Thursday, March 22, 2007 5:48 AM
In the post Law Professor Wendy Seltzer Takes on the NFL , The Wall Street Journal Law Blog pointed out an interesting storyline involving YouTube, the National Football League and Wendy Seltzer, a visting professor at Brooklyn Law School, [who] wanted to illustrate to her students the clumsiness of the DMCA and the problems inherent in what she calls 'the DMCA dance.'
DMCA, being the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and the illustration, being the validity of the application of the DMCA online at YouTube. Fortunately for us, Professor Seltzer also has a weblog, and as she noted in her February 8th post, My First YouTube: Super Bowl Highlights or Lowlights she specified her fact scenario:
I snipped the copyright warning out of the weekend's Super Bowl broadcast as an example for my copyright class of how far copyright claimants exaggerate their rights.
This telecast is copyrighted by the NFL for the private use of our audience. Any other use of this telecast or of any pictures, descriptions, or accounts of the game without the NFL's consent, is prohibited.
Let's see whether the video, clear fair use, gets flagged by a copyright bot.
What followed has been a blow-by-blow account of the back-and-forth between the various parties involved. See My First DMCA Takedown, DMCA Saga Act II: Counter-Notification, We Have Put-Back: Super Bowl Warnings Back Online and NFL Clip Down Again, among others, for details.
If you are at all interested in the DMCA, it is worth catching up with Professor Seltzer and her posts at Wendy's Blog.