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

[Cajun Hell]

how ironic it would be to turn the DCMA against the rich people who are in power and would like to torpedo Mr. Kerry

Mr. Kerry was in the Senate when DMCA passed unanymously, thus he voted for it. Would it be ironic if a law that a senator voted for, turned out to be useful to him? Not really.

And as for contrasting "rich people" with Mr. Kerry, that's a very interesting spin you have chosen.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

For sooth! He used a Y instead of an I! LETS FLAY HIM!!

Re:/. sums it up nicely for once

[Anonymous Coward]

Kerry probably qualifies as one of the "rich people" who are in power

In fact, if Kerry is elected, he will the the 3rd richest US president ever (behind George Washington and JFK).

Re:/. sums it up nicely for once

[YrWrstNtmr]

Well, Kerry probably qualifies as one of the "rich people" who are in power

probably? You DO know what the F. in John F. Kerry stands for, right?
Hint, it's not Field&Stream.

And you DO know his wife's maiden name, right? A well known condiment.

Rich people indeed...

Re:/. sums it up nicely for once

[RailGunner]

I have a question - were the pictures presented meant to be Satire? Lampooning political figures happens all the time, though IANAL, I wonder if making satirical photoshopped images, from a copyrighted source or not, would be protected by free speech?

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.

Re:/. sums it up nicely for once

[techno-vampire]

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?

Re:/. sums it up nicely for once

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

You DO know what the F. in John F. Kerry stands for, right?

Fred? Frank? Farfegnugen? Who cares?

And you DO know his wife's maiden name, right? A well known condiment.

Ketchup? Mustard? Relish? Again, who gives a rats ass?

Re:/. sums it up nicely for once

[YrWrstNtmr]

Forbes. Kerry was not poor before he married the Heinz heir.

Re:/. sums it up nicely for once

[Anonymous Coward]

Bush is too stupid to be Hitler or the devil.

Re:/. sums it up nicely for once

[DustMagnet]

Mr. Kerry was in the Senate when DMCA passed unanymously, thus he voted for it.

You are not required to vote in the Senate, but I checked and Kerry did vote yea .

Re:/. sums it up nicely for once

[AhBeeDoi]

And you DO know his wife's maiden name, right? A well known condiment.
What sort of condiment is Simoes-Ferreira?

Re:/. sums it up nicely for once

[mapmaker]

And you DO know his wife's maiden name, right?

No. And clearly, neither do you. Her current last name, which she got from her first husband, is Heinz.

I have no idea what her maiden name was.

Re:/. sums it up nicely for once

[LostCluster]

Mr. Kerry was in the Senate when DMCA passed unanymously, thus he voted for it.

Sorry your premise doesn't lead to that conclusion... A bill can pass unanimously by a score of 97 to 0 in the Senate. It's still unanimous because nobody voted "no", but that doesn't lead to the conclusion that all of the senators in office were present or that everybody that was present agreed, the losing 3-person side may have just chose to abstain.

What happened in the Senate is that the Senate voted by "Unanimous Consent", which is to say not one senator spoke up to object to the bill being passed and/or request that an on-the-record vote be taken. This is often done for sure-to-be-disliked legislation because nobody has to vote "yes" either.

Now, the thing is, to call for debate and a recorded vote on an issue that you're opposed to, but you're sure the other side has the votes it takes to pass is a waste of the Senate's time, and sure to make you some enemies who might start to do their best to muck up an unrelated issue that you're in favor of. Therefore, there's a downside to objecting, the only real thing you have to gain is to get your objection onto the record.

Kerry, being a Senator, is going to be confronted with a lot of questions about the activities of the Senate and when he took action and didn't take action on them throughout the campaign. Candidates who run for a higher office after ahving any legislative position always have these questions... that's why it's more common for a former govenor to run for the office, they have far fewer on-the-record actions they have to justify, and total control of their own agenda rather than having to fight other legislators for control of a schedule.

Re:/. sums it up nicely for once

[NearlyHeadless]

You DO know what the F. in John F. Kerry stands for, right? Hint, it's not Field&Stream.

And you DO know his wife's maiden name, right? A well known condiment.

