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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."
I think we're going to see more of this in the future. Remember the famous shark in san fran harbor pic?
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Corbis hopes either to track the responsible people down using watermarks, or to invoke DMCA if the watermarks were removed.
If the watermarks were removed, the DMCA won't be able to help much, they'll have a hard time figuring out who did the forgery...
It's gonna be a big one this time folks. The bushies will do anything to stay in power...and they will get it. I have an immense sense of dread, but there seems no stopping them, unless the media stops being their personal servant.
In some ways, it's better than any sport... If only it didn't have such a vast impact on the rest of the world.
If Bush gets re-elected, I'm seriously considering moving to either Europe or Canada. The man simply has no idea what it takes to create a sustainable society. With his current plans, I won't get a cent from the gov't after retirement age (Or my retirement age will be 90 yrs). I'll be a slave to my job until I die (or be homeless) if I remain in this country.
And yet all his rich friends and Cheney's friends get our hard earned money in the form of "tax breaks." It's a sick system.
Are you sure? Many companies (*cough* MPAA *cough*) use watermarks so they can figure out where leaked material came from. This is hardly new. Back in the golden days before PCs existed sensitive government or corporate documents were watermarked so if leaked you could figure out by whom.
Didn't MPAA also sue that screener under the DCMA for attempting to remove their watermarks from the screening films he leaked? Would they not be able to do this?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Does anyone know if an open-source (cheap) watermark solution exists?
I like to take photos and post them on my site, but I would like to also have them watermarked in case someone takes the photo and starts making money of it.
I looked into the one that comes with Adobe products, but it was way to expensive. Something like $75 for 10 photos.
Just wondering what options are avalible...
hmm... for fun I enjoy launching DDoS attacks against 127.87.42.5
I don't think this is that good of a forgery, the first thing I noticed was a blur on his cheek and collar. That was a red flag that it was a forgery to me. The blur didnt look natural, it looked like it had been done with a blur tool to hide something. Low and behold, it was, it was used to remove the watermark. Geez people. you can do better than that can't you? =)
-G
A man, a plan, a canal, panama
> Are you sure?
How hard is to figure out? A watermark isn't an access control device, it's a tracking device
As for the screener guy, the obvious thing to do would be sue him for regular copyright infringement and for cracking CSS. Not for removing watermarks.
I don't think this would be covered under free speech as a fair use application. Instead this could be construed as defamation or slander. When these cases have come up in court before, the defining standard always has been that it must be obvious that the picture is either satire (Hustlers famous example of some evangelical priest) or being used to illustrate a political point (W with horns on his head or some such).
In this case what was done was not obvious until the original photographer looked at the picture and said "that's not right" and even he had to look at his original to be sure. It's certainly a good enough photoshop that it would easily fool most people who will give this only a scant few seconds before concluding Kerry did associate with Fonda. Since it depicted him side by side with Jane Fonda, with no way for the public to readily know it was a forgery, the only intent has to be slander.
I saw the real photograph with Kerry in the same place as Fonda, but I kept look at the dude with the beard and saying "that looks nothing like Kerry, WTF are they talking about?"
Then I finally saw him in the distance, blurred a bit. So, big fucking deal.. It's not like he was sitting next to her holding her hand or something.
But in any case... Kucinich for President!!!
Now I'm not defending these images, which were clearly meant to be passed off as real, but what if... oh I dunno - say the original picture was used in a photoshop thread on fark or something - what about then?
Seems to me that this is a lot trickier of an issue then what the surface of it seems.
And finally, as far as the rich in power - no political figure, regardless of party affiliation, should be judged on the actions on it's extremist kooks.
I must admit that it doesn't sound like Bush's style; it sounds more like something Tricky Dick Nixon would have done. What I'd like to know is, how many of you are upset because it's wrong, not because it's being done to Kerry? If somebody put out a faked photo "proving" Bush was AWOL, how many of you would cheer?
