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Corbis, DMCA, And John Kerry Photos
Phronesis writes "Photo District News is running a story reporting that three historic photos of John Kerry from the early 1970s, including the one used for the Jane Fonda forgery, were pirated from Corbis. The photographers who own the copyright on the photos are asking Corbis to use its fancy watermarking technology to find the culprit. Corbis hopes either to track the responsible people down using watermarks, or to invoke DMCA if the watermarks were removed."
Hmm, I was going to make a comment on how ironic it would be to turn the DCMA against the rich people who are in power and would like to torpedo Mr. Kerry (or anyone who is a threat to them for that matter) but the /. subject line summed it up quite nicely: "from the forgery-and-lebel-were-already-criminal dept."
Still it would be a nice amount of irony wouldn't it? A wonderful example of what happens when you pass draconian laws -- they come back to bite you in the ass no matter how "good" your intentions were.
On a somewhat offtopic sidenote here's this quotation from the article:
So much for our clean 2004 election - as if any of us thought it would actually happen anyway.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
That aside, though, this is a neat use of watermarks. Much better than that stupid the-watermark-determines-the-restrictions crap that the music companies were playing around with, a while back.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
A bad law used in a decent way is still a bad law; the ends do not justify the means...
The unofficial
Sorry to rain on your parade...
Kerry's not even officially the nominee yet, just the most likely nominee since he holds a very large lead over the surviving competitors. Therefore, it's a bit far to assume that this came from a right-wing zealot, it just as much could have come from somebody who is overly zealous in supporting another Democrat.
It's highly unlikely that this came from anybody's official campaign, but somebody who really doesn't want Kerry to win for whatever reason makes sense to them. It'd be nice if there's a digital watermark somewhere in the picture that can unmask whomever was involved...
Phony pictures of Bush, Clinton, Daschle, and many other politicians have proliferated the Internet for years. I think it's a little scary how Kerry is going after the pranksters. Freedom of speech and all that is usually interpreted very liberally by the liberal unless it slights them, right ? I know the picture was passed off as a geniune news article, but it still smacks of hypocrisy. A lot of people believe the other pictures floating out on the Net too, but this is the first I've ever heard of proscecution being sought.
-- NymblZ
Ignorance is a sty in the mind's eye
If the "culprit" is caught, I could understand him being sued for libel. However, all that aside, isn't this a derivative work protected under the Fair Use clause? The perp could say "I was making a politcal parody like those pcitures of Bush next to Saddam or Osama." Didn't we already have a Surpreme Court ruling about this kind of stuff thanks to Larry Flynt?
The fact that people believe it without question is what's makes it continue to this day... and that's never going to change. I doubt that it will happen more in the future.. it happens a lot now!
My sig is blank, I typed this by hand.
because you are too close minded to think it might have been another democrat or an indepdendent?
Those watermarks will probably mark a trail that leads directly to some person or government group closely tied to President Bush. I predict that hotdogs will fly as soon as the hounds get close and that will be *the end* of the story.
LOL, if whoever doctored these pictures is liable for libel charges, isn't the Nation Enquirer, Globe, et.al. also liable for libel. They have doctored pictures of famous people in there magazines every day.
On a side note, doesn't John Kerry look like Jay Leno in that profile?
I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed...
I think you need to read Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music (92-1292), 510 U.S. 569 (1994).
Parody is a defense against copyright infringement, however, the infringing work must qualify as a parody.
Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree. -Martin Luther
I imagine to actually get pictures from this site, you have to sign some long dealy that probably gives away your soul in the small print.
For some reason I don't think this is in anyway endorsed by the Bush camp. I think GW wants to get past the whole military service thing because of the controversy about whether he completed his national guard service or not.
As far as I understand, the fight to be the president now revolves around same sex marriages.
It seems to me that no-one has high thoughts about the voters.
As an outsider, these American elections seems rather silly and I have never understood why the public allows this circus which seems to be all about avoiding important national issues.
But then again, that might why explain the low number of people voting.
That's a good point - in fact, the media outlets that didn't even bother to check this bad looking picture out *really* have to be seen as the bad guys here. The whole 'check your sources' thing has to hold once you get past the tabloids. Bad journalism, plain and simple. Taking ANYTHING straight off the web - without independent confirmation of the facts through existing sources and contacts is pretty irresponsible. Any of us can freely editorialize and satirize on the internet, and that's great (I'm doing it now)... but this is like when the Chinese republished the Onion's story about the US Capitol renovations - as fact!
The real photo is not a picture of them together. It is a picture of them in the same place at the same time. Yes, there's a difference--Kerry is basically background in that picture; he's not talking to Hanoi Jane, he's not looking at her, nothing.
I attended a Republican convention once. One of the many speakers was Pat Robertson. By your logic, I therefore believe everything that Pat Robertson believes. Pete DuPont spoke at the same rally. By your logic, Pete DuPont and Pat Robertson therefore have no differences.