Her maiden name was Teresa Simoes-Ferreira. She did inherit millions from her first husband, John Heinz. Kerry's middle name is Forbes, but he's not related to the Forbes magazine publishers.

He does come from a wealth family, too

Re:/. sums it up nicely for once

[Golias]

Sorry your premise doesn't lead to that conclusion...

Correct. However, since the fact that he voted for it is a matter of public record, there is no need for conclusions to be drawn.

Re:/. sums it up nicely for once

[Luscious868]

He wasn't filthy rich either, which he is now.

Re:/. sums it up nicely for once

[Phronesis]

how ironic it would be to turn the DCMA against the rich people who are in power

Of course, you might ask, "who owns Corbis?"

Re:/. sums it up nicely for once

[nexex]

he also the richest senator

but what people dont know he is controlled by big ketchup and the tomato lobby

Re:/. sums it up nicely for once

[KlomDark]

So people will be chanting "No blood for ketchup" (Or "No Ketchup for Blood" :) ) instead of "No Blood for Oil"?

Re:/. sums it up nicely for once

[nexex]

The top 5 richest senators are:

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!

Re:/. sums it up nicely for once

[Jayjay75]

Taken rather out of context to make it sound worse.

"As you move to conference on "The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998," I write to express concern regarding unrelated provision[s] added by the House in its companion bill. These provisions deal with the protection of "collections of information," or databases.

I am specifically concerned about language contained in Title V of the House-passed bill. This language is similar to that contained in S. 2291, "The Collections and Information Antipiracy Act, " a bill introduced in the Senate that would amend current law by creating a new form of intellectual property protection for informational databases. In recent days, I have been approached by various Massachusetts- based groups and institutions with concerns regarding the potential implications of the language included in Title V.

While I am not opposed to the eventual consideration of the database legislation, I believe that the Senate Judiciary Committee has not had ample time to examine closely the specific provisions contained in Title V and their potential implications. I would therefore urge you to move forward with the passage of "The Digital Millenium Copyright Act," but to delay consideration of any database legislation until next year. This will provide the committee with the opportunity to hold hearings on the matter and to craft database legislation that enjoys broad-based support in both the public and private sectors."

Re:/. sums it up nicely for once

[b17bmbr]

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.

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

[greenhide]

Can you even prove he was in the room at the time it was brought up?

Hmm...let's see. Let's look at your parent, shall we?

since the fact that he voted for it is a matter of public record

And here's the record.

Unless there's something seriously wrong the Congressional Record, it looks like people did vote for this one.

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

[TXG1112]

It seems to me, it is much easier to be liberal when one is wealthy. Why else would there be a "rich east coast liberal" stereotype? I have also observed that it is the moderately wealthy (who would like to cross over into the super-rich category), that are more likely to be fiscally conservative.

Re:/. sums it up nicely for once

[d34thm0nk3y]

so much for the 'rich republicans'

I was suprised when I saw these numbers too, but then I realized that most people probably don't put bribes on their tax return.

Re:/. sums it up nicely for once

[ljavelin]

Funny, because Kerry's wealth is really his wife's fortune. And where did she get that fortune? She inherited it from her former husband, who died in an air crash. And what was he when he died? A Republican U.S. Senator!

Re:/. sums it up nicely for once

[uncoveror]

Those old analog photographs are so easy to fake. It is a shame we didn't always have digital cameras.

As Dr. Marcus Von Vickersburg from The International Institute for Photographic Analysis stated, "digital photographs cannot be faked"
;)

Re:/. sums it up nicely for once

[Dun Malg]

BTW how Rich is Bush? Being from one of the elite families in the US you'd think he would be swimming in money. After all wasn't his grandfather or great grandfather one of founders of the CIA or something.

What? You speak as if the CIA is a company and the Bush family has stock in it. It's a government agency, you knob. It was formed in 1947 by Harry Truman. GW Bush was the head of the CIA for a while, but he was rich before that.

Re:/. sums it up nicely for once

[Anonymous Coward]

So...you're saying we should elect CowboyNeal?

Re:/. sums it up nicely for once

[Damek]

The media verifying claims? What world do you live on?

