For Would-Be Censors and the Thin-Skinned, Copyright Law Offers Powerful Tools

electronic frontier foundation (01/20/2023)

“One culprit, the ironically named No Evil Foods, went after journalists and podcasters who reported on accusations of union-busting, claiming copyright in a union organizer’s recordings of anti-union presentations by management.

Whether the presentations were even copyrightable was doubtful. And even if they were copyrightable, using such material to verify and strengthen news reporting is a textbook example of fair use. The public not only has an interest in this information; being able to hear the sources also helps us determine for ourselves how accurate the reporting is. By trying to silence critics using copyright, No Evil Foods was setting itself up for a lawsuit for its bad-faith use of the takedown system. So we sent a letter telling them to knock it off, explaining all of this in clear terms. The takedowns stopped after that.”

Click the link below to read the full article.

For more on No Evil’s history of copyright abuse, check out this video.

To hear audio from No Evil’s anti-union meetings, click here.