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Real
Fake
Is it visually embedded, or just embedded in the file? If it's just embedded in the file, then if I just take a screenshot while I have the image displayed and crop it, won't I have a non-watermarked version? And this is against the law????
See, reading Slashdot does make us smarter sometimes... :-)
It's not Kerry going after them, it's the photographers (and their agents) whose work was misappropriated. In any case, Kerry wouldn't have standing to object on copyright or DMCA grounds. He might have a libel case, though.
-Tom Duff
1. The event where they were actually together (1971) happened before Jane Fonda went over to Vietnam in 1972.
2. At the time that Fonda went over there, Kerry publicly decried her actions.
3. There is no evidence that they really knew each other personally other than as passing acquantainces.
It's not not Kerry going after them for libel. It's the photographers, and they are trying to protect their copyright.
Life is like a web application. Sometime you need cookies just to get by.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1075317/p osts
(Scroll down to post 47.) The original link was at:
http://members.aol.com/registered/private/freep/ke rryfonda.jpg
though it's gone now. "Registered" admits elsewhere on the board to creating the photo.
and of course, the story of "fake" makes people think this is a fake, too: It's not.
Where were you when Karl Rove started pushing for Bush? ALL of his campaigns have this element. Remember what happened to McCain in the Alabama primary in 2000?
Not his style my ass.
The biggest "Doh!" is that the photographer who took the pic of Kerry is a "professor of journalism ethics" at UC Berkeley, and I doubt he's too pleased that his photo was stolen and used in a forgery.
You could go one step further and make some assumptions - that a UC Berkley professor who photographed an anti-war rally might possibly be slightly leftward leaning and have a political motive in pursing this... =)
Original Article
Kerry really did participate in the same rallies as Jane Fonda -- read the article.
If there was nothing wrong in such participations, than these forgeries are definetly not libels:
So, this forgery is inlikely to be criminal...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I'll take a crack at it...
Jane Fonda was also a prominent opponent of the Vietnam war. Some people think she went too far, to the point of actually supporting the North Vietnamese (I'll not go into whether this was actually the case, as I don't know or care). So by linking Kerry with Fonda as closely as possible, they try to say Kerry is a wacko like Fonda. All without going into the fact that Kerry made a principled stand against the war only after serving in that war with considerable distinction.
Frankly, I don't think this approach has much traction. The rabid Fonda-haters are all on the right-wing fringe anyway. I would hope that for most Americans, having opposed the Vietnam war in the considered way Kerry did makes you look smart. You'd have to be pretty out there to say that in retrospect the Vietnam war was still a good idea when Kerry came out against it. I think it just makes it obvious that his critics on this issue are fully in the "all independent thought is treason" camp.
Anyway, a lot of people opposed the Vietnam war, and at this point, most people probably think they were right to do so. The demographic that still thinks of Vietnam war protesters as hippie-commie-pinko-scum is pretty small now, and they're not voting for Kerry anyway, so I don't see this fake photo mattering much.
On the other hand, there are plenty of real pictures of current members of the Bush administration being all buddy-buddy with Saddam Hussein...
If they were pirated, does that not imply someone has to make a profit or use for a NON fair use purpose ? IE NOT poking fun at his retangular face in the time honored form of Satire ? So if someone profited, who ? and get a subpeona for records, businesses keep them, and you are only protected if operating under good faith, buying from the back of a van implies you KNEW it was stolen. If they can't point to someone who profited how do they justify/support the piracy angle. Sounds like a valid issue, but another place in which the terminally stupid piece of legislation previous known as the DMCA will be mis-applied to everyone NOT a CONSULTING LAWYER for either party or firms involved....
At what point does construct of stupidity, layed on a ground of venal greed, to a philosophy of deniability become a solid doctrine to manage society by/with ?
I should have been born wealthy, or too stupid to appreciate the difference...
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Well, actually, this particular Republican administration + congressional leadership does seem to take lying to new heights. I mean, describe a policy initiative or campaign statement they've made which is *not* substantively based on various lies?
