Progress Illinois

Today, Wendy Davis at Online Media Daily published an article on the apparent resolution of our YouTube dispute with Fox Chicago.  But it includes a quote from a Fox spokesman suggesting that the matter might not be over yet:

Progress Illinois's lawyer, Paul Alan Levy of Public Citizen, said he didn't expect the site to change its procedures. "Progress Illinois intends to continue excerpting from Fox, as it always has, subject to fair use restrictions, just as it always has," he told Online Media Daily. But Fox might have other ideas. "We are continuing to review the situation," a company spokesperson said. 

Levy is quite right that we plan to continue excerpting Fox Chicago footage -- within fair use guidelines -- and uploading those clips to YouTube.  Since our account was reinstated late last week, we haven't had occasion to do so.  But when we do, it will be interesting to see how Fox reacts.

In my first post on Progress Illinois' dispute with FOX Chicago over our use of their video content on YouTube, I wrote the following:

Rather then trying to turn the clock back to 1995, WFLD should get its web presence in order.  Rather than trying to impede the use of their content, the station should embrace bloggers' interest in their coverage and figure out a way to share video in a usable, functional, and timely manner.  Indeed, if we had been able to find embeddable versions of the videos in question, we would have surely used those (as we do with MSNBC content), rather then upload our own.  

Now that the dispute has seemingly come to an end, I wanted to note one possible byproduct of the whole dust-up: FOX Chicago yesterday rejiggered its website yesterday to allow for embeddable video.  This is a step in the right direction.  Of the seven major news networks in Chicago, FOX and CLTV are currently the only stations to offer video embedding.  The remaining five: ABC 7, NBC 5, CBS 2, WGN, and WTTW would all do well to follow suit.

We're pleased to report that, as of 8:10 pm last night, Progress Illinois' YouTube channel is finally up-and-running again after being suspended for more than six weeks due to a copyright infringment claim from FOX Chicago. 

With the representation of Public Citizen's Paul Levy, we followed the Digital Millenium Copyright Act's guidelines for contesting such a claim and also corresponded with the FOX legal team regarding their objections to our use of the station's content, which we contend is protected by federal Fair Use laws.  Their unreasonable demands for future use prevented us from reaching any formal agreement.  Nonetheless, FOX ultimately chose not to take further legal action and YouTube reinstated our account.  

We hope that, if and when FOX or any other outlets have a problem with our use of their content, they'll reach out to us with their objections, rather than take the heavy-handed approach of having our YouTube account shut down.  As Ben Sheffner put it on his blog Copyrights & Campaigns, "[T]his is a clear win for Progress Illinois." Hopefully, the entire dust-up will serve as an example to mainstream outlets of how not to handle such matters.

For more detail on this turn of events, here's the statement out today from Levy and Pubic Citizen:

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Today, Free Press' "Media Minutes" podcast covered our dispute with Fox Chicago regarding the use of their content on YouTube.  Listen below:

Internal mp3

At the moment, all I can say about the dispute is that Levy has been in contact with Fox Televisions Stations' legal team in California and talks are ongoing.  Meanwhile, the clock is ticking for Fox to make a decision as to whether to sue us over the YouTube clips in question.  If they don't take legal action by late next week, YouTube should reinstate our account shortly thereafter.

We'll let you know if and when there are any further developments.

The clock is ticking for Fox Chicago.

After our YouTube channel was suspended due to copyright infringement clams by the station, we sent a counter-notification to YouTube challenging WFLD's complaints.  Yesterday, we received an email letting us know that our counter-notice had been forwarded on to Fox. 

At this point, the ball is squarely in the station's court.  If they don't respond to the notice in the next 10 business days, YouTube will restore our material.  If they tell YouTube that they're standing by their infringment claims, we're prepared to enter litigation.

Meanwhile, we sent a separate letter to our contacts at WFLD last Friday saying that we would be happy to sit down and discuss reasonable guidelines for our future use of Fox Chicago video content.  But we're yet to hear back.

Meanwhile, the dispute continues to attract attention in the blogosphere.  Click here for our full coverage.

Since my last post on the ongoing Fox Chicago/Progress Illinois dispute over our use of clips from their news broadcasts, there have been some interesting developments.  For one, the station responded last week stating that they are willing to discuss the establishment of guidelines that would result in the withdrawal of their copyright complaints and the reinstatement of our YouTube channel. Unfortunately, their preferred resolution -- in which we agree never to post Fox Chicago clips on our site -- is unacceptable, as we made clear in a response sent Friday.

