was fair use.
Ben Sheffner (2d68f4) — 4/26/2009 @ 11:50 amThere was a time when the left protested, rightly or wrongly, based on what they believe in.
Now, they only seem to protest for what the Party believes in
This has already been commented on in #26 but I will second the point. John Kennedy would be a Republican today. In foreign policy he was weak but his economic philosophy would not fit the Democrats today, nor would Harry Truman fit except for his pro-union stance but unions in those days were part of the private system. Nobody thought of public employee unions at that time. Or teachers’ unions, for that matter.
Take a look at some high school history text books, for example. I used to have my cousin’s high school world history book from 1938. I read it a couple of times when I was about 13. It began with items like the Punic Wars and the Doric invasion. Do you think a Harvard freshman would know what those were ? That was world history at Hirsch High School in Chicago, 1938.
Mike K (2cf494) — 4/26/2009 @ 12:13 pm#30- John Kennedy would be a Republican today. If “Republicans” like John F. Kennedy support a tax rate of 75% on the top 1% of wage earners, expanding the Peace Corps, back civil rights, will never negotiate out of fear but never fear to negotiate, injecting billions of government dollars into the nation’s space program, reduce troop levels in foreign lands and replace them with advisors, enjoy sailing and sleeping with a fresh piece of tail every day as a bench marks for family values, let’s get ’em elected now.
DCSCA (9d1bb3) — 4/26/2009 @ 1:53 pm#30- I recently watched a high school ‘college bowl’ styled game on our local TV station between top high schools in the region. The cream of the crop. The kids did the math, understood physics, knew their Shakespeare and could spell well… but when the quizmaster asked which document contained the phrase, ‘… we pledge our lives, our fotrunes and our sacred honor’… all 8 kids, top honors students, could not answer. In fact, none of them knew any of the history questions at all. American or world history. It was shocking. The general reply from these kids seems to be it’s not relevant to their lives today and does nothing to help them get jobs.
DCSCA (9d1bb3) — 4/26/2009 @ 1:59 pmWhich, at the time, was a cut of 16%
Republicans did back civil rights in the 1950s and 60s.
Better that than the NEA and NPR
Steverino (69d941) — 4/26/2009 @ 2:50 pmACRAP is trying to suggest Democrats historically backed civil rights? Really?
John Hitchcock (fb941d) — 4/26/2009 @ 3:59 pmRe; Smothers Brothers. I was a temporary writer on the show. When I joined them they were number one on Sunday night. Then Tommy started his raving and ranting and within a very few weeks we had dropped to number sixteen, a fall precipitated largely because Tommy had hurled some vile commentary about Mamie Eisenhower who was loved (who knew?) by just about everybody. In short Tommy was an asshole with no restrictions on his behavior or his show until the ratings dropped through the floor (I believe he dropped out of the top 25 before leaving). When I was there the complaints by CBS concerned the “Pot Lady” (Leigh French) who basically told everyone to get loaded on grass or anything else each week. Tommy was more interested in becoming the new Lenny Bruce than anything else, determined to be fired or jailed.
howard432 (3f8901) — 4/27/2009 @ 9:46 amRe; Smothers Brothers. I was a temporary writer on the show. When I joined them they were number one on Sunday night. Then Tommy started his raving and ranting and within a very few weeks we had dropped to number sixteen, a fall precipitated largely because Tommy had hurled some vile commentary about Mamie Eisenhower who was loved (who knew?) by just about everybody. In short Tommy was an asshole with no restrictions on his behavior or his show until the ratings dropped through the floor (I believe he dropped out of the top 25 before leaving). When I was there the complaints by CBS concerned the “Pot Lady” (Leigh French) who basically told everyone to get loaded on grass or anything else each week. Tommy was more interested in becoming the new Lenny Bruce than anything else, determined to be fired or jailed.
howard432 (3f8901) — 4/27/2009 @ 9:46 amRe; Smothers Brothers. I was a temporary writer on the show. When I joined them they were number one on Sunday night. Then Tommy started his raving and ranting and within a very few weeks we had dropped to number sixteen, a fall precipitated largely because Tommy had hurled some vile commentary about Mamie Eisenhower who was loved (who knew?) by just about everybody. In short Tommy was an asshole with no restrictions on his behavior or his show until the ratings dropped through the floor (I believe he dropped out of the top 25 before leaving). When I was there the complaints by CBS concerned the “Pot Lady” (Leigh French) who basically told everyone to get loaded on grass or anything else each week. Tommy was more interested in becoming the new Lenny Bruce than anything else, determined to be fired or jailed.
howard432 (3f8901) — 4/27/2009 @ 9:46 am