There's no reason that Kerry should change his mind or disassociate himself from Jane Fonda. He came back from service in Vietnam convinced that the war was wrong and became prominent in the anti-war movement. There's nothing wrong with that. I too opposed the war then, as did, eventually, a majority of Americans. Nothing has happened to change my mind, and I see no reason that Kerry should change his. But whatever one's take on the Vietnam war, Kerry never did anything in any way improper. Even if you don't approve of Jane Fonda's trip to Hanoi, the fact that she and Kerry participated in the same rally does not reflect on Kerry. The anti-war movement, like any large movement, involved all sorts of people united only by their position on that issue. The fact that some may hold even more extreme views or distasteful views on other issues or be criminals doesn't say anything about the others.
In this day and age, who circulated the image certainly does not imply who generated the image. It only takes one person with photoshop and the email address of a "hot-head" to seed and get things going.
Certainly anyone thats covered Kerry for awhile would know where he's disliked.
Not so. Kerry didn't go to Hanoi, Kerry didn't broadcast speaches designed to harm soldier's moral, Kerry stayed here and worked within the law for what he believed in. I have no respect for Hanoi Jane, but I do for Kerry.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
www.snopes.com/photos/politics/kerry.asp
Happy now?
I hardly see the difference this makes, I don't post on here with my account, for my own reasons. I've had max karma ever since the karma kap came into effect.
Signing your name isn't half as important as being right. I post AC all the time on here & I'm regularly modded up. I don't have to justify my existance to another 'coward' but I will, because I believe in anonymous posting.
Yours truly,
chickenshit
Making us believe he sided with Fonda might be all it took to swing the votes. Imagine how it might be in Britian, let's say, if somebody made it look like an important politician in an election had been a vocal opponent of the Fauklands incident.
Doesn't work, I'm afraid. Most Britons don't give a damn about what some politician thought about a minor war twenty years ago. A sizable proportion of the population believe that Britain should never have intervened in the Falklands in the first place, despite the indisputable good effects of our intervention in its undermining of the Argentinian military junta.
More to the point, one of the fundamental differences between Britain and the US is that nobody over here would even consider bringing up a politician's military record - most of our politicians don't even have military records.
Now, their opinions on the recent Iraq farce might well swing the next election, but that's a bit of a different matter...
The whole point of watermark technology is to provide proof of origin or ownership, by providing a mark that is very hard to remove. This tech is valued on that sole premise: if I find my watermark on something, I can prove it's mine.
If someone can remove your watermark technology, to sue them (under the DMCA or whatever) is to admit and certify that your own technology is crap.
Not to mention the possibility that the watermark wasn't there to begin with...
You could simply not publish the entire photograph. Leave a quarter-inch or so around the edges where the crop won't make a difference in the photo. If it comes down to a copyright battle, you can always show the original image in court. Unless the infringer is a genius with Photoshop, and makes some lucky guesses about the size and contents of the missing border, you're pretty much guaranteed a victory.
The best thing about this is that it doesn't require any special software, works for both film and digital, and is dirt-cheap to do. It's not the most technically advanced solution, but anyone can do it.
... is that Kerry wasn't in Barbarella, either. Liars. All of you.
"if war had been officially declared"
How shocking of her to protest the fact the United States government killed millions of Vietnamese civilians, drowned their country in the deadly Agent Orange and the President accidentally forgot to declare war. Not to mention that the pretext for this illegal non war was the Tonkin Gulf incident. It was claimed North Vietnamese gun boats fired on a U.S. destroyer off the coast of North Vietnam. The Johnson administration neglected to mention that North Vietnamese didn't actually fire on the destroyer and were in fact attacking South Vietnamese boats that had been attacking their coast.
Fonda's actions may have been a little over the top in going to North Vietnam but she didn't wage an illegal war that killed millions including 50,000 Americans while the U.S. government did. I think I would take Fonda over LBJ, McNamara, Nixon and Kissinger any day.
If you were really an American patriot you wouldn't blindly support the proposition that its OK for the U.S. to kill anyone it feels like, whenever it feels like it.
The first two Al Queda in for military tribunals are up on war crimes charges for killing civilians and attacking civilian objects (buildings). If that were the criteria for war crimes then the U.S. has been a war criminal for most of its history, it was called strategic bombing in the second half of the 20the century.
Ummm, no, more than just the political right hate her guts. Anyone ever associated with the military hates her guts. Any (informed) patriotic American probably hates her guts.
Um, I used to be associated with the military. I'm more informed than most Americans (probably including yourself) and am pretty damn patriotic. I don't really want to refight the Vietnam war here, but the behavior of the U.S. government and military during that war towards those who chose to dissent was at least as shameful as what Jane Fonda did. That war, and the stupid "anyone who opposes our enemies is our friend, no matter how evil they are themselves" mentality still haunts America today. Like it or not, 9/11 happened because our illustrious leaders thought (and still think) that fomenting military coups in Guatemala, Iran, and Chile, helping Saddam Hussein against Iran, shipping weapons to Egyptian and Saudi dictators, etc, etc, etc is good foreign policy. Our leaders (of both Republicrat and Democan parties) speachify about all of the great things (capitalism, freedom) Amerika offers, but simply cannot grasp the hatred that those actions have provoked among the have-nots of the world who hear the speaches but end up on the receiving end of American bullets when they try and put those American ideals into practice in their own nations. It is sometimes very hard to be a patriotic American, and Fonda's actions have to be seen in that light.
