C-SPAN drops suit against GOP candidate

C-SPAN -- the cable television channel that features congressional and governmental hearings and testimony -- said it would drop its lawsuit against a former Republican congressional candidate that the network said illegally used its footage in a campaign ad against House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, D-Mo.

The suit claimed that Bill Federer, a St. Louis-area real estate executive and author who ran an unsuccessful campaign to unseat Gephardt, violated copyright law because his campaign developed an ad using C-SPAN footage showing a speech the House minority leader gave to the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Oct. 5, 1999.

Attorneys for the cable channel said the network would drop its suit against Federer and not ask him to pay any damages if he agreed to drop an appeal he had filed against C-SPAN in the U.S. Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals.

"This is a tremendous victory for the American people," Federer said in a statement released Thursday, after both parties agreed to settle the matter out of court. "It is vital to the life of the nation that the political processes be open to the public."

"We are pleased that C-SPAN has thought better of suing Mr. Federer for constitutionally-protected speech," added Stephen M. Crampton, chief counsel for the American Family Associated Center for Law & Policy, which represented Federer.

In his speech before the homosexual group, Gephardt said, "If I have anything to say about it, I can assure you that these measures -- that make good sense and represent the right values for America -- will be on the agenda and will be passed."

That portion of Gephardt's speech was included in the Federer ad. The agenda Gephardt referenced includes the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force's support for legislation promoting, or approving of -- on the federal level -- homosexual marriage, homosexuals in the Boy Scouts, government-funded needle-exchange programs for drug addicts, homosexual recruitment programs in the public schools and opposition to any law that would criminalize the purposeful transmission of AIDS.

Federer has charged the Gephardt campaign with encouraging C-SPAN to initiate legal action -- much in the same way Gephardt campaign officials initially encouraged St. Louis television stations to pull Federer's campaign ads.

The ads first aired Oct. 24, but were ordered off the air by U.S. District Judge Charles A. Shaw Oct. 27 after Gephardt officials complained to local television stations that an ad featuring the C-SPAN footage violated copyright laws.

"We understand that C-SPAN does not authorize their footage to be used in political television ads and the Federer campaign may be violating a copyright and other intellectual property rights," said Kevin Gunn of the Gephardt campaign, in letters to KDNL-TV and KSDK-TV.

Officials at C-SPAN, said Tom Federer -- a campaign spokesman and the candidate's brother -- faxed a warning to the Federer campaign within a day of the ad's first airing, threatening legal action if campaign officials did not have it pulled.

However, Federer's campaign appealed Shaw's ruling to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, and Nov. 2 the appeals court reversed the district court's ruling, supporting the Federer campaign's claims that barring use of C-SPAN video footage was a violation of the First Amendment right to free speech.

"The attempt to block Federer from publicizing Gephardt's pandering to a left-wing special interest group amounted to little more than censorship," said Bryan J. Brown, litigation counsel for the law center and lead Federer counsel on Thursday. "If C-SPAN had prevailed, it would have made [the network] not a mere reporter of the news but the owner" of it.

Due to Friday's congressional recess, Gephardt was unavailable for comment.

Gephardt and Federer squared off in Missouri's Third District. According to official state results, Gephardt defeated Federer by a margin of 57.8 percent (147,222 votes) to 39.7 percent (100,967 votes).