It always amazes me what can sometimes drift by unnoticed by the mass media. It's not like they don't have enough time to get to it all. Last week, CNN found time to discuss at length, Barack Obama's clothing style and tie-less shirts, but somehow, they couldn't get to this:
ABC Inc., a subsidiary of the Disney-ABC Television Group, apparently issued a cease-and-desist letter targeting Spocko and his blog for copyright violation. Specifically, ABC alleged that by posting brief audio clips of various talk radio hosts on KSFO, the site was "in clear violation" of the station's copyright. The letter demanded that the owner of the site "remove the content immediately." Soon after, according to Spocko, his Internet service provider shut down his blog.
Why? Well it seems this blogger had something to say they didn't like (or rather that was effecting their pocket book):
In 2006, a blogger named Spocko began spotlighting inflammatory rhetoric common to several talk radio hosts on KSFO, an ABC Radio-owned station in San Francisco. Spocko compiled a litany of examples on both his weblog, Spocko's Brain, and in numerous letters to corporations advertising on KSFO. He noted that KSFO hosts had claimed to have put "a bull's-eye" on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), advocated hanging various New York Times editors, called for the murder of millions of Muslims, and so on. This letter-writing campaign apparently got results, as major advertisers such as MasterCard, Bank of America, and Visa reportedly pulled their ads from the station.
Now I am not an expert on copyright law, but I believe if you are using sections or clips of copyrighted, yet publicly dispensed material for "review or commentary purposes" you need only keep the clips short. I also know these "rules" are not clearly defined, and in most situations, a warning letter is just that, a warning, meant to either put a stop to the copyright infringement, or begin a dialogue for "permission to use" requests. In this case, they clearly wanted to simply shut the blogger up.
Spocko also wrote to KSFO's corporate sponsors calling their attention to these statements. For instance, in a November 20, 2006, letter to telecommunications giant AT&T, he wrote: "Thanks to radio hosts from KSFO your brand is being associated with torturing and killing people." He included in the letter numerous examples of the hosts' invective.
ABC's response?
But on December 21, Spocko's Internet hosting service, 1&1 Internet Inc., received a cease-and-desist letter bearing ABC's logo. In the letter, Enid J.H. Karpeh, who identified herself as ABC's counsel, claimed that Spocko's use of brief audio clips of Rodgers, Morgan, and other hosts was "in clear violation of KSFO's copyright."
Read the full letter
here.
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