To get a better sense of our arguments, read the following statement from Paul Alan Levy of Public Citizen. The D.C.-based advocacy organization has agreed to represent us in our negotiations with Fox Chicago:

Fox Broadcasting has used its vast resources to unfairly squelch the First Amendment rights of an independent blogger. In this case, Fox Chicago objected to the use of three short video excerpts that were posted on YouTube to support political commentary on the site ProgressIllinois.com.

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In addition to MediaPost's article on our ongoing copyright dispute with Fox Chicago, Mashable editor-in-chief Adam Ostrow picked up the story this morning.  Here's his take:

Ignoring the copyright issue – where ProgressIllinois would seem to be in the right anyhow – Fox News is simply being ignorant in terms of how to utilize the Web. Having clips re-posted with commentary adds more exposure for their content, at no additional cost, since the videos are hosted on YouTube or other video sharing sites. Further, if Fox News’ issue is that they want to be compensated for the clips, they could do a deal with the video sites to make clips available and include ads. Instead, Fox News has just had the content taken down, which is of no benefit to anyone.

ProgressIllinois tells Online Media Daily that they are prepared to sue Fox News over the takedown. But, that shouldn’t be necessary. The company should see the light and do what’s good for everybody, including themselves, by letting ProgressIllinois use the clips.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation chimed in yesterday as well.  And attorney Ben Sheffner wrote about the issue on his blog Copyrights & Campaigns last night.  While Sheffner may be right about whether our counter-notification is in order (I'm looking into that now), it's most likely beside the point.  On Monday, I sent the memo to an acquaintance at Fox Chicago.  The legal team and general manager there have read it and expressed interest in coming to some agreement.  Meanwhile, Paul Alan Levy of Public Citizen has agreed to represent us in our talks with the station.  There should be more news to share on that front in the coming days.

Meanwhile, if you're interested in learning about the policy side of this, be sure to read Levy's recent blog post proposing revisions to the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. 

In response to Progress Illinois' dispute with Fox Chicago over our use of brief clips from their news coverage, some have asked me exactly how many YouTube videos we create that included WFLD footage.  Here's the answer: a sweep of our coverage during the past ten months found that we uploaded 11 videos with Fox Chicago content.

If you click on the links at the bottom of this post, you'll see that in four of these cases, we pulled down the clips to criticize something said by a political figure.  In six others, we were highlighting an interesting statement by a guest or reporter. In the remaining one we criticized Fox Chicago itself.  Furthermore, in only three of these cases are the full videos of the underlying segments available on Fox Chicago's website.  Meanwhile, a search of the YouTube database for the terms "Fox Chicago" and "Fox Chicago News" turned up nearly 300 functioning videos.

I'd also like to make this point about the use and subsequent removal of the Axelrod clip. 

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Yesterday, I described how Fox Chicago's short-sighted reaction to our use of clips from their news coverage recently resulted in the suspension of our YouTube account.  Today, the Citizen Media Law Project (CMLP) at Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet & Society took note of our case and provided some additional context.  In his blog post on the matter, CMLP director David Ardia cited an earlier example of FOX's "overreaching copyright claims" before concluding:

Fox's heavy-handed response to Progress Illinois' use of its clips highlights the network's myopic view of the media ecosystem in which it operates.  Rather than seeing Progress Illinois as a competitor attempting to steal website traffic from WFLD-TV, the network should be grateful that its political coverage is generating buzz in the blogosphere.

That's exactly right. The fact that we occasionally highlight excerpts from WFLD's coverage should be seen as a benefit to the network -- an indication of relevancy.  If there is anything depriving the network of website traffic, it's their own failure to adapt to the times. 

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As some of you might have noticed, the Progress Illinois YouTube channel has been disabled for the past three weeks, along with the corresponding "video wall" that is normally a fixture on our homepage.  Here's an explanation of what happened and what we're doing to hopefully remedy the situation. 

On December 10, our YouTube account was suspended after three copyright infringement complaints from FOX Television Stations for our use of news footage from WFLD, the FOX affiliate in Chicago.  It's unfortunate that rather than contact us directly about our use of their content, FOX took action that ultimately resulted in us -- and our readers -- losing access to the over 100 clips compiled on our channel over the past nine months, including over 25 original videos. Even more discouraging are the circumstances surrounding the videos in question.

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