Going loco for the Olympics

After months of preparation, the Olympics are finally upon us! This blogger is not in London but it seems that Olympic fever is everywhere. Here are a couple of Olympic copyright stories to get us warmed up.

As many of you will know, the opening Olympics ceremony rehearsal took place earlier this week. Despite the organisers' best efforts to keep the ceremony secret, a video of the rehearsal managed to make its way on to YouTube. It was removed yesterday "on copyright grounds". Thirty-second clips of the rehearsal were however permitted to be shown on the BBC. Bet the Paris '24 Olympics did not suffer from such problems!

After the recent Al Green copyright debacle one might have thought that Obama and Romney would want to keep their campaigns free from copyright protected work however the US Olympic Committee recently registered a copyright complaint in respect of an advert released by Priorities USA, backing President Obama. The advert, which used the Olympic "parade of nations" to mock Romney's reported overseas investment accounts, was removed from YouTube and will not be aired on television.

The International Olympic Committee agreed with the decision, saying that "The IOC does not allow footage of the Olympic Games or an association with the Olympic rings to be used for political purposes, in line with the Olympic Charter."

You may be interested to know that Mitt Romney is in the UK for the Olympics which he has said he thinks will be "highly successful". Glad to have his approval!

And finally, its not really a copyright point, but this blogger could not help reporting that Oddbins (a UK off-licence) has launched a "marketing counter-strike" against the Olympic branding restrictions imposed by the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (LOCOG).

Apparently Oddbins will reveal special window displays intended to ruffle LOCOG's feathers, and will reward customers wearing or using Nike, Vauxhall, RBS MasterCard, Apple, British Gas, Pepsi and KFC goods with 30% off Oddbins purchases.

Oddbins' managing director Ayo Akintola has said that the company has taken steps to ensure that its planned window displays do not flout any of the "asinine rules", but that it is taking a stand to highlight "the absurdity of the fact that the British people - who are paying for these games - are at the same time being subject to ridiculous rules", adding that "even though our window designs will be within the rules, we would not be surprised if LOCOG goes loco."

Romney and Obama: it's just not fair

A very quick post to relay some news that is making waves over the pond where copyright has reached presidential levels.

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…

Murdoch v Obama, Google v Murdoch

Further updates on the ongoing debate over the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), after the Obama administration responded on Saturday to the "VETO the SOPA bill and any other future bills that threaten to diminish the free flow of information" petition and made it clear that, though online piracy by foreign websites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response, it will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet (full response was reported by this Blog here).

Right away, on Saturday night, Media mogul Rupert Murdoch embraced the arms of his Twitter account to blast President Obama for throwing "his lot with Silicon Valley paymasters who threaten all software creators with piracy, plain thievery." 

He also used a couple of tweets to attack Google: "Piracy leader is Google who streams movies free, sells advts around them. No wonder pouring millions into lobbying." and added "Film making [is as] risky as hell. This has to lead to less, hurting writers, actors, all concerned."  

As noted by The Hollywood Reporter, considering Murdoch was airing his complaints on the Internet, he didn't exactly find a sympathetic audience.

Captain Hook reading latest SOPA updates 

In an e-mail sent to CNET on Sunday afternoon, Google responded to Murdoch's statements.

"This is just nonsense," wrote a Google spokeswoman. "Last year we took down 5 million infringing Web pages from our search results and invested more than $60 million in the fight against bad ads ... We fight pirates and counterfeiters every day."

Google said it thinks there are better methods to fighting piracy than those sought by copyright owners: "We believe, like many other tech companies, that the best way to stop [pirates] is through targeted legislation that would require ad networks and payment processors--like ours--to cut off sites dedicated to piracy or counterfeiting."