Re:/. sums it up nicely for once

[fenix down]

W is the richest Bush, pretty much solely from the 15 million he made selling the Texas Rangers. Daddy Bush is in the single-digit millions somewhere. Prescott, W's grandfather, was an investment banker/millionare, but not all that impressive as far as war profiteers go. He supposedly was the one who stole Geronimo's skull for Skull & Bones. (without a skull, it's a kinda shitty secret club) The great-grandpappy Samuel was in charge of buying guns for the army during WWI and maybe-kinda Remmington used him to overcharge the army like drunken sailors.

None of them founded the CIA, George H.W. just got appointed head of the CIA for awhile.

Re:/. sums it up nicely for once

[e_pluribus_funk]

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.

Re:/. sums it up nicely for once

[caffeinefiend]

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!

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.

Re:/. sums it up nicely for once

[errxn]

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.

Re:/. sums it up nicely for once

[Hittite Creosote]

Do Americans really still buy that log cabin myth? The Lincoln family owned two farms, livestock, and more land in Elizabethtown, Ky while Lincoln was growing up.

Pretty Funny

[firstadopter.com]

I think we're going to see more of this in the future. Remember the famous shark in san fran harbor pic?

Re:Pretty Funny

[wankledot]

This is nothing new. The technology is to the point now where it's nearly flawless unless you have the orginals and can say "OK, here's the source." But the same kind of photo doctoring has been going on for as long as photos have been taken. It really doesn't take a very high quality photo to publish it in the paper, and have it look believable.

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!

Re:Pretty Funny

[Anonymous Coward]

San Fran Shark Link...

http://www.snopes.com/photos/shark.asp

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:Watermarks

[Shakrai]

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."

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?

Re:Watermarks

[GMFTatsujin]

it's not like it reads, "Thou shalt not do anything we don't like."

Are you sure about that? It's in the fine print. Really fine print, as it turns out -- it's in microtext in the dot over the second "i" in "millennium."

Re:Watermarks

[lynx_user_abroad]

I don't get how DMCA applies at all.

The other part of the DMCA says stripping copyright information or other identifying marks from a copyrighted work in an attempt to avoid proper attribution is also a violation.

It's in that part none of us got really upset about because most of us (even those who "pirate" regularly) still think the creator should get credit (just not control).

Re:Watermarks

[Anonymous Coward]

> 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.

Re:Watermarks

[Salsaman]

Actually, it is a crime under the DMCA, section 1202. There was an article on this very issue on groklaw.net. All they need to do is say that a watermark is copyright management information.

Sec. 1202. Integrity of copyright management information

. . . (b) REMOVAL OR ALTERATION OF COPYRIGHT MANAGEMENT INFORMATION- No person shall, without the authority of the copyright owner or the law--

(1) intentionally remove or alter any copyright management information,
(2) distribute or import for distribution copyright management information knowing that the copyright management information has been removed or altered without authority of the copyright owner or the law, or
(3) distribute, import for distribution, or publicly perform works, copies of works, or phonorecords, knowing that copyright management information has been removed or altered without authority of the copyright owner or the law,

knowing, or, with respect to civil remedies under section 1203, having reasonable grounds to know, that it will induce, enable, facilitate, or conceal an infringement of any right under this title.

In other words "Thou shalt not do anything we don't like."

Re:Watermarks

[jdgreen7]

That's funny, but luckily the government just decided to standardize on a specific font size for official documents.

See, reading Slashdot does make us smarter sometimes... :-)

Re:Watermarks

[ArseneLupin]

Unless the watermark effectively limits access to the picture (and obviously, it doesn't)

I somehow get the feeling that this isn't what lawyers mean when they say "effective". Or else the entire sentence would be redundant: either the protection is effective, in which case it cannot be removed, thus how could the accused possibly have infringed, doing something that is impossible.

Or, the accused did indeed remove the protection, thus proving it was not really effective, and it wouldn't apply.

In reality however, the word "effective" is more or less just decoration, just like the "technical effect" in European patent law. Don't rely on it to get you off the hook!

Re:Watermarks

[jpmjpm1]

Actually, the DMCA doesn't apply because you CAN'T remove a watermark, unless you have the original image! If you had the original image, why would you send out the one that has a watermark in it??? You would get caught...that would be stupid.

