Barney's loose

The White House isn't complaining this year, now that several Internet sites are running clips of its annual Barney the Dog holiday video, according to CNET. Last year, the White House embargoed the video from web publishers, but made available videotapes to television news organizations in hopes that the material would make it to the soft news features almost universally addended to the end of TV news broadcasts. That made a Washington Post executive angry enough to complain, which seems to have worked. Without seeking permission, the Post and other sites ran clips of the video online. Helping squelch any potential complaint from the Whitehouse, the Administration appears to have little legal right to complain due both to fair use doctrine and the deliberate exclusion from copyright law of works created by federal employees.