As part of his presidential
campaign Mitt Romney recently released an advert on YouTube including a clip of
President Obama singing one line of Al Green's "Let's Stay Together".
The Obama clip is 9 seconds long. You can watch a longer version here.
This use of Al
Green's work prompted BMG to issue a takedown notice causing YouTube to remove
the advert from its site. Of course the political ramifications of the decision
can be argued at great length, and commentators have used the takedown as
evidence of all sorts of allegiances, however the fundamental question is
whether using 9 seconds of a song in a political campaign constitutes fair use.
The short answer: there
is no definition of the meaning of "fair" in the US and there is no
single threshold above which use becomes unfair. Instead the courts look at a
number of factors including the amount
of the work used, as well as the purpose of the use. In this instance it seems
that YouTube was right to remove the content as following Henley v. DeVore, 733 F.Supp.2d 1144 (C.D. Cal. 2010) use by a
political campaign of a song protected by copyright is not fair.
What would happen if
Cameron employed similar tactics? The mind boggles…
Cameron would probably select some ancient work, no one more contemporary than Ivor Novello, that is in the public domain. Although he might be tempted to use dead rock stars who can't sue....
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