The McCain/Palin campaign has found itself caught in a DMCA/Fair Use YouTube battle, after having campaign videos pulled from the site because of their use of copyrighted material.

The campaign’s letter, embedded above, makes a great against the over-zealous enforcement of DMCA claims.

Let’s hope that politicians getting ensnared in the DMCA/Fair Use battle will lead to a future where moms don’t have to go to court because there’s a Prince song playing in the background of their baby videos.

Update: YouTube has rejected the McCain/Palin campaign’s request, saying that they did not want to give the campaign preferential treatment:

Here’s a portion of YouTube Chief Counsel Zahavah Levine’s response:

While we agree with you that the U.S. presidential election-related content is invaluable and worthy of the highest level of protection, there is a lot of other content on our global site that our users around the world find to be equally important, including, by way of example only, political campaigns from around the globe at all levels of government, human rights movements, and other important voices. We try to be careful not to favor one category of content on our site over others, and to treat all of our users fairly, regardless of whether they are an individual, a large corporation or a candidate for public office.

The real problem here is individuals and entities that abuse the DMCA takedown process. You and our other content uploaders can play a critical role in helping us to address this difficult problem…You can file counter-notifications. You can seek retractions of abusive takedown notices. You can hold abusive claimants publicly accountable for their actions by publicizing their actions…

We look forward to working with Senator (or President) McCain on ways to combat abuse of the DMCA takedown process on YouTube, including by way of example, strengthening the fair use doctrine…

via Lessig