YouTube has rejected a request from US presidential candidate John McCain's campaign to review its fair use policy and stop removing political campaign videos that may infringe copyright so swiftly.

The McCain campaign's general counsel, Trevor Potter, sent a letter to executives from YouTube and parent company Google earlier this week asking for a "full legal review" of takedown notices submitted against videos posted by political candidates and campaigns.

"Lawyers and judges constantly disagree about what does and does not constitute fair use," said YouTube's chief counsel Zahavah Levine in a letter of response.

"No number of lawyers could possibly determine with a reasonable level of certainty whether all videos for which we receive disputed take down notices qualify as fair use," Levine added.

YouTube, which is facing legal action from media companies and rights owners including Viacom and the Premier League over illegal copyright infringement, argues that it is protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Under the DMCA YouTube is protected from being responsible for illegal material as long as the company moves to take it down when notified of an infringing video.

"The DMCA provides a statutory safe harbour for service providers such as YouTube that host content at the direction of users," said Levine.

"Without this safe harbour, sites like YouTube could not exist. The real problem here is individuals and entities that abuse the DMCA process," he added.

McCain, who is outgunned in ad spend terms by Democrat rival Barack Obama and is suffering in the polls, has found his campaigning films frequently removed by YouTube following complaints they use copyrighted material without permission.

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