Democrat fights back against Fox News lawsuit

[meegbear]

Source: RawStory.com / Reuters

Last month, Fox News filed an unprecedented lawsuit against Democratic senatorial candidate Robin Carnahan, claiming she violated its copyright by using a Fox News clip in a campaign commercial against her challenger.

Now, Carnahan has struck back, telling a Missouri District Court that Fox News sued before properly registering copyright on the clip.

The Carnahan camp submitted a motion to dismiss the lawsuit on Friday, arguing that the popular cable news network was premature in initiating its copyright claim.

Carnahan's lawyers say this is "more than a technical failure." Instead, the campaign contends that Fox couldn't complete a copyright application because it would have trouble claiming copyright on all elements of the clip that Carnahan used. The footage itself, it turns out, incorporates an image first broadcast on C-SPAN. The campaign says this may be proof that Fox abused the copyright registration process and filed a frivolous claim in bad faith.

Read more: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/10/democrat-fights-fox-news-lawsuit/

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:woohoo:

[joeybee12]

1. woo-hoo! Bad faith! Probably can get costs for that!

[Kingofalldems]

2. K and R for Fox/O'Keefe's good buddy to see

[texastoast]

3. May she get lots of bad faith money n/t

[TomCADem]

4. Reminds Me Of Sharron Angle Threatening To Sue People Who Quoted Her

Remember Sharron Angle's efforts to hide her old website?

http://www.slate.com/id/2260061/

Harry Reid is facing the threat of a copyright lawsuit. We couldn't be happier. Don't get us wrong. We don't have anything against Harry Reid. But the occasional willingness to flout the demands of copyright owners is essential to the long-term health of intellectual property law.

The Senate Majority Leader is locked in a tight race for re-election against Tea Party favorite and Republican nominee Sharron Angle. During the Republican primary, the Angle campaign featured a Web site that touted some of Angle's more controversial stances, including her desire to abolish the Department of Education and phase out Social Security. Although these ultra-conservative positions were boons in the primary, now the campaign perceives them as liabilities for the general election. To win, Angle presumably needs to attract at least some independent voters. Accordingly, she has taken down her old Web site and replaced it with a more polished version that finesses her harder-line views. But Reid was not about to let Angle tack back toward the center without a fight. His campaign reposted a copy of Angle's old Web site, using the URL Therealsharronangle.com.

[Ikonoklast]

5. Faux is hoist with their own petard.

Got to love it.

When you plant land mines in your own front yard, it is always a wise thing to retain a map of them for your own use.

[Plucketeer]

6. THIS Robin's tearin' the worm a new one!

Let's hope Rupert's reaching for some antacids! :grr:

[usregimechange]

7. kicking for robin/mo

[bjobotts]

8. Great news.Roy Blunt on CREW'S top 10 list for most corrupt congressman since he began

[bjobotts]

9. Finally forced his son Matt to resign as Gov. of MO or face charges. Now we can get rid of Daddy too

[bjobotts]

10. Most MO republicans are clueless on the issues, they just hate dems

[Sherman A1]

16. Precisely

It would not matter at all to them. They will vote for that corrupt S.O.*......no matter what.

[DCKit]

11. Microsoft v Apple over technology (GUI) Lucent Labs developed...

But you never know with today's courts.

[orleans]

12. wouldn't this fall under "fair use?"

to show a short excerpt, as long as it is not for making a profit or a commercial enterprise, i think it might be considered fair use.

[usregimechange]

13. kick

[LawnKorn]

14. It is time to counter-sue FOX

I wonder if Eric Holder could investigate if FOX was trying to influence an election.

[LawnKorn]

15. K&R

[zehnkatzen]

17. What? FOX News operating in Bad Faith against a Democrat?

Prithee pray tell, sirra!

Seriously, about the only time FOX News and "good faith" can be seriously used together in a sentence is

...

ah

...

Well, pretty much never.

[KharmaTrain]

18. All Hat No Cattle...

Election laws are a joke. File a complaint and the FEC may get around to it 6 months after the election and then send out a parking ticket fine. The same will apply here. This is more PR and politics than anything else...an attempt to make Carnahan look bad and, in return, Carnahan rallying support by fighting the Democrats favorite target. From face value if faux didn't copyright the clip (and you'd think that'd be an automatic) then Carnahan is within right to use it. My bets are this suit dies the day after the election...the ultimate verdict will be decided by the voters of Missouri.

[The Uncola]

19. Bingo!

Campaign laws with no teeth that don't have immediate results, are less than worthless. Just one of the many things wrong with our electoral system. The game is rigged.

[AldebTX]

20. Wonder If They Have Been As Protective

of their clips in the Repug ads, since it seems that many are pre-edited to distort..

[TexasObserver]

21. Part of the GOP scheme to use corporations to do their political dirty work.

Fox News IS the GOP's publicist. That's why it was created.

[Enthusiast]

22. K&R

Just imagine, Fox filed a frivolous claim in bad faith. How could the last bastion of honest reporting do such a thing? It must have been a mistake.
:sarcasm:

[herbm]

23. Chapter four in which Doris gets her oats and learns freedom of expression is a two edged blade.

[Scurrilous]

24. Kick

:kick:

[thesquanderer]

25. copyright doesn't require registration

The one weak point there is "Carnahan has struck back, telling a Missouri District Court that Fox News sued before properly registering copyright on the clip." As I understand it, copyright is basically instantaneous. Registration documents proof of ownership in case of a dispute, but registration is not required, you can own copyright privileges even if you never register something. Lack of registration just puts the onus on you, in the case of a dispute, to prove that you produced the work when you said you did.

[progressoid]

26. Yes, but then there's this...

Some of the material used wasn't Fox's creation to begin with: "Fox News uses C-SPAN footage for approximately half the running time of the 24-second clip.".

Not to mention the whole fair use debate.

I'm not sure she would ultimately win this lawsuit but maybe that isn't really the issue at this point. This is bringing LOTS of negative attention Blunt. All she has to do is stretch it out for a few more weeks.