Intellectual Property Law

More Olympian Censorship

By Tim Armstrong, Derek Bambauer, and William McGeveran.

Building on Derek’s recent post about the International Olympic Committee’s complicity in censorship of the internet in China:

Slashdot features an item about a takedown notice from the IOC demanding that YouTube remove video of a Tibet-related protest at the Chinese Consulate in New York. (The video is still available on Vimeo.) The protesters projected images on the wall which apparently are the source of the IP claim. I can’t tell if the IOC’s claim is related to that video’s parodic “riffs on the Olympic logo of the five interlocking rings, turning them into handcuffs,” or on its use of footage from the opening ceremonies. Either way, the protesters (and whomever posted this video on YouTube) has a gold-plated fair use defense for any copyright (or trademark) claims.

Thanks to the notice-and-takedown regime under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, however, YouTube does not have much choice in the matter. The now familiar and well-documented problem is that someone claiming IP rights can use that claim to effectively squelch criticism or dissent. I wish I were more surprised that the IOC uses the leverage of the DMCA for the purpose of silencing critical speech.

Full post as published by Info/Law on August 13, 2008 (boomark / email).