With so much happening this week, we almost missed the letter from the McCain campaign to YouTube asking for some special consideration when taking down its ads.

The gist of it was this: You do a great job, buddies, but you are also chilling free speech when you comply with take down notices.

Which was an odd thing, considering the DCMA (the copyright act) is not what someone with a pro-business political platform would knock.

So when YouTube responded to the campaign saying:

“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.”

it was basically telling him “you’re not above the law, bro.”

How could his campaign not know this might ensue? We all know that online video is the new battlefield for both the Obama and McCain campaign. Having engaged social media this far into the campaign, it’s way too late in the game to be trying to tweak the rules.

To me it gives us yet another glimpse of how badly managed this campaign is.