Much of the American political blogosphere is built upon the Left attacking the right-wing Fox News, or the Right ridiculing the left-wing MSNBC.  Thanks to the ongoing democratization of video, people can now do news and commentary à la The Daily Show from their bedrooms, catching politicians in their contradictions or criticizing television personalities for making fools of themselves. For these kinds of reflexive and multi-layered video conversations to work, users need access to the source material. On YouTube, there’s an active culture people who capture and upload short news clips for this purpose.

What happens, though, when Fox News decides to send over 150 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notices to YouTube—all aimed against a single clip provider? Well, the criticism is silenced. At least, briefly.

Many blogs, mostly liberal, get their Fox News clips from a YouTube channel called News1News. The Huffington Post, Truthdig, Gawker, and more depend on News1News for political fodder—something Fox News didn’t seem to like. Late last week, the large media corporation sent enough DMCA notices to push News1News far past YouTube’s three-strike rule, resulting in an automatic termination of the account and leaving many blogs with empty embedded players. Hundreds of thousands of viewers were met with a familiar message: “This video has been removed due to a terms of use violation.”

Gawker, which published the story yesterday, claimed (prematurely) that these takedowns were selective—a politically motivated move on Fox’s part—and noted that channels like ConservativeNation and GlennBeckDailyClips are still up. Later in the day, though, ConservativeNation posted that they began receiving takedown notices as well. As of today, both GlennBeckDailyClips and ConservativeNation have been suspended.

Under Section 512(f) of the DMCA, a copyright holder can be held liable if they misrepresent their claim against an alleged infringer. This means that Fox needs to keep fair use in mind before they can send takedowns, at the risk of being sued for damages. I’m no lawyer, but it seems pretty clear that use of these clips fall under or newsworthiness or critical nature needed to be protected by the fair use doctrine.

UPDATE: Perhaps the fair use claim isn’t so clear. Here’s an interesting piece by law student Arthur Bright via the Citizen Media Law Project. News1News hosted the clips of Fox News, but never provided any commentary or criticism themselves—they left it up to the blogs to do so. Should a user who clearly provides fodder to help blogs criticize still receive fair use protections?