NPR chafed by Yes on One/Stand for Marriage Maine campaign ad

National Public Radio issued a cease and desist letter to the Yes on One/Stand for Marriage Maine campaign alleging that a 30 second segment used in an anti-gay marriage advertisement was copyright infringement.  Asserting that the complaint was “ridiculous and frivolous,” Scott Fish, spokesman for the campaign to repeal the gay marriage law in Maine, noted that use of the audio snippet was protected speech under the first amendment and comes within the ambit of fair use.

The situation is vaguely reminiscent of the recent Perez Hilton/National Organization of Marriage (NOM) tussle over video footage from perez hilton (dot) com.  As part of an anti-gay marriage montage, NOM used 3 seconds of video depicting Hilton calling pageant contestant Carrie Prejean a “dumb bit*@.” Hilton served YouTube with a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notice only to have the video restored under fair use principals.

In that instance, YouTube counsel likely reasoned that the 3 second snippet of was insignificant (compared to the whole of the original work) to justify fair use and protected speech. In this case, NPR contends that the 30 second audio clip is a significant amount of the original and comprises 2/3 of the Yes on One/Stand for Marriage Maine advertisement. An amount, that NPR fears, “may give people the impression that NPR permitted the use of the content in this manner.”

More from the Maine Public Broadcasting Network. Listen to the entire NPR segment, “Massachusetts Schools Grapple with Including Gay & Lesbian Relationships in Sex Education” (All Things Considered,  Sept. 13, 2004). [Note: The original ad spot is not available due to a DMCA takedown notice by NPR.]