FreeSpeech.org
It's a lot different then the action movies you've grown up on. In fact, when I was serving in Somalia, the situation was closer to "Blackhawk Down" than "Stripes".
---Well that's nice. I was serving in SWA/Kuwait a few years prior to your stint. When Bush Sr. realized that going into Baghdad would result in a dangerous power vacuum that could lead to a fundamentalist Islamic state. Not to mention civlian casualties and general chaos.
I'm pro-military. I'm vehemently against the current debacle launched in Iraq. And I can definitely see where a Vietnam vet coming home just might have something to say about how pointless that war was.
So again there, Mr. Somalia: What makes you think one cannot simultaneously be pro-military and yet still protest against a war?
I vote for an Edwards supporter. This thing is silly enough that I'm sure it'll blow over by November.... but since John Edward's fate is going to be decided on tuesday....
You aren't voting for Edwards or Dean (both of whom would actually have a chance of winning) because the Republicans told you not to. They told you Kerry was winning, and that you should vote for him because of that, and you believed him.
Guess Democrats are just as stupid as the rest of the sheep, eh?
They get our money in expensive, no-bid contracts to rebuild a country that they used our tax dollars to destroy in the first place...
How come Slashdot never gets Slashdotted?
Suppose you were on the scene at the My Lai massacre, when American troops were murdering civilians. Would it be treason to urge them to stop? No. Would it be treason to use force to try to stop them? Maybe. Would it be wrong? Certainly not. Chief Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson ordered his crew chief to "open up on the Americans" if they fired on Vietnamese civilians he was shielding with his helicopter.
If you view the Vietnam War as one big massacre, you have a moral obligation to do what you can to stop it. That view is one reasonable people could hold. The U.S. dropped more tonnage of bombs on agricultural N. Vietnam than on Nazi Germany and Japan. The B52 crews Hanoi Jane was hoping would be shot down were following lawful orders and yet perpetrating massacres. It's a problem.
I have a lot of respect for the troops. I have no respect for the current CIC. If my own brother were shooting civilians, I'd stop him if I had the chance. Would you stand by just because of the uniform?
I notice that these photos made it quickly and prominently onto The Faux News Channel. I wonder if the announcement that they are forgeries will be broadcast with 1/10th the gusto! Anyone care to give me odds on this?
Well, it kind of follows from the previous post, which follows from the previous, and originally there WAS an on topic post.
But to answer your question: YES, all BUSH SUCKS POSTS are insightful.
Umm... bush sucks!
Hmm... I'm not insightful yet.
" No, we understood why we were fighting that war, although many today who rely on revisionist history may not. Most of us volunteered. Polls show that the vast majority of us are proud of our service and would go again."
So what? You think God will care that you wanted to kill people and that you were proud to kill people? You think God cuts you a break because you volunteered to go to another country and kill people there who never attacked you or your country?
"We know that 100,000 Vietnamese were summarily executed after we left, that hundreds of thousands more were sent to concentration camps (where many more died),"
Mmm. They killed hundreds of thousands of people. That means they are evil. You killed hundreds of thousands of people. That means you are evil.
God does not give you a pass because somebody is more evil then you. There are lots of people more evil then you but that does not excuse your actions. You will be held responsible for every life you took, every baby that grew up without parents because of you, every kid missing a leg because you left mines laying around, every deformed baby and old man rotting from cancer because you dropped napalm on their village.
Go ahead, feel better about yourself because you are not the most evil person in the world. But realize this you are evil, more evil then 90% of the people in this world who manage to get through their lives without killing anybody. The vast majority of humanity would be disgusted if they killed somebody not proud.
The best way to support the US war effort is to continue buying American products.
I realise this is probably not the election to be saying it during, but you guys could always try and create a third party? When you have three or more parties, centrism is no longer an equilibrium, so you'll actually find politicians with progressive policies.
Personally I don't envy you guys at all, and I'm not sure I'd be able to stomach vote for Nader, but I'd at least give it some thought.
Why? All the market needs to function like a well-oiled machine is the rich. The poor are the ones losing from Bush's policies, but no one really gives a crap what happens to them or whether they have enough money to buy things. It's Lincoln Navigators and Hummers that drive the economy, and surprise surprise, times are good for people selling those kinds of things! Go Bush!
And don't say "if" bush gets four more years. Say it with me: WHEN Bush gets four more years. We all know he's going to get the biggest landslide in the history of landslides. Especially with Diebold in his corner. I personally would rather the election were just cancelled today and Bush declared the winner so we could not waste our time with an outcome that's already guaranteed.
-Daniel Pritchard
Registered Democrat
(No, I'm not voting for Bush, but it won't matter.)