Lowering taxes on the rich will stimulate the economy? Even Bush doesn't believe that one, according to his ex-Treasury secretary.
Bush "volunteered" for Vietnam? Yeah, volunteered for Palace Alert 7 days before the program was scheduled to terminate, knowing that you needed minimum 500 flight hours to get in, at a time when Bush had ~300.
"Healthy forests initiative"? That's right, increased logging of mature fireproof trees will reduce fire danger.
Clean air act? Bwah-ha-ha. Up there with increased arsenic in the drinking water.
Drilling in ANWR will reduce American oil imports? Total projected output is 2% of American consumption. I'm sorry, but 2% isn't statistically significant.
No Child Left Behind Act? Nice piece of paper, but no funding.
Teen sex abstinence program? Programs don't work, but do ship money to right-wing christian charities. Best way to reduce teen pregnancy is to increase the price of beer.
Invade Iraq as revenge for 9/11? Um, Osama's supposedly in the Pakistan/Afghanistan border region, where are troops got pulled out of to invade Iraq.
Department of Homeland Security will make us safe? Then how-come it's employees don't have civil service protection, thus making them even more vulnerable to political pressure to fake up intelligence to satisfy the white house? 9/11 was possible because in 2001 it was politically incorrect to bring up intelligence regarding the Taliban being run by Al-Queda--after all, Enron and Unocal wanted to build a gas pipeline across Afghanistan.
Did you see the picture in question? It seems extremely unlikely that a reasonable person could take it as a parody because it is carefully created to appear original and was apparently presented as the genuine article. It was meant to be taken as an original work, not as a satirical offshoot of an original work.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
John Kerry, D-Massachusetts: $163.6 million
Herb Kohl, D-Wisconsin: $111 million
John Rockefeller, D-West Virginia: $81.6 million
Jon Corzine, D-New Jersey: $71 million
Dianne Feinstein, D-California: $26.4 million
list
so much for the 'rich republicans'
more
According to a recent article on cnn.com, there are 40 millionaires in the U.S. Senate, according to their own financial statements.
Of these, the 5 richest are Democrats. Of the dozen richest, 10 are Democrats and 2 are Republicans. The richest (Democrat) senator is worth more than 6 times as much as the richest Republican senator.
Finally, since the remaining 60 senators must be worth less than $1M each, we can compute that the 3 richest senators (all Democrat) are worth more the the rest of the Senate combined!
Winter 2010: With Glowing Hearts
please remember that stereotypes are the hardest things to break. and since this particular stereotype fits a nice political agenda, then it doesn't matter the truth. i for one actually would rather have a rich politician only in that (btw, i'm from calefornyah) can't be "bought". i kinda like rich pols. clinton was never rich. he was easily taken for a few million. at least the rich will more often than not vote their conscience. and, i don't want a president who identifies with "common folk". hell, i'm a school teacher. i want a person larger than life, a lincoln, a roosevelt, a reagan. i wnat a someone who is a leader, who is visionary. i don't want the president to deal with the mundane affairs. he has much bigger things. like, oh, i don't know, global terror and the future of liberal and free democratic societies. but your original point was too obvious. the best part about people who know whatthey is right, is that they never let truth stand in their way.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
I dont think Corbis is using invisible watermarking in the traitor-tracing mode. As I recall they use Digimarc to embed copyright ownership. That is, the watermark is batch embeded once for each picture and basically says "(c) Corbis 1999" and maybe (big maybe) an image number so they can find it in the database. So finding who did it tru watermarking is definitely on the FUD department.
Article V, Section 3:
Clause 1: Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
This was put in to prevent people from being charged with treason just because the government didn't like what they'd done, as had happened a number if times in Britian in the "bad old days." Because we had not declared war on North Vietnam, and Fonda didn't do anything but talk, what she did was not treason, although it could be argued that morally it was. (That's another question that I'm not getting into.)
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Don't you think people who sent you to kill and die without declaring war deserve to be tried for treason more then Jane?
