Peter Friedman
Lawyer
Ruling Imagination: Law and Creativity
Archers Daniel Midland abuses copyright law to censor criticism — corporations have the right to free speech, but not the people who criticize them?
Some corporations apparently believe in free speech for themselves but not for individuals. The first video below is a deadly dull piece of propagandistic pap in which Patricia A. Woertz, Chairman, President and CEO of Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), USA drones on (someone get her better training for dealing with the media!) about ADM’s profound importance to feeding the world. The piece was produced in advance of the recent Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
ADM has, top it mildly, been the subject of considerable ire, criticism, and even criminal prosecution for price fixing (the subject of Matt Damon’s recent film The Informant and Fair Fight in the Marketplace, an excerpt of which appears below’s Woertz’s blathering), political corruption, destruction of the rainforests, and the forced labor of children.
A couple of days ago I posted on my Facebook page what I thought was a hilarious edit of the Woertz video in which some of her original words were retained and many were dubbed over to make it appear as if she were speaking openly on behalf of an evil multinational bent on the gross and horrific exploitation of the world and especially of multinational food markets. I thought it was hilarious piece of political critique. No one could have mistaken it as an “official” ADM production, but plainly it hit a nerve at ADM.
Today I noticed that when I click on the video on my Facebook profile a message appears that it is “no longer available due to a copyright claim by Archers Daniel Midland Company” and that if I click through to YouTube there’s no page for the video at all, not even a page with the same empty video box and takedown message.
This is outright copyright abuse. Criticism is fair use. When anyone asks whether in fact fair use is grounded in the Constitution’s guarantee of free speech, all you need is to think of a situation like this — one can appropriate copyrighted works to criticize and parody the copyright holder. And to use the copyright laws to silence that critique has nothing to do with protecting intellectual property and the rights of a creator to profit from his, her, or its creation: it’s unconstitutional censorship! (Peter Bouchard wrote a good summary yesterday on ” The Battle against Bogus Takedowns, a topic I’ve touched on in the past.”
February 5th, 2010 at 4:37 pm
[...] joke, there were important free speech implications to it. Law professor Peter Friedman quickly points us to a more serious case of a giant company stifling criticism through DMCA takedown. Apparently, food conglomerate, Archers [...]
February 6th, 2010 at 2:17 pm
[...] “[T]o use the copyright laws to silence that critique has nothing to do with protecting intellectual property and the rights of a creator to profit from his, her, or its creation: it’s unconstitutional censorship!” -Source [...]
February 6th, 2010 at 8:48 pm
[...] Archers Daniel Midland abuses copyright law to censor criticism — corporations have the right to f… ADM has, top it mildly, been the subject of considerable ire, criticism, and even criminal prosecution for price fixing (the subject of Matt Damon’s recent film The Informant and Fair Fight in the Marketplace, an excerpt of which appears below’s Woertz’s blathering), political corruption, destruction of the rainforests, and the forced labor of children. [...]
March 20th, 2010 at 6:28 am
This post is that first brought me to your blog.
The careful way the parody removed from your facebook was done makes it so very entertaining- when one watches the original you can see the care the voiceover artist uses to try and get her tone down, the pauses, etc- It’s unflinchingly leftist, sure, but the unapologetic approach is also what makes it so powerful and hilarious.
Ms. Woertz apparently feels slandered but elites need to lose the ego. Criticism is part of democratic participation and ADM is fair game since economic interests carry huge potential social and governance influencing power, as ADM has actively engaged the pursuit of that power, and since ADM propoganda seems to misrepresent itself as a world service. I can’t fully weigh the company’s good against its bad (though joint liberal and conservative watchdog condemnation seems telling)- I don’t know enough to make solid arguments; but hypocrisy boils me, especially in governance and the pubic good; and again ADM- like many other powerful commercial companies- is embedded in international institutions (such as the WEF) that given the lack of power in international governing institutions, functions as that governance de facto. (I welcome criticism in this statement or its logic, I seek growth and value the input).
Elite egoism aggravates me as well; again, especially in this context. I know this is an idealistic stance, it expresses something that is nowhere near the way things actually operate, but anyone who can’t figure out the value of (and the truth behind) humility is not someone I want making decisions that affect me, more/less the world. I also think that those who fake this humility should be called out.
“WEF spokesperson Adrian Monck says ‘the only defense to satire is common sense!’” (http://www.businessinsider.com/world-economic-forum-website-gets-spoofed-2010-1)
I completely disagree when that ‘common sense’ is specific to and defined by a particular political paradigm. It’s a cop out response. If a decision affects the world, those involved should be engaging the world’s concerns. Woertz, I would note, was ranked by Forbes in 2007 as the 8th most powerful woman in the world.(http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20516848/)