Jeanette Rishell Tries To Silence Critics
By Greg L | 29 July 2009 | Jeanette Rishell, 50th HOD District | 12 Comments
UPDATE: Rishell’s campaign has filed a complaint on the high resolution video as well. If you would like me to email you a copy of the video, send me a note at admin@bvbl.net and I will send it to you (7.5MB flash video).
UPDATE #2: Not Larry Sabato is first out of the gate with hosting this video on his own server. You can see it here. Big kudos to him for sticking up for the First Amendment, something Jeanette Rishell can’t seem to stomach.
This is a new one. What political campaign has ever tried to remove videos from YouTube on the basis that the video included some of their own campaign content and argued that the criticism was a violation of their copyright? Well, Jeanette Rishell sets a new standard for utter incompetence today, which is arguably a really difficult thing for her hapless campaign to do. I must really be getting to them for Rishell’s campaign to start acting this stupid.
Here’s what showed up in my inbox this afternoon:
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I have never seen anything approaching this level of ignorance from a political campaign since Jeff Dion decided to run personals ads on gay.com when he was running for office. The “Fair Use doctrine” holds that since it is rather difficult to critique a work without showing the work you’re critiquing that as long as you use only the specific part of the work you need in the critique, you’re OK under copyright law. So on the law, Jeanette Rishell is utterly wrong. Not only that, but given the immense volume of videos out there were they use a candidate’s video to critique them, only an utter fool would somehow decide that their instance of being under the microscope is unlawful while everyone else’s travails weren’t a copyright infringement.
Worse than that, the last thing a candidate would want to do is vault this video into a mainstream media news story. When a candidate tries to silence a blogger, that’s news. Instead of making this video go away, Jeanette Rishell is making it more noteworthy. Nice going, doofus. Now that this is going to be referred to the courts for adjudication as a result of my appeal of YouTube’s action, this ought to be great fodder for more discussion about Jeanette Rishell’s choice of campaign staff.
To add insult to injury, there are two versions out there, one of which has higher video quality. The one they took down? The lower resolution one, of course. Because of that screw-up, you can still see this on YouTube here and on NLS:
If you see a message about Friends of Jeanette Rishell claiming copyright infringement on this video, you can see it here.
What morons. I think it’s time to add another entry to Jeanette Rishell’s hit parade of errors, miscues and outright blunders.
Also commenting on this issue are Crystal Clear Conservative, SWAC Girl, From On High and Eschew Obfuscation.
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12 Comments
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She is a moonbat…what else can you say….
YouTube has taken this version attached to this post down too.
Greg Everyone is entitled to have fun at their work and what fun would you have if Rishell did not keep running for office ?
So host the video on your own server. YouTube has the right to take down any video if they don’t want to receive complaints, but if you host it, it would take a lawsuit to take it down.
At 7.5MB flash, and 9MB windows media, it’s a little big to host on my server, otherwise I certainly would. Since I run this webserver on a DSL line from my house, I just don’t have the bandwidth to host video. Fortunately FOIS just got run in my neighborhood, so this is another reason to take time tomorrow and talk to Verizon about that.
In the meantime, the video file isn’t too big to email. If anyone wants a copy, just contact me and I’ll send it to you.
This went out to the mainstream media this evening. Normally I don’t bother, but this merits an exception:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
JEANETTE RISHELL CAMPAIGN SEEKS TO SQUASH POLITICAL SPEECH
July 30th, 2009
Manassas, Virginia: The campaign of Jeanette Rishell, a candidate running for the 50th District House of Delegates in Virginia has filed a copyright infringement claim with YouTube regarding a video created by local blogger Greg Letiecq on July 29th. The video criticizes her selection of a campaign manager and uses short clips from her own campaign videos to demonstrate the hypocrisy of claiming to support family values, but hiring someone to represent her campaign who posted pictures of used condoms on her public Facebook page, written articles advocating homosexual relationships, and had supported including hard-core pornography videos in the collection of the library at Rochester University.
“YouTube maintains a policy of disabling video content after receiving any complaints regarding copyright infringement, so the videos are currently unavailable on YouTube” said Letiecq, the blogger who operates the Black Velvet Bruce Li blog. “It is unprecedented for a political campaign to allege copyright infringement when someone uses short clips of their campaign videos, and this is a clear effort to stifle criticism of her bad judgment by misusing the law.”
Copyright law provides limited use of the material of others under the “fair use doctrine,” particularly when such use is essential for parody, criticism or educational purposes and is limited to the minimum portion of the original work necessary. Recently, a similar “fair use” issue involving a video by the National Organization for Marriage and contested by Perez Hilton was resolved by YouTube in favor of the “fair use” of Perez Hilton’s statements. Using short clips of a video for permitted purposes, even without authorization, is permissible “fair use” under Title 17 Section 107 of the United States Code.
Ben Tribbett, the blogger behind “Not Larry Sabato” called the Rishell campaign’s actions “total insanity” in a post late on July 29th he decided to make the video available for download from his own servers so they could evaluate the claims of the Rishell campaign themselves. The attempt to misuse copyright law in an effort to stifle free political speech has failed because of a bipartisan effort by Virginia bloggers to stand up for free political speech.
RESOURCES:
Electronic Frontier Foundation FAQ on “fair use”
http://w2.eff.org/IP/eff_fair_use_faq.php
Copyrights and Campaigns Blog on National Organization For Marriage and Perez Hilton:
http://copyrightsandcampaigns.blogspot.com/2009/05/youtube-restores-national-organization.html
Video “Jeanette Rishell and Used Condom Girl”
http://notlarrysabato.typepad.com/files/jeanette-rishell-perversion-ws.wmv
Worth noting is the exceptional traffic on these videos prior to the takedown effort the Rishell campaign initiated. The “low res” video has 975 views in two days, and the “high res” video has an additional 158 views as of midnight tonight. If Rishell was trying to prevent people from learning the truth about her decisions as a candidate, that seems to have failed pretty badly.
This is de ja vu all over again. Who is advising her campaign, Steve Chapman?
Now the media inquiries are starting to come in. Looks like the local papers will be picking this up.
…and NOW, with the MSM getting involved is when the young Campaign Manager, instead of the real culprit, Jeanette Rishell, will be embarassed/hurt by some decisions she made in the past.
The issue here really is NOT the Campaign Manager…I’m sure she’s “far from alone” in her beliefs and actions; the issue is the political aspirant who is so naive as to have not “taken a look at background” before hiring her, OR so naive as to think that the voting public either wouldn’t find out, or if they did, wouldn’t object.
I dare say that most, if not all of us have at some point said/done things that we’d just as soon not be widely known by the public. Therefore, I have empathy for the young girl. However, we surely have no place in the HOD for the “family values”politician who was either asleep at the switch, or thought it would make no difference.
Is the campaign manager a heavyset, busty girl with medium brown hair? When I was driving home this evening, I saw such a person coming out of Rishell’s house, and she looked GLUM!
And no, I am not a stalker, I live one block away and her home is along my route in and out of Bloom’s Crossing.
Yeah, she’s pretty heavyset now from the looks of the photos on Rishell’s flickr site. I think you pegged her.