Fair Use is A Bitch, Even For A Senator

This week the McCain camp felt the sting of a DMCA smackdown when CBS issued a takedown notice over the campaign's use of a video clip posted on YouTube. While YouTube may be quick to takedown videos when a notice is sent by the copyright holder, asking to fully review the video would bring the a level of burden to Google that is unknown outside of the hallowed grounds of government bureaucracy.

Now that McCain is really feeling the pain of the every man perhaps some real progress can made. Probably not, his answer to get exemptions for those that can lobby for it (because it worked so well for the Tax Code).

Real Lipstick On A Pig

Gov. Palin has been ordered by an Alaskan Judge to "preserve" her Yahoo! e-mail messages (you know, the ones that she for gov't business) so that the Attorney General can further investigate them. It seems that she just skips from one investigation to another, without missing a wink.

At first, I thought that Palin stood for just as much change as Obama: it turns out that I was right (unfortunately). The election is less than 3 weeks away and if I wanted a Vice-President that uses private e-mail accounts to circumvent public oversight while abusing and overstepping the power of their position for personal gain, I would rather that the GOP hadn't put lipstick (and an up-do) on Dick Cheney.