Watermarking an image is pretty basic signal processing (go talk to your EE friends about it). You add a small amount "noise" to the signal (in this case, an image). This "noisy" image is then sent to people. To prove where a watermarked image came from, you subtract the original image from the watermarked/noisy image and you get the noise that you added. You compare this to your records and see who you you gave that noise pattern to.

The problem with removing the watermark is that you don't know what noise was added, and there isn't a way to find out, unless you have access to the original. Another way of putting it is that A+B=C. If you only know C (the watermarked image), you can't find out what A and B are! (unless you know A (original image) or B (noise you added).

Damn that photoshop

[ArmenTanzarian]

TotalFarker's give a collective "yeee..." and pull at their shirt collars.

Re:Damn that photoshop

[Senjutsu]

Wouldnt they be protected under parody laws?

Standard IANAL bit.

It would protect him or her from libel, but not copyright or DMCA violations.

Re:Damn that photoshop

[double-oh three]

And with this PS contest, they are clearly in violation of copyright. Look at all those photoshopped pictures of celebrities!

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:Damn that photoshop

[ArmenTanzarian]

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.

Not a bad forgery.....

[BWJones]

Yeah so this is the problem with folks who don't ask questions. A quick examination of the forged image reveals differing light angles. However, other than that, the forgery (based upon an interpretation of the low resolution image from the link) is pretty decent. The cut lines are well concealed, and the brightness has been rather nicely matched. Of course the highlights in her hair have been darkened to match the background of trees and such, but here is(are) my question(s)..... 1) Who would be stupid enough to obtain a copyrighted image in a forgery attempt? 2) Unless this is an attempt by a right wing organization to discredit Kerry, why waste your time? Especially when you are lying?

Re:Not a bad forgery.....

[GNUguy]

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

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:Not a bad forgery.....

[theghost]

Jane Fonda is an actress who was a vocal critic of the Vietnam War. In 1972 she visited the capitol of North Vietnam. Many people branded her a traitor for visiting with the enemy of the United States while the US was still at war with them. They gave her the nickname 'Hanoi Jane' because of her actions. Some people still harbor great animosity for her for this.

Note: Her visit occurred in 1972. The real picture of her and Kerry at the same rally was taken in 1970.

Re:Not a bad forgery.....

[An. (Coward)]

Jane Fonda's a two-time Oscar-winning actress who organized opposition to the Vietnam War, going so far as to travel over to Hanoi and make radio broadcasts on behalf of the communists, with the intention of demoralizing the soldiers fighting there. For this, leaving aside the question of whether the war was moral or not, many Vietnam veterans have never forgiven her and consider her a traitor.

The forged photo is a nasty attempt to smear Kerry's reputation through a fabricated guilt by association.

Re:Not a bad forgery.....

[shark72]

"But could someone explain the Jane Fonda thing? What did that forged photo purport to show?"

Many people consider Jane Fonda to be a traitor.

That's why this forgery is significant: it isn't some innocent and harmless Fark-style "let's put him with Barney the Dinosaur and make a funny image." It was designed to instill hatred of the candidate by associating the two. The rationale is likely that while the fact that both protested the war might not be enough to convey a sense of guilt by association, it might make all the difference in the world by providing a photo of the two speaking together.

Re:Not a bad forgery.....

[techno-vampire]

She did mnore than that. She sat in the seat of an AA gun and said that she wished she could shoot it against an American B-52. If we had declared war, it would have been treason as defined in the Constitution. Those of us that were serving their country in Vietnam in those days still remember.

Re:Not a bad forgery.....

[Skjellifetti]

But could someone explain the Jane Fonda thing? What did that forged photo purport to show?

Jane Fonda is an actress, daughter of Henry Fonda, formerly married to liberal media mogul Ted Turner and also to SDS activist Tom Hayden. She was an opponent of the Vietnam War who made a trip to North Vietnam at the height of the war thus earning the sobriquet "Hanoi Jane." The political right in the U.S. hates her guts. By placing John Kerry with Fonda, they seek to make Kerry appear as a left wing traitor.

Re:Not a bad forgery.....

