Norton Attack Ad Improperly Taken From People’s Press Collective Video
by Julian Dunraven | 3:09 pm, July 29, 2010 | 23 Comments
By Julian Dunraven
Honorable Friends:
This morning, Eileen Mahony, D.C. Bureau Chief for the People’s Press Collective, put up a very amusing piece about how the Norton campaign borrowed rather liberally from PPC to produce their latest attack ad against Ken Buck. Well, borrowed might not be quite accurate. Given that they took video from PPC, edited it to remove the PPC copyright notices, cropped the size of the video to remove the PPC title bar, and then added it to their ad without any citation to PPC whatsoever, some might even call that stealing. Unfortunately, that seems to be the theme of this election.
Judging from the comments in Ms. Mahony’s post, some have mistakenly assumed PPC is favoring Ken Buck in the primary. This is not true. PPC does not endorse in primary elections. However, its members do tend to object when campaigns try to steal their material. It seems they have objected rather strenuously too. PPC has provided access to a series of documents detailing this matter, including the PPC cease and desist letter to the Jane Norton campaign, the Norton campaign’s response, and PPC’s reiteration of its cease and desist demands.
As one of the PPC commentators has already suggested, this incident reveals a disturbing lack of character in the Norton campaign. Not only did the campaign grossly distort Buck’s words in its ad, it took material from the PPC without permission or even attribution to do so. The PPC’s final letter to the Norton campaign asks, “If even allies of the campaign cannot depend upon it for fair dealing, how is the rest of the state supposed to trust it?” That is a question I think many of us will be considering.
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July 29th, 2010 @ 4:13 pm
Is this another example of plagiarism type behavior? Or is this an elevated example? Can the Norton campaign be sued? And can PpC prove their claims? It seems they could if they do a frame-by-frame comparison. And who was responsible for creating this ad? Just curious…
July 29th, 2010 @ 4:20 pm
If anything I would say that the PPC has been more favorable towards Norton. Which makes this all the more interesting and disturbing.
Is anyone else sick of this primary season? Can we save a little for the progressive that are coming after us?
July 29th, 2010 @ 4:29 pm
Ms. L.
Yes. The proof is easy. The Norton campaign does not even deny it as you can see from thier response letter. I understand the PPC is still considering all options.
Releasing these documents was not an easy decision though. PPC only made these documents public after the Norton campaign began to refuse to speak to the PPC board or return phone calls from PPC’s legal counsel.
Ms. Miller,
I agree; this is most disturbing. I cannot imagine why the Norton campaign would treat PPC with such disdain. It would indeed be nice if progressives were our biggest problem instead of our own Party’s issues with plagiarism.
July 29th, 2010 @ 5:29 pm
Fair use is fair use. Jane isn’t sticking it to the PPC.
July 29th, 2010 @ 5:31 pm
Stealing the creative work of someone else is a violation of U.S. copyright law. It is also known as plagiarism. We know how dishonest Jane Norton’s campaign has been. This is more of the same dishonesty.
July 29th, 2010 @ 5:34 pm
Mike Niland. Having produced a Hitler You Tube spoof involving the Constantin films production, Downfall, I got pretty boned up on the fair use doctrine. Would you please explain why you think the doctrine applies to the PPC example?
July 29th, 2010 @ 6:05 pm
I just spoke with Josh Penry about this topic. Beyond what’s covered in the letter from the campaign’s attorney, I asked him why he removed all the attributive material on PPC? He responded, reasonably I think, that they didn’t want PPC to appear to be associated with the Norton campaign – out of fairness to PPC.
Josh said if they had it to do over again, they would have run things by PPC first and discussed the issue with PPC. (He did not state or imply they would not run the ad without permission from PPC).
July 29th, 2010 @ 6:23 pm
Good info Laura.
It’s fair use because, as the recent campaign e-mail says, it was a ten-second clip out of a minute thirty-four. The purpose was different – news reporting vs. political campaigning – and the market value of the video was 0 to begin with.
Had I been responsible for the video, I would have done the same thing, except I would have given proper attribution to the PPC. I don’t think it’s required, but it would have been polite.
July 29th, 2010 @ 6:52 pm
And Mike your Juris doctorate was from which school? You do realize you are making your case against a lawyer (Laura) and in disagreement with PPC’s attorney. Just pointing out how silly this appears.
July 29th, 2010 @ 8:07 pm
Mike’s not a real lawyer; he just has wet dreams about it.
