Slashdot Mirror
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?
Best Community for Gaming and Gadgets!
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...
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 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 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?
Good, inexpensive web hosting
Real
Fake
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.
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 ?
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.
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.
...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.