[YrWrstNtmr]

"very vocal", as in donning parts of an NVA uniform, and posing for pictures at the controls of a NVA AAA gun.

"very vocal", as in lying about the treatment of US POW's.

"very vocal", as in christening her son Troy after a Viet Cong hero, Nguyen Van Troi, who later tried to assassinate SecDef McNamara.

"very vocal", as in "I would think that if you understood what communism was you would hope, you would pray on your knees, that we would someday become communists." - Jane Fonda, MSU, 1970

Re:Not a bad forgery.....

[sfjoe]

Well, at least she got closer to the VietCong than George Bush.

Re:Not a bad forgery.....

[That's Unpossible!]

The political right in the U.S. hates her guts.

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.

You see, she did not just "make a trip" to N. Vietnam. She ENCOURAGED them to shoot down Americans. She visited an anti-aircraft battery that was used to shoot at/down American planes. She encouraged the enemy to continue fighting, and encouraged the Americans (over the radio) to essentially "give up." She even asked to pose in videos with American POW's, and some of those POW's later testified that they were tortured if they did not want to appear in the videos with her. Like a previous poster said, if war had been officially declared, she could have been executed for treason. As it stands, most people who know all the facts consider her a traitor to this day.

This is why any photo showing Kerry at an anti-war rally with her is extremely damaging to his campaign. This is also why Jane Fonda has been trying to distance herself from him in recent interviews, because she knows she is so hated it could torpedo the Dem's campaign.

Here is some more info from Snopes.

Re:Not a bad forgery.....

[2short]

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...

Re:Not a bad forgery.....

[solarrhino]

From Snopes

(Finally, in an interview in 2000, almost thirty years after the fact, Fonda admitted: "I will go to my grave regretting the photograph of me in an anti-aircraft carrier, which looks like I was trying to shoot at American planes. It hurt so many soldiers. It galvanized such hostility. It was the most horrible thing I could possibly have done. It was just thoughtless.")

Re:Not a bad forgery.....

[Anonymous Coward]

"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.

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:Not a bad forgery.....

[techno-vampire]

Really? I checked the Constitution and found this:

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.)

Re:Not a bad forgery.....

[k_head]

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.

Re:Not a bad forgery.....

[k_head]

" 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.

Re:Not a bad forgery.....

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

lebel?

[petabyte]

from the forgery-and-lebel-were-already-criminal dept.

I believe it's "libel"

Volunteering

[lukewarmfusion]

"Pardon me. Would the person responsible for forging the photos, removing the watermarks from the source images, and distributing a libellous claim please come to the Principal's office? Thank you."

Wait a second...

[LostCluster]

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...

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...

I keep reading...

[cartzworth]

...infringers - don't they mean thieves? Oh wait, this isn't an RIAA related article.

Who?

[JohnGrahamCumming]

/. please explain some of these difficult to understand terms: I mean I know what GIMP, DMCA, MP3, PARC, DSL, DRM, DVD and NSA mean, but who's this John Kerry and this Jane Fonda?

John.

Open-Source Watermarks?

[kruczkowski]

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...

Re:Open-Source Watermarks?

[LostCluster]

This level of watermarking needs to be done every time an image is downloaded. The whole point is that they want to embed the IP address the image was sent to along with the timestamp so that there's enough to take a subpeona to the ISP to find out under what ISP account it was downloaded.

That might not get us down to what person did it, but it very certainly would narrow the number of suspects into a very tight group...

Re:Open-Source Watermarks?

[gnu-generation-one]

"Does anyone know if an open-source (cheap) watermark solution exists?"

Look at ImageMagick (or Image::Magick for Perl people) -- it lets you add text to an image from the command line, among many other things.

For websites, ImLib lets you modify images from within PHP, but it's probably easier to batch-process them if you care about your webserver's CPU usage.

Re:Open-Source Watermarks?

[powerg3]

The GIMP's plugin is called Digital Signature. Looks pretty neat.

Re:Open-Source Watermarks?

[Glytch]

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.

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:Well they do have a history of lying

[RetroGeek]

Where are those 3.6 million jobs bush was talkin' about a while ago?

No, no, no, you mis-understood.

He was talking about lost jobs.

