So something weird and interesting has been going on over at the Sanders Campaign recently that may or may not be important about Sen. Sanders himself, but is very important about his campaign.
According to Arstechnica the Sanders Campaign’s lawyers, served the Wikimedia Foundation with a formal DMCA request to remove the campaigns logo’s from all of it’s wiki pages; specifically from the pages concerning Sen. Sanders Presidential Campaign because they claim that the images are protected by copyright, and exempt from fair use purposes.
The Wikimedia Foundation complied after contacting the campaign directly to ascertain the validity of the DMCA claim and a failed negotiation with the campaigns lawyers to preserve the use of the images.
From the Arstechnica Article:
“We also contacted the attorneys representing the Bernie Sanders campaign to discuss the issue, and they asked that WMF carry out a takedown in compliance with the DMCA rather than work with the community to update the licensing information or allow the images,” wrote Wikimedia community manager James Alexander on a discussion page about the Sanders DMCA notices.
A Wikimedia Volunteer Administrator in the UK,Tomasz Kozlowski, has filed a formal counter notice that claims the DMCA removal is a “mistake or misidentification” and that the material in question is not subject to copyright because it fails to meet the standards for granting protection under copyright laws.
With out regard to the merits of either claim, this does not strike the Author as a particularly smart political move. The DMCA as a whole is generally regarded by a significant portion of liberals and/or millennials as a draconian piece of corporate welfare garbage at best. To bring in the lawyers and the DMCA on this issue over Wikipedia page(s) could jeopardize Sen. Sanders support with both groups if both groups are actually made aware of the situation.
The comment section of the Arstechnica article is full of unhappy campers, to say the least, but one does not have to be a psychic to know that for a large group of people Sen. Sanders could be, and is likely, doing real damage to his persona as a ‘Tried and True Socialistic Liberal’ by big-footing Wikipedia over campaign logos with the DMCA, generally viewed by the groups in question as a heavy handed corporate trade handout and over zealous IP protection, while claiming to be against heavy handed trade deals, corporate handouts, and over zealous IP protection deals like the TPP.
As of the publishing of this dairy however, the Author has seen only the one story on Arstechnica even mentioning the event.
If this falls under the radar however, then it will obviously have little to no repercussions. Only time will tell.
Update [2016-1-15 23:9:44 by Beahmont]: Turns out in this case I should have read the comments section completely before posting or not take such long naps in the evening. The Sanders Campaign reached out to the Wikimedia Foundation and changed it’s mind this evening after the Arstechnica article was released.
From the Wikimedia Commons DMCA page:
Conclusion: The campaign has contacted the WMF and formally withdrawn the DMCA. I will be undeleting the images immediately after I save this message and notifying the 3 users who I sent notices too on their talk page. I have already notified odder and we are asking for a written version of the withdrawal (it was done initially over the phone) so that we have it formally for odder and for posting. Jalexander–WMF 23:46, 15 January 2016 (UTC)
