Categories: Capital Read, Inside the Queensway

Potential copyright infringment: Not worth the risk.

by kadyomalley on Thursday, September 11, 2008 11:09am - 35 Comments

Dear Overzealous Web Designer in the Basement of the Conservative War Room:

Hi! I know you’re probably busy dealing with the — uh, bandwidth issues that brought down DionBook (still readable – for now – via googlecache), but I just wanted to let you know about another potential headache-in-the-making over at notaleader.ca.

You know that line about how it’s better to seek forgiveness than ask permission? That’s actually not always the case — not when you’re talking about, say, copyright — which is something that you’d think the Conservatives would have learned by now.

Yet, on your create-your-own-ad flash thingy, there are all sorts of video snippets from various networks – CTV, CBC, TVO and possibly others – but I can’t find anywhere that it says that material is being used with permission.

In fact, there’s nothing to indicate where the footage came from at all – which is required if you were planning to use the ‘fair dealing’ exemption, although it’s hard to see how this qualifies as “criticism or review.”

Did you just forget to add that information? Did it get accidentally removed when you took down the puffin? Or are we heading towards another one of those copyright oopsies moments that seem to crop up with surprising frequency when y’all try to get down with your bad multimedia-user-content-generating selves?

Anyway, hope you’re having a fab Day Five! Can’t be worse than Day Three, right?

ITQ

PS Say hi to The Ghost of Sir Charles Tupper for me!

Tags: conservatives, conversations with imaginary web designers, notaleader.ca, this web 2.0 thing may be more trouble than it's worth

More by kadyomalley

http://www.macleans.ca Jonathan McKinnell

Buahahahaha

Hi Conservative Web Designers! *waves*
http://www.macleans.ca Andrea Ball

I’m with Kady.

Did you guys not pay attention to that lecture on copyright infringement in your college course on Web Design? (I paid attention to it in mine ;)

P.S. Awesome Facebook/MySpace mash-up, too bad it “crashed”
Jack Mitchell

Either they’re wildly short on bandwidth or they expect a rather faster connection than I’ve got: I’m 2mb/s and I still can’t get the damn thing to load. What’s with making every page a huge independent flash file? This ain’t South Korea, Mr. Harper.

Which brings me to the issue of investing in digital infrastructure…
http://canpolnex.blogspot.com/ canpolnex

I almost think that getting the thing to load so slowly (with a silhouette of Dion on screen) is intentional.The problem is that it just makes the website look amateurish.
http://carnewsandviews.com jwl

It’s too bad that you didn’t provide your wise advice to your mates in the Lib party before they had to settle with Jennifer Wright, Kady.
David

Jeese… have the testosterone-raged pimply-faced blue-shirts in sweater-vests not read the Made in California copyright act that Harper is all horny to inflict on Canada?
http://www.macleans.ca Jonathan McKinnell

The confusion comes with the fact that both dionbook and notaleader.ca seem to be on the same server (notaleader.ca/dionbook) so the claim that they seem to be out of bandwidth is a little dry.
http://deleted seaandthemountains

I wondered the same about DIonbook Kady….how close is too close?
john g

Hmm, I thought this was going to be a post about the Liberals swallowing their pride and settling the GreenShift (TM) lawsuit with Jennifer Wright.

Oops, it’s Kady’s blog. No such luck.

But to be fair, she may not have heard about it, as not a single media outlet covered it except National Newswatch.

Kady, as the new Goddess of Election Financing Irregularities, perhaps you might know if the GreenShift licensing fee is a campaign expense for the Liberals? If so, then what utter stupidity on the part of Dion for waiting for the writ to drop before settling the suit.
http://www.macleans.ca Kady O’Malley

jwl – Actually, if you’ll read back, you’ll see that my friendly advice to the Liberals involved doing exactly that — settling with Jennifer Wright, that is — although really, they should have worked it out before going public in the first place – which, incidentally, I also said at that time.