Re:Well they do have a history of lying

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Well they do have a history of lying

[demachina]

OK. Bush lied about WMDs, and while I'm at it he lied about Iraq's ties to Al Quaeda before the war!!

If he didn't lie then he is dumb as a post and that should disqualify him to be President too.

In his state of the union when he told America Iraq was pursuing Yellow Cake he didn't technicly lie because he said "British Intelligence says" but he did decieve. The fact is all of the documents that were the basis of this claim were badly and obviously forged and everyone who'd seen them knew this. Rice and the NSA had been told on numerous occasions these claims were bogus but this deception occured anyway.

The state department's intelligence agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency and elements within the CIA repeatedly insisted there was no creditable evidence to establish with any certainty that Iraq still had WMD's.

Its a well known fact the Wolfowitz and Rumsfled established a special projects office, a new intelligence agency under Wolfowitz's direct supervision whose goal was to mine all the intelligence that made a case for war and for WMD's in Iraq and to downplay all the intelligence that suggested there was not. Presumably this office was formed because the Defense Intelligence Agency whose role it usurped wasn't giving them the answers they wanted. Much of the best intelligence this office used was single source coming from defectors associated with Chalabi who had a vested interest in getting the U.S. to attack Iraq. In other words the defectors lied about the WMD's and Wolfowitz and company were so eager to believe that they made no attempt to corroborate. Wolfowitz has since publicly admitted WMD"s were just the excuse everyone could agree on when in reality the goal was entirely about a regime change and finding justififaction for it everyone would buy. WMD's were ideal since they evoked the greatest fear and its impossible for a country to prove they don't have them.

If you recall Bush and Cheney repeatedly used rhetoric that suggested that Iraq might have nuclear weapons soon and that we would find out about when there was a mushroom cloud over our cities. Iraq's nuclear program was simply nonexistent since at least 1995. The country that was doing the most to put nukes in the hands of rogue nations and terrorists was our close allie Pakistan. North Korea, Iran and Libya were all farther along than Iraq but we haven't invaded them yet.

You will be hard pressed to find any creditable expert who will agree that the famous aluminum tubes Iraq had were for gas centrifuges. They simply weren't built for it so they probably were rocket tubes. If you want to see some fine centrifuge parts check out the ones the Pakistani's were manufacturing in Malaysia and selling to the highest bidder.

Cheney as recently as a few weeks ago was still contending the mobile vans that were discovered might be used for biological weapons. There is simply no evidence that is the case. They were for manufacturing Hydrogen. There was no traces to indicate they had been used for biological weapons and they weren't particularly suited for it any more than any other big tank you could point to.

The administration repeatedly said "WE KNOW" where the WMD's are. In fact the U.N. inspection team was desperate for the CIA to tell them where the WMD's were. The little intelligence the CIA gave to the U.N. inspection teams was worthless garbage. The Democratic chairmen of the intelligence committee this week is suggesting that Tenet was in fact lying about the intelligence they had on WMD's when the U.N. inspectors were in Iraq and what he gave the U.N. inspectors. The CIA had no creditable evidence on the location of WMD's in Iraq and they also declined every invitation to go in and show the world where they were though they were repeatedly saying "WE KNOW" they have them. The CIA declined because A) they didn't know where they were and B) if they did there has zero interest in actually finding or destroying them until after the invasion. The U.S. wanted to i

Far too many suspects right now...

[LostCluster]

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...

AG Ashcroft ...

[burgburgburg]

has declared that this investigation has been indefinitely been put on hold for reasons of national security. Furthermore, the original photographer has been relocated for his own protection to Guantanamo Bay, along with representatives of Corbis and anybody else who makes trouble, see!

On free speech and fair use

[onyxruby]

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.

Re:On free speech and fair use

[spun]

You mean libel. Slander is spoken, libel is in print. Libel will be hard to prove. You can easily prove the picture is false, which is one criteria for libel. However, showing that the author actually meant harm, and that harm actually occured will be difficult. Much easier to get the author on copyright infringement.

no george's pretzel habit is funded by my taxes

[Anonymous Coward]

put that in your pipe and choke on it.

Copyright violation?

[gpinzone]

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?

Re:Copyright violation?