How many people is Jane Fonda responsible for killing? How many is Nixon? How many people did you kill while you were over there?
When you die do you think God will judge you more harshly then Jane? Do you think God will punish somebody who was trying to end bloodshed more then somebody who was comitting bloodshed?
That's a question you should ask yourself.
The best way to support the US war effort is to continue buying American products.
You know, unguarded cynicism is as naive as unguarded credence. It's just less embarssaing to be caught wrong.
There are other options besides lying, including redirection. Eisenhower was a master of this. When press asked him a question which he had a good reason not to answer, he used to launch in a rambling war story (literally a war story) that would have everyone in the room chuckling, nodding sagely, and none the wiser.
The thing is, lying is not really the hallmark of the sucessful politician; changing the subject is. When done skillfully, as Ike did it, people don't even realize their question hasn't been answered. Lying is the mark of an amateur, it's way too risky. Bush lied about WMD, and now he's catching hell. However, he's learning and doing a pretty good job at changing the subject to Sadaam's nastiness -- a documented and undeniable truth, and he's getting some traction.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Lincoln Chafee is otherwise known as a RINO, ie, a Republican in Name Only.
For example, the American Conservative Union gives Lincoln Chafee a lifetime score of 42, a and a 2003 score of 35.
By comparison, Zel Miller (a democrat), has a lifetime score of 65, and a 2003 score of 75.
Also in comparison, Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-Texas), lifetime scores a 91, and for 2003 scores 75.
Yea, yea, yea it was just an accident you posted a bunch of right wing propaganda designed to trash Fonda. We will all believe you from now on.
I hate to break it to you but according to the military tribunals forming in Guantanamo it IS a war crime to kill civilians and target "civilian objects". So, by the U.S. Governments own definition when B-52 bomber pilots bombed civilian's they did became war criminals. Not entirely their fault, they were just following orders. If they are enlisted men they are a little less culpable than ranking officers.
I hate to break it to you both sides in wars commit atrocities like torturing prisoners. Three national gaurdsmen including a women were recently found to have been torturing Iraq prisoners and were discharged and were facing charges last I heard. She was stripping them, repeatedly kicking them in the nuts and encouraging everyone else to do the same.
If you want to see some real war crimes look up the Tiger force. It was a unit of the 101st Airborne that apparently roamed Vietnam in 1967 massacring civilians:
http://iht.com/articles/114376.html
" The probe substantiated 20 war crimes by 18 soldiers and reached the Pentagon and White House before it was closed in 1975"
The investigation may well have been killed by none other than Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney:
According to the Blade, "It is not known how far up in the Ford administration the decision [to bury the cases] went," but it is worth recalling whom the leading actors were at the time: the Secretary of Defense, then as now, was Donald Rumsfeld, and the White House chief of staff was Dick Cheney.
Americans, as a people, need to stop operating under the delusion that American soldiers never commit attrocities and their enemies always do. It is simply propaganda. In the middle of a brutal war Americans can be just as brutal as the next nationality.
imo, if bush gets four more years, the fiscal uncertainty he brings with him will trigger a market crash. On the order of 1929, not relatively mild like 1987.
I think you folks down there are wise to worry that Kerry will serve the interests of his peers, however up here in Canada things are a bit backwards:
The current Prime Minister (Paul Martin) is the son of a Prime Minister runner-up (Paul Martin Sr, believe it or not). One of the most quoted pieces of advice passed from father to son is that if he wanted to be PM, Jr should get rich first so he couldn't be controlled by special interests. So he when his father lost the leadership convention, Jr went out and became a millionaire before going into politics. Then, just before stepping down as PM, Jr's rival Jean Chretien passed legislation severly limiting campaign contributions. So in the end politicians don't even have the choice of being controlled by special interests anymore.
Although there's some skepticism about Jr's social policies, in general Canadians don't distrust politicians just because they're rich: because if money was important to them, they would have moved somewhere with lower taxes and privatised health care long ago!