July 29th, 2010 @ 10:15 pm
Any viewer who would judge Buck from a 10 -15 second attack ad is showing themselves to be very gullible and frankly unfair to Buck. Anyone would look bad under that scenario if judged without the longer video seen as a backdrop piece of data.
July 29th, 2010 @ 10:46 pm
I think the Norton campaign made a mistake in not asking for permission to use the clip. I can understand that under the pressure of the campaign, everyone was on deadline and made some bad decisions. And it may be common practice in the campaign advertising trade. I don’t know.
No question the clip was just too good to pass up, but the ad could have been produced without the clip. A little animation would have done the job.
This is a copyright violation, not plagiarism. The internet is full of copyright violations and too few people understand that violating copyrights is wrong.
Lesson learned for the Norton folks, its supporters and its critics.
I don’t think it disqualifies Norton the way McInnis’ plagiarism, habitual lying and mistreatment of clients disqualifies him.
July 29th, 2010 @ 11:36 pm
@Val-
your comment brings me joy
July 30th, 2010 @ 3:08 am
Donald you are just making excuses for the Norton campaign. This is not rocket science and one of the first things a campaign learns is the legal side of operation. And you are not helping matters by stating it’s just a mere copyright infringement. If you were the author you’d be hopping mad.
July 30th, 2010 @ 6:01 am
Donald:
Honesty does not have a deadline.
Plagiarism is what this is. Copyright law provides that the work was the property of PPC. Taking it without the permission of its owner is theft.
If you want to appologize for the behavior of McInnis and Norton, have at it.
If this was an oversight and they acted mistakenly and in good faith as you postulate, they could take it down as requested. They have not.
This is not the first instance of Norton stealing the work of others. Her initial announcement was lifted from Gerry Ford.
Norton, like McInnis is a crook. Some may say but they are conservative crooks so it is ok to support them. Personally, I don’t support and associate myself with crooks, but I leave that to your sense of ritht and wrong.
July 30th, 2010 @ 8:31 am
Fair use is legal where you point counterpoint to an issue or candidate. You can use an entire video if you are doing a parody of the content. If you are claiming the original work used to be yours, that would be a copywrite infringement
July 30th, 2010 @ 12:08 pm
Always hilarious when dumb-ass thieves try to justify. There’s really no argument.
July 30th, 2010 @ 1:39 pm
@Laura–So what Norton’s campaign–and Penry in particular–is saying is that they stole from PPC to protect PPC?
July 30th, 2010 @ 2:08 pm
Michael Espinoza: No, that’s not what they were saying. What I reported was simply the campaing’s explanation for the lack of attribution.
July 31st, 2010 @ 3:14 pm
Just read the exchange of communications again. The PPC complaint and reply to Norton’s attorney are all emotion and rhetoric. The Norton reply includes citations that support its case. PPC doesn’t bother to reply with citations.
I think Norton’s on solid legal grounds. The original video has no market value and PPC is not claiming that anyone has paid it for permission to use the video. There is nothing creative in the video. It’s not like having the NBA copyright the original play of its athletes, and it’s not like copyrighting a film made by an individual or organization that wrote the script. PPL didn’t even put on the party.
As I’ve stated, I think Norton should have gotten permission for political reasons. It makes no sense to tick off PPL, which I’m probably doing now. But I think Norton’s on solid legal ground and PPL would be foolish to sue and lose in court. I am not a lawyer, but I can read and form an opinion.
I reserve the right to change my mind if someone comes up with a legal brief that convinces me to do so.
July 31st, 2010 @ 3:16 pm
PPC not PPL.
August 1st, 2010 @ 8:59 am
El Presidente,
Since this post is still sticky, I think the issue is still unresolved.
Since I’m neither a PPC contributor nor affiliated with Norton for Colorado, I think I can present a mutually beneficial solution.
Putting this clip in the public domain would nullify the complaint and clarify licensing. Doing it through Creative Commons – the “CC0″ license – could encourage contributors to license their work under the appropriate Creative Commons attribution licenses.
The Creative Commons creates viral publicity for content creators: http://creativecommons.org/choose/
All of my writing online is licensed under Attribution 3.0 Unported: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
This is just a third-party proposal, and I’m not an attorney. I am involved with Volunteers for Jane Norton and I write the Gunbarrel Teleprompter.
Mike
August 3rd, 2010 @ 5:27 pm
[...] the material for their cheesy attack add from the People’s Press Collective? Yep – READ. Gees, not even the courtesy of a citation. By the way, the video on the PPC’s website puts [...]