[Skyshadow]

The perp could say "I was making a politcal parody like those pcitures of Bush next to Saddam or Osama."

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.

Re:Personal Photos

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the person who takes the picture gets the copyright (unless a work for hire).
However, some states do have laws that regulate the use of a person's image, especially with regards to endorsing some product. So you can't take that picture and put it on Kerry-brand penis pumps in California, for example.

What about the National Enquirer?

[kellman]

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?

Background On Photo from Guardian

[ackthpt]

Not necessarily. Heard that it was helping Kerry soften his pro-Iraq war support.

That would seem ironic, considering it's apparent origins:

From the Guardian

Ms Fonda is reviled by many Vietnam vets for her wartime visit to Hanoi, and the image was widely aired over the internet by a fringe group of Vietnam veterans who have pursued a vendetta against Mr Kerry for years.

In less than a week, the forgery travelled from a message board on a rightwing website to a Vietnam veterans' mailing list to mainstream organisations. Two British national newspapers - the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday - used the photograph in editions on Friday last week and at the weekend.

I think I know who did it

[AppyPappy]

I saw it when it first came out. It was a joke. It was an answer to a request by someone to find a picture of Fonda and Kerry. It was basically a Fark.

These goomers need to relax and find another vendetta. Otherwise, Fark is going out of business.

What about the National Enquirer? OJ Simpson case

[adzoox]

Good point, but this does raise some questions as posed in the OJ Simpson case. He claimed that the photo of him wearing Bruno Mali size 14 shoes was a fake and it doesn't prove at all that Bruno Mali shoe prints (size 14) found at the crime scene are related. His defense team said the pictures were doctored. This really reduces the credibility of video and photographic evidence in the court room. This marks a day coming that the guilty get away with anything so long as they have access to money and technology - oh wait - that already happens.

Re:Interesting

[Blic]

Parody and "pranksters" is one thing - no one lost any sleep over this one or the pic of Dubya wearing the One Ring - but this is different. This was passed off as a legitimate AP photo to news organizations complete with fabricated story.

And if you RTFA (I know, this is Slashdot) it's Corbis going after them for copyright violations, not Kerry.

Two Kerry photos, one real, one fake

[Stonent1]

Real

Fake

Re:Could it be?

[Gherald]

Have you read this?

Interesting Corbis info

[Jaguar777]

From the overview page at Corbis.

Founded by Bill Gates in 1989, Corbis is headquartered in Seattle, with offices in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, London, Paris, Dusseldorf, Vienna, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, and Tokyo.

Just throwing out that tidbit of info for the tin foil hat crowd. ;)

Belgian hacker found responsible...

[Channard]

Apparently the trail lead to the account of one Beorge Gush - investigations continue.

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Meoward]

Just off the top of my head, another thing: Doctoring photos as such is more than mere libel during a political campaign. The US actually does (again IIRC) have laws on the books for such smear tactics.

Someone help me out here, but there was a politician whose campaign in the 1940s (or 1950s) tried to frame his opponent with a photo of Joseph Stalin. A photo of Stalin was placed alongside that of the opponent, and the border between the 2 was blurred, and alongside one of the other guy. The border was blurred, and presto.. a photo of a conference between Stalin and a sitting American politician, just in time for the average voter.

The fallout from this particular incident, I believe, caused considerable flak back then.

Of course, nowadays we're much more sophisticated.

We just take a picture of Osama Bin Laden and (now ex-)Senator Max Cleland, stick them on the telly, without any editing whatsoever, and add a sinister voice-over to scare the sheep...

Where the blame should lay...

[BradySama]

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!

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:Interesting

[td]

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.

Re:An awful lie by right-wing nuts!

[Trickster Paean]

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.

Re:Interesting

[khendron]

It's not not Kerry going after them for libel. It's the photographers, and they are trying to protect their copyright.

Here's the guy who did it.

[1729]

Sheesh, 2 minutes on google and I found the guy who did it. A user called "registered" unleashed it on a message board www.freerepublic.com:

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.

Apropos posting.

[erik_fredricks]

Am I the only one who finds it ironic that this article directly follows the one announcing Gimp 2.0?

