Change or Be Changed

If you’re not going to change with the times, eventually time will change you.

Trite platitudes aside, John McCain’s presidential campaign apparently has seen the light when it comes to net neutrality. Despite the fact that McCain has repeatedly voted against measures to enshrine net neutrality into the legal framework that undergirds the Internet, and though he doesn’t mention it once in his campaign’s technology policy platform, his campaign now gripes to YouTube because it has pulled down some of McCain’s ads on the website in keeping with the law of the land for which McCain voted, the NY Times has reported.

“The commercials incorporated snippets of television news broadcasts. Using provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the news organizations demanded that the commercials be removed from YouTube because they violated the organizations’ copyrights,” writes Saul Hansell of the Times.

Hansell continues:  “Senator McCain has not had much common cause with the Internet free speech movement. He voted for the D.M.C.A., and he opposes legislation to enforce network neutrality. So not surprisingly, the advocacy groups jumped to highlight the irony of the campaign’s letter.”

While this makes for an interesting and humorous example of hypocrisy on the part of the McCain campaign, it also sheds light on how the “Net Neutrality” movement might gain ground.  As businesses increasingly turn to social media and adopt its “amateur” aesthetic, which includes the mashup, for purposes of promoting business and upping profits, the market for fair use material on the internet will grow. And, as the market grows, social norms and mores will shift toward allowing more digital material to fall under the category “fair use.”

But how would McCain negotiate his seemingly hypocritical stance on “fair use?” Hansell puts it well: “If the polls are to be believed, we may never know how much a McCain administration would fight for everyone’s right to make mash-ups.”