Topic: WorldNetDaily
The Washington Independent details how WND's anti-Obama "documentary," "A Question of Eligibility," features a video made by Media Matters:
Most of the footage is taken from cable news coverage of the president’s election and first months in office. At the height of its sloppiness, the producers use, in its entirety, a video that Media Matters put together to mock Fox News coverage of the president’s first 100 days. You can spot the rip-off because the blue bars and white text that Media Matters mark the 100 days with are still on the screen. Where the liberal group meant to mock the hyperbolic rhetoric of Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, and the rest of the network’s line-up, WND treats this like pages from the Gospels.
(Gawker weighs in as well.)
Did WND compensate Media Matters for using this video in its for-profit "documentary"? We suspect not -- WND has a pretty expansive view of what it considers "fair use" when it comes to its own appropriation of others' work, even though it's much more narrow when others use WND's work. And WND did not credit Media Matters on-screen either during the video or during the end credits.
This means that WND is attempting to profit off the work of others without obtaining permission to use that work or even offering credit to the creators -- a clear violation of copyright law. The Media Matters page on which its video resides carries a copyright notice at the bottom.
Wouldn't it be wonderfully ironic if Joseph Farah had to pay Media Matters for the unauthorized use of its Fox News clip?