John G – Actually, I’m pretty sure CanWest covered it, although I’ll have to find the link — but as far as I know, the details of the settlement haven’t been released — and probably won’t be, since usually, that sort of thing isn’t made public. Although as you point out, it will eventually show up in their financial report.
http://www.macleans.ca Kady O’Malley

(Also, because I am a huge geek, I have to point out that trademark law and copyright law are far from interchangeable, as far as things like “fair dealing” go.)
john g

Thank you Kady. I guess that is a yes to my question.

I don’t really care what the amount was, though I’m sure it was a signficant hit in the context of a $18M limit; she was suing for 8.5M so I’m speculating completely but it wouldn’t surprise me if the licensing fee turned out to be 1M or 2M.

Why on earth wouldn’t Dion have done this last week, when that money wouldn’t have counted as a campaign expense?
The Ghost of Sir Charles Tupper

OOOOooooOOOooOooOOOoOOoOOOOOOoOOOOOOO!!!!

Uhhh… hi yourself.
Geiseric the Lame

Really, Kady. Don’t you think there’s enough human shields in the mix already?
http://carnewsandviews.com jwl

Kady I did read back and I don’t see the post you are referring to.

From what I found, you have 3 Green Shift posts and I don’t see any advice about getting Libs to settle but I did find this: “More and more, it seems as though Ms. Wright has unwittingly allowed her company – and herself – to be hijacked by those with a purely political purpose …”

Seems to me you are questioning Ms Wright for not wanting her property stolen, not giving advice to Libs to settle. And I also recall you musing in the comments section somewhere about how it was ok to steal things when the value of the item stolen is not known.
Mike T.

I would not be surprised if the licensing fee was one dollar, but like others I am prepared to wait for it to be gleaned from any available records.
http://bigcitylib.blogspot.com bigcitylib

I’m pretty sure the libs offered a deal like this at the beginning of the kerfuffle but Ms. Wright rejected it (a liscensing deal, that is).
Sisyphus

Obviously,Kady,when the world finally turns Right the first order of business will be sending you to re-education camp.Don’t worry,though. Upon completion of your assignment you will be honoured with a column and be included in the Megapundit line-up. Probably batting clean-up.
All will be well.
http://www.ottawawatch.blogspot.com Mark Bourrie

And you probably won’t remember your time slaving for ARC, which is a good thing.
http://bigcitylib.blogspot.com bigcitylib

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/posted/archive/2008/09/11/senior-conservative-official-sparrow-suspended-from-campaign-report.aspx

Sparrow booted from campaign. Tory warroom meltdown continues. More money than brains, I guess.
http://caiti-online.blogspot.com/ Transcanada

Ohh you CLOWNservative web designer guys!!!!

Just you wait until Big Daddy Jim Prentice hears about this!!!!

You know, the Conservative Minister of Industry who is spearheading stronger copyright laws in Canada, more or less a carbon-copy of the US DMCA laws in the US of A.
Cool Blue

I believe this issue was already covered when the Tories released their first “Not a Leader” ads shortly after Dion became leader.

Those ads featured clips of the Liberal leadership debates and some government body, I’m not sure which one, ruled that the clips were fair use.
T. Thwim

Cool Blue: The question is, did those ads attribute where the clips came from? If they did, this is a completely different ball-game.
http://carnewsandviews.com jwl

Sisyphus

Now you are talking! A little equivalent of Mao’s reeducation through labour for our reporters is exactly what we need. :)
Lord Bob

Puffin poop! Potential copyright infringement! The Conservative party is making catastrophic blunder after catastrophic blunder that will plunge Canada into civil war or something!

Now, I’m a gigantic copyright anarchist, so I’m the last person in the world who’s going to worry about people using television footage on their websites. But still, come on. I mean, down south they have vice presidential candidates arguing about their pregnant daughters and up here our scandals are “maybe those campaign ads weren’t quite above board”.

Come on, Harper, flirt with a reporter on the campaign plane and give us something to talk about. Preferably a male reporter. Shame Wells left.