McCain vs. YouTube on fair use

In a recent post on CNET, blogger Chris Soghoian criticized presidential candidate John McCain for requesting special treatment from YouTube when it came to his campaign's fair use of copyrighted material. The October 13 letter, written by general counsel Trevor Potter (and copied to Barack Obama's general counsel), was posted by Prof. Lawrence Lessig at Stanford, who said "Bravo" to the campaign for demanding that YouTube "start getting real about the response they're giving to notice and take-down demands of material that 'are clearly privileged under the fair use doctrine.'" But Soghoian argued that fair use is fair use, and special treatment for some would make the battle harder for everyone: "The minute a special set of rules are made for those in Congress, the incentive to fix the [copyright] system will disappear."

In any event, YouTube said no: Here's their response, posted by The New York Times blogger Saul Hansell.