Just recently his administration reffered to the teachers union as a terrorist organization.
;-)
Hey, I was in 11th grade during the UTLA strike of 1990... I can see how they'd make that mistake!
(I support unions and think teachers are generally underpaid, but I tend to be disgusted by anyone who will slash tires in the name of a cause. Unless the cause is freeing opressed air from rubber prisons.)
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
At least if Newt Gingrich divorcing his cancer victim wife was worth so much ink, the circumstances of Kerry's first divroce should be worth mentionion.
Well, see, the problem with that is that Gingrich made the fatal mistake of doing it while being a (gasp) Republican. Kerry, on the other hand, has the good sense to at least make sure that he's a Democrat when he misbehaves, which, of course, means he gets an automatic free pass from our "objective" media.
In Soviet Russia, Chuck Norris will still kick your ass.
Fonda's actions may have been a little over the top in going to North Vietnam
That is not "a little over the top," but traitorous.
The "illegal war" that you moan about, but fail to correctly identify, was the war of aggression launched by the Communists of North Viet Nam to conquer South Viet Nam. The Communists of North Viet Nam repeatedly violated cease fires, peace treaties, international law, and the Geneva Convention. Why you feel sorry for them is a mystery, unless that is where your sympathies lie.
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.
If you were a decent human being you would protest the war of aggression by the North. Isn't the best protest to make a protest against the first aggression, not against those who come to the aide of those who are attacked? Isn't that like blaming the victim? And how do you think South Viet Nam fell? It was from a conventional invasion of South Viet Nam by the North Vietnamese Army using tank and infantry divisions, and plenty of artillery. After capturing the South, the Communists killed large numbers of people, and imprisoned many others. For a taste of the things to come you only have to look at the battle of Hue in which the Communists executed about 3,000 people that we know of, due to mass graves, and left several thousand more missing.
As to the Law of War, if you actually knew anything about it you would know that civilians are not absolutely priviliged from harm. It is unfortunate, but that is the way it is. No magic shields, not fantasy charms of protection. That is part of what makes war so terrible. Part of the reason for that is it is well known that some will try to exploit the priviliged status of civilians by using them as "peace shields" or putting arms and supplies in civilian areas. Sadly, once again, there was no outcry when Saddam did that, although a few luck ones lived and emerged a little wiser.
I find the sensitivities of the left about war revealing: there was no protest against Iraq in Europe or the US when Iraq invaded Kuwait, captured it, and incorporated it into Iraq. There were howls of outrage against war when a large coalition of nations went to war to remove Iraq from Kuwait and free the people of Kuwait. Viet Nam was much the same. No outrage about the invasion and war of aggression by the North, but howls and outrage when the US and other nations helped to defend South Viet Nam. That pattern repeats in other times and places. It reveals the moral bankruptcy of the left.
They don't need to protect their copyright. You are thinking of trademarks, which need to be protected. A copyright can be enforced, or not enforced as you like, without losing any of your rights.
...it's also easier to be conservative.
The wealthy tend to be more conservative. But, of course, this is by no means universal. Conservatives generally support the status quo, and the rich tend to be happy with the status quo.
A countervailing tendency is based on the fact that more highly educated people tend to be more liberal, and education tends to correlate to income. All of these are tendencies, and they get mixed up when they counter one another.
We have a rich-east-coast-liberal stereotype because some people can manipulate others politically by perpetuating it. And because some people can make lots of money telling people who want to hear it what they want to hear. You do understand that most stereotypes are inaccurate, don't you?
The very wealthy of the east coast have tended to be conservative from the very earliest days of our Republic. James Madison sought to build his political base in New York City because he felt this crowd would be won over by his conservative message. And they were. Today we have the Wall Street Journal (one of the most successful conservative publications in the world) making a very good living supplying similarly rich conservatives with what they want to hear in New York City.
If you base your logic on the assumption that stereotypes should be believed, you will come to many false conclusions. But they might well be commonly believed by those who share your biases.
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.