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."

Comments

/. sums it up nicely for once

[Shakrai]

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 many of the captions attached to this photograph were totally inaccurate," Skoogfors says. "At the actual event, [Kerry] was a pretty low-key player and it was only a year later that he became a leader of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War

So much for our clean 2004 election - as if any of us thought it would actually happen anyway.

Re:/. sums it up nicely for once

[subrosas]

Well, Kerry probably qualifies as one of the "rich people" who are in power, and he did vote for the DMCA.

He helped pass a draconian law, and when someone tried to slander him, that law's being used to help nail the people who did the forgery.

Where's the irony?

Re:/. sums it up nicely for once

[leifm]

I know you're not really referring to the election, but politics is a lot like /. polls, when all the answers suck vote for the least offensive (CowboyNeal).

Clinton IMHO was tons better than Bush, but he still signed the DOMA and the Telecommunications Act, which if I recall correctly contained the CDA.

So DMCA proponent or not Kerry '04!

Re:/. sums it up nicely for once

[LostCluster]

So much for our clean 2004 election - as if any of us thought it would actually happen anyway.

Even if the candidates promise to keep things clean, candidates can't control their supporters. And, we've seen that even though there are tight regulations on what political groups can put out in traditional paid media, it seems like the campaign reform laws have completely overlooked the Internet, and people have discovered that if you put something contraversial on the Internet, it'll get discussed on TV for free. Even the infamous "blocked by CBS" MoveOn.org Super Bowl spot, which complied with all of the campaign law rules, got more free runs on CNN, MSNBC and Fox News during discussions of it than paid ones.

So, even if both candidates shake hands and promise zero negativity from their own people, there will be people on both sides of the ball who they can't stop that'll go negative in their name anyway. The media's going to have its work cut out trying to verify claims made by such groups this year...

Re:/. sums it up nicely for once

[aborchers]

I don't recall the argument being that Republicans were rich. It was that they are the tools of the rich...

Besides, 9 out of 10 people know you can use statistics to prove anything!

Re:/. sums it up nicely for once

[ichimunki]

Besides, 9 out of 10 people know you can use statistics to prove anything!

No. You can't. Statistics is a very rigorous mathematical process. Most of what you see in the media, however, is not valid statistics. Further, even if valid statistics are to be found, there almost always logical fallacies involved that direct the reader to conclusions that are not supported by the data. The most common fallacy I see is confusing correlation with causation, followed closely by the false dichotomy.

As to which party serves the rich? The way I see it, they both do.

Re:/. sums it up nicely for once

[nomadic]

Re:/. sums it up nicely for once (Score:2, Informative)

Don't forget the "stupid" argument. As was so well documented in a book called "Slander" it would appear Bush is not the dummy that the Democrats would have us believe! In fact, he blew away Al Gore's school record. A synopsis: Bush= A's, B's and the Occasional C Gore= A few C's many D's and a none to rare F. Oops, it looks like another cherished stereotype has been thrown to the wind!

Nope, it hasn't.

Slander was written by Ann Coulter. Coulter is an inveterate liar. I mean, all political pundits stretch the truth a bit, but Coulter lies shamelessly, frequently, and implausibly. She'll claim anything about anyone she hates, she'll fabricate insane facts that can be disproven in 5 minutes on lexis-nexis, and she is constantly being caught in her idiotic lies. Hell she fabricates footnotes constantly, gets caught in her lies, but nobody really says anything a) because her loyal readers tend to be on the stupider side of the species, so they eat the lies and believe them, and b) she's so much of a joke that none of her enemies wastes too much time with her. Don't believe me? See if anyone ever corroborated her little idiocy over Bush and Gore's grades. To call any Coulter book "well-documented" betrays an incredible misunderstanding about how this frothy-mouthed, right-wing, borderline psychopath works.

Watermarks

[Cajun Hell]

If the infringers took the photo illegally and digitally removed the watermark, Croan says that in itself is a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

No it isn't. (Though passing along such a derivative work may indeed be a violation of copyright.) Unless the watermark effectively limits access to the picture (and obviously, it doesn't), I don't get how DMCA applies at all. DMCA is a nasty law, but it's not like it reads, "Thou shalt not do anything we don't like."

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.

Re:Could it be?

[Gherald]

A bad law used in a decent way is still a bad law; the ends do not justify the means...

Well they do have a history of lying

[Anonymous Coward]

Iraq for example. As well as job creation (Where are those 3.6 million jobs bush was talkin' about a while ago?) Also, witness Rove/Bush's strategy against other candidates, like McCain, where they mercilessly decimated him in South Carolina with accusations he had a black baby, etc. It's not just the repubs either; both sides are guilty of lies. It's all part of the game. We just like to believe our government is all nice and happy and gets along fine together in a big fluffy friendly world.

Sorry to rain on your parade...

Re:Well they do have a history of lying

[YrWrstNtmr]

Well they do have a history of lying

They, meaning politicians in general, not just Republicans.

Re:Damn that photoshop

[Jeremy Erwin]

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.

Re:Not a bad forgery.....

[Bender Unit 22]

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.

Re:An awful lie by right-wing nuts!

[xTown]

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.

Re:Evil, evil Jane

[techno-vampire]

But they both opposed the war, and that makes them both traitor-liberal-bleedingheart-(add your own insult here).

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.

Nobody "placed" him anywhere...he was really there

[bonch]

www.snopes.com/photos/politics/kerry.asp

Re:Not a bad forgery.....

[Skjellifetti]

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.

Re:Veterans Protesting Against A War? Of course!

[MooseByte]

Just Some Guy wrote:

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?

Here's a dillema -

[JimmytheGeek]

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?