Well the Internet has been atwitter the last few days over a video posted to YouTube that melds Apples famous 1984 Superbowl ad with the image of Hillary Clinton. The message is Hillary = Big Brother, Barack Obama = tightly clad woman with hammer ready to destroy a television set…. or so my understanding goes.

For me the WORST part of this parody was the nine hundred articles & blog posts written about it. Which is why I stayed away. Every one of these things had the same message. “The Internet is Changing politics” which is something I have heard since 1996 and doesn’t come as much of a surprise. But anyway, this video was a great visual representation of how the Internet is indeed changing politics AND in true Internet style it was a whopping example of copyright infringement.

Well we now know the identity of the much hyped man and his name is Philip de Vellis. Now after several days (a week or so) of Barack Obama claiming to have absolutely no involvement with the ad it turned out that de Vellis worked for a consulting company Blue State Digital who manages the server for the Obama campaign. With that said de Vellis claims to have done this ad on his own time without the knowledge of his employer or the Obama campaign and he resigned on Wednesday when his identity was released.

There are many convergent things occurring with this story. First, yes, I will give credit to the Internet for allowing one person to stamp his mark on the election. Whether or not he has truly “influenced” it in that people will now vote or contribute to Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton, we have no idea (most polled say it won’t influence them at all). Second it is an example once again about how your day job and night life, especially when your nights are spent on the Internet, don’t usually go hand in hand. Which is common sense and sad at the same time.

At the end of the day this man is employed for his skills with technology. Skills he accumulated himself and can use freely in his personal life. As a member of a democracy he is also free to do everything he can to participate in our government, participate in campaigns and do everything he can to influence elections.

There is a conflict of interest here, he works for a company that is supposed to be neutral in its ability to pickup contracts etc. His personal involvement has business ramifications. Couldn’t that be said about most peoples jobs though? Can you work for Halliburton, even as a secretary, but then go out and campaign for George Bush without seeming improper? What if you go out and campaign for Hillary Clinton but work at Halliburton?

The lines between personal lives and work lives are increasingly being skewed, in great part because politics have become so personally destructive that we now seem okay with judging a persons work performance by their personal indiscretions.

Anyway its amazing how fused a lot of these issues are and it is interesting to see how things have evolved in such a way that participating in a democracy is discouraged.

Third and finally is the copyright issue. YouTube, which is now being sued by Viacom and others, profits from breaking copyright. Our knowledge of and influence on the electoral process does as well. Think about the videos of Giuliani dressed in drag that could well influence how those in the Midwest vote. If a candidate is caught on tape saying a racial slur, as they were in 2006, shouldn’t that video be shown to as many people as possible to let voters decide?

More often then not these videos will be copyrighted by one or more parties. The law says, even though the figures in there are public the capturing of their image by non-government entities is not. We cannot rely on television networks to put these images up, time and again lately stories seem to build on the Internet long before the national media pick up on them. So to influence democracy at times you must break the law. Do the ends justify the means?

Anyway my point is that there is indeed a lot going on with this story. Not much that actually means anything for Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton in the direct sense, but a lot going on nonetheless.