Just wondering...

one real

[ayeco]

and of course, the story of "fake" makes people think this is a fake, too: It's not.

Re:one real

[qtp]

Wow, he must be only twenty or thirty feet away, in a crowd, no less.

If anyone reads anything into that pic, they're really reaching.

Of course the guy's at a peace rally. Unlike the majority of the people there, Kerry had an actual understanding of war, and actual combat expiriences that led him to protest the war after his return.

The realness of the other photo in no way discredits Kerry as a candidate, or as veteran. He was one of many Viet Nam veterans who had the balls to speak out against the war when he returned.

A lot of crap is comming out from the right-wing chickenhawks who are beginning to realize that this is a candidate who served in some of the worst combat zones any vet has seen, and earned a Bronze Star, a Silver Star, and Presidential Unit Citation while doing so. The guy has a dislike for the intelligence community and has gone after them before.

Real or not, I'm pretty sure those pictures are not going to make a whole hell of a lot of difference.

Re:An awful lie by right-wing nuts!

[belmolis]

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.

Re:An awful lie by right-wing nuts!

[joehill48]

I think it's interesting that the media is following the forged photo and completely ignoring the fact that the man claiming now to be pro-military and bragging about his service record has been proven to be one of Hanoi Jane's fellow protesters.

Everybody already knows he protested the Vietnam war after he came home from it carrying a number of medals. It's not even remotely a secret. As far as I understand, he's still proud that he protested that unjust war.

Also, it's pretty funny that the Right Wing thinks trying to associate him with Jane Fonda will get anyone outraged besides the Right Wing itself, which already hates him anyway. Most Americans associate Jane Fonda far more with her exercise video. If they get outraged about anything, it'll be about her role in the fashion trend of wearing those silly belts along with the leotards.

Not Bush's Style?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Not Bush's Style?

[welshsocialist]

The AC is refering to the 2000 South Carolina GOP primary were polls were conducted asking SC voters how they would have felt if McCain had fathered an illegitimate black child. There's more at this blog posting.

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.

Bill Gates..

[greenskyx]

Not that this is too important, but I found it interesting that Bill Gates owns Corbis... (see this month's forbes magazine)

Re:Interesting

[Blic]

Personally I don't think it's a big enough issue for him to care that much about it, but I doubt he'd discourage such action.

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

Not gonna RTFA, but....

[Archfeld]

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...

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

[bonch]

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

Re:An awful lie by right-wing nuts!

[Tarnar]

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

DMCA for watermark removal?

[aber]

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...

Next thing you are going to tell me...

[mark0]

... is that Kerry wasn't in Barbarella, either. Liars. All of you.

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?

On the watermark details

[AlienRancher]

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.

Edwards?

[InfiniteWisdom]

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....

Re:Nobody "placed" him anywhere...he was really th

[RickHunter]

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?

Why forge it in the first place?

[nadamsieee]

There is a real photo of Fonda and Kerry at a 1970 anti-war rally in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania (which they both spoke at).

Huh?

[k_head]

Bush Style? This man is ruthless when it comes to campaigning. Of course he uses henchmen to spread the hate speech so the stink does not get on him but everybody knows who is in charge.

Just recently his administration reffered to the teachers union as a terrorist organization.

Not his style my ass.

Re:Huh?

[Ironica]

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.)

Re:Ha!

[avgjoe62]

The original poster was wrong. They don't get our money in the form of tax breaks, not by a long shot.

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...

Lying is the hallmark of the amateur

[hey!]

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.

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?

I'm confused.

[CausticPuppy]

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

So basically you're saying that Republicans are the tools of the Democrats?

Brain... hurting! Must... vote... Libertarian!!

We distort...you decide.. FAUX News!

[Newer Guy]

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?

lick bush in '04

[cesspool]

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.

Re:lick bush in '04

[danielsfca2]

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.)

Meanwhile in Canada...

[Vagary]

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!

Make a Third Choice!

[Vagary]

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.

Re:Interesting

[jms]

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 easier to be liberal if you're wealthy...

[freeBill]

...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.

While we are on the subject...

[bmf033069]

Speaking of photographs linking political figures, I have yet to see the obligatory link to these pictures of Rumsfeld and Saddam Hussein