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Comment by Pinckney | Hacker News Reader

Ars claims this is "as clear-cut a case of fair use as can be imagined", but courts have established that political use, while an important factor weighing in favor of fair use, is not the only factor, particularly when concerning the wholesale appropriation of the work.

http://www.callawyer.com/cle/cle_story.cfm?eid=898723&ev...

See for instance Long v. Ballantine, where the court ruled against a political campaign for their unauthorized use of a photo in advertising.

Likewise, McCain settled with Browne over the former's use of his song in a campaign video, after the court rejected the McCain campaign's fair use argument.

http://www.scottandscottllp.com/main/refuse_to_dismiss_music...

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Did you read the same article I read?

"...seems like as clear-cut a case of fair use as can be imagined." They don't 'claim this is,' they say 'seems like.' And with that phrase, I am primed to read a sentence later in the paragraph on why that's not the case.

The article goes on to say "copyright law explicitly mentions commentary and criticism as justifications for fair use." I don't even see a mention of 'political use' to defend the "seems like" phrasing.

Unless they edited the article between views, I'd suggest you've incorrectly characterized the article.

To be perfectly honest, I was so pleased to remember about Long v. Ballantine that I stopped reading at that point and came here to post.

With that said, I don't see how Ars later characterizes the clip as anything but fair use. Looking specifically at

The Romney ad seems like as clear-cut a case of fair use as can be imagined. Obama's singing is a core part of the ad's message, and copyright law explicitly mentions commentary and criticism as justifications for fair use. And it's hard to imagine the ad harming the market for Al Green CDs or iTunes tracks.

Ars seems to be saying that the ad meets two of the criteria for fair use: that it is commentary or criticism, and that it has no effect on the work's market. How does this strike you as indicating that they are rejecting fair use?

This was my parsing of the article as well. The video could be viewed as being either a "commentary" or a "criticism" or both. The continuation "and copyright law explicitly..." is reinforcing that author's belief that this is the case.

I'm fairly sure the "commentary and criticism" exception pertains to fair use use of media that refers to the media itself (e.g. film reviews, cultural commentary, satire of a popular program etc.)

All this is very different from declaring "I'm producing a work of commentary or criticism and therefore I can do anything I want with whatever I find, even if the point I'm making relates to something else entirely."

That's just a rookie move. Rupert Murdoch really was right about Romney needing to "drop old friends from team and hire some real pros."

https://twitter.com/rupertmurdoch/status/219393140245807104

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