Slashdot Mirror
Using Copyright To Suppress Political Speech
MacDork writes "As most /.'ers know all to well, Copyright is increasingly being used as a means to suppress free speech these days. And the trend has not been lost on our 2004 US Presidential candidates. Both George and John are using copyright law to 'vaporize' information considered embarrassing or harmful to their campaigns. Don't worry about basing your vote on copyright issues though. Like most other domestic issues (gay marriage: no, offshoring: yes), their stance is pretty much identical (i.e. pro Hollywood)."
John Kerry's friend, George Butler, a New Hampshire filmmaker who has known Kerry for more than three decades is threatening legal action against Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry.Com. Butler is claiming ownership of two photographs pertaining to Kerry's radical pro-Hanoi days.
1 , a site displaying one of the infringing photographs. It is well-settled that "a party may be liable for contributory copyright infringement where knowledge of the infringing activity, it induces, causes or materially contributes to the infringing activity of another." A&M Records v. Napster, Inc. 114 F. Supp.2d 869 (N. Cal. 2000). Accordingly, you are still liable under federal copyright law for posting the hyperlink.
One is the cover picture that appeared on Kerry's book, The New Soldier which Kerry tried to suppress in 1972. It depicts several unkempt demonstrators crudely handling an upside down American flag to mock the famous photo of the U.S. Marines at Iwo Jima.
Read letter below:
March 5, 2004
By Certified Mail, Return Receipt Requested
and By Email usveterandispatch@earthlink.net
Ted Sampley
U.S. Veteran Dispatch
P.O. Box 246
Kinston, N.C. 28502
Re: vietnamveteransagainstjohnkerry.com
Dear Mr. Sampley:
Please be advised that this office represents the professional photographer George Butler. The above-referenced website is currently hyperlinking to a website which displays an infringing photograph, and is making false statements about this law firm. This must be remedied, or our client and this firm will be forced to commence legal action against you.
Your online service provider, EastLink, was contacted by this office regarding two photographs taken by Mr. Butler that were being used without permission on your website. To ensure compliance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (17 United States Code 1200 et seq.), EastLink removed the infringing photographs on March 4, 2004.
In response, you posted the above-referenced statements and hyperlink to http://www.grunt.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=953
Moreover, the statement that "lawyers representing John Kerry's interest threatened our Internet server with legal action unless the picture was removed" is a false statement of fact. As stated above, this firm represents George Butler. John Kerry is not, and has never been, a client of this firm. In addition, we did not threaten your Internet server, EastLink, with legal action. Rather, our letter and phone calls were required by law to afford EastLink the opportunity to take advantage of the safe harbor provisions of the DMCA that protect the interests of online service providers before commencing an action against any of the websites they host.
Thus, you remain in violation of copyright law by continuing to link to the above referenced website and have published false statements of fact on your website, which is actionable as well. You must immediately remove the hyperlink and the false statements from your website.
If you have any further questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Very truly yours,
Nancy E. Wolff
cc: George Butler
This brought to you by the Republican party, the political group led by an imbecile cokehead who didn't even have the balls to turn up to his cushy National Guard posting. I have little sympathy for their copyright complaint...
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
Why I'm voting for Kerry: his administration didn't get us into an insane war in the middle east, his administration didn't write the PATRIOT act, and his administration wasn't instrumental in creating the largest federal budget deficit ever seen.
Those reasons really suck, and I'd love to vote for somebody I could actually like voting for, but there's just too much at stake this time.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
and his administration wasn't instrumental in creating the largest federal budget deficit ever seen.
Neither was Bush. He's still only achieved 85% of Reagan's deficit.
>Like most other domestic issues (gay marriage: no, offshoring: yes), their stance is pretty much identical (i.e. pro Hollywood)."
That's not true. John Kerry is anti-offshoring. He went as far as naming CEOs who do extensive offshoring "benedict arnold" CEOs.
This article makes it sound like both candidates are engaging in a campaign of suppression. If you actually follow the links, you find out that there is (as far as i can tell) only one lawsuit per candidate, and that the suits were not filed by the candidates.
I think copyright holders are wrong in both cases, but the candidates aren't necessarily behind it.
If you want to know where a politician stands on an issue, you should ask them and check their record. It's not enough to find one example where they've benefitted from someone else's lawsuit.
Come to think of it, how come these suits are only evidence in one direction? The candidates aren't party to the lawsuits. You could just as easily say that both candidates are against copyright suits because a movie that helps Kerry is being suppressed and so is an ad that helps Bush.
-- . . ramblin' . . .
GW Bush is censoring free speech because NBC won't let Michael Moore use a clip from Meet the Press.
l ?pg=5?tw=wn_tophead_6
BZZT! Sorry, but that is incorrect. It is not Micheal Moore, but another Iraqi War documentary maker: Robert Greenwald, who is trying to use the clip.
Source: This editorial from Wired about, not-ironically, big media and copyrights suppressing democracy.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.08/view.htm
What you want is a Proportional Representation voting system. Then you could could give your first preference vote to $3rd_party preference and give $mainstream-lesser-evil your second preference vote.
I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.
It doesn't really matter - they're both unacceptably bad. Although Reagan's deficit was larger as percentage of GDP (GNP, then), eg. 6% in 1983, vs. Bush's 5% of 2004 GDP, -$500B in 2004 brings us to something like $8.5T of debt. And remember that Reagan's debt was also Bush Sr's debt - especially as Bush Sr ran the "deregulation" of the banking system that enabled the $1.5T S&L heist. That was the 1980s, when a trillion dollars was still worth something :).
--
make install -not war
I know who the moderators are going to vote for - anyone anti-kerry or pro-truth (not necessarily pro bush) is abandoned whole the pro-kerry posts are "informative"
I know my posts are mostly ignorable, but there must be SOMEONE the doesn't believe Kerry and says so good enough to get moddedup
You're actually incorrect. The individual states do *not* have to recognize the marriages of other states. Each state is free to recognize or not recognize marriages performed in other states, since (barring an amendment) marriages are a state function, and there is no hard-and-fast requirement to recognize marriages from other states. *Usually* states will recognize marriages performed in other states, but they do have the option to not do so.
Don't worry about basing your vote on copyright issues though. Like most other domestic issues (gay marriage: no, offshoring: yes), their stance is pretty much identical (i.e. pro Hollywood).
Vote Libertarian?
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
NO. That is NOT how it works. Throughout America's history, states have refused to recognize certain marriages allowed in other states. Some states allow cousins to marry; others don't recognize such marriages. Some states allow you to get married at a younger age than other states; if your state doesn't want to recognize the marriage of a 14-year-old, it does not have to. This is how the courts have ruled in the past, so anyone who says the Full Faith and Credit clause of the constitution necessarily applies to gay marriage is simply ignoring decades of jurisprudence. At the very least, it is an open legal question, not a fait accompli.
'matthewn' is flat out wrong on the "full faith and credit" clause. States *always* recognize marriages granted by other states. Even if the relationship exclusions are different; even if the age requirements are different; even if the waiting periods or medical exams are different. That's why the meme about "going to [other state] to get married" is so prevalent, after all!
:-(
It *is* true that there is some precedent for non-compliance with the Constitutions mandate of full faith and credit: anti-miscegenation laws. Back before Loving vs. Virginia, some states indeed excluded marriages valid in other states. What a surprise that many of the very same people who are today's homophobes grew up as yesteryears' racists.... well, they were homophobes then too, and mostly they're still racists now. But it's a matter of priorities.
Buy Text Processing in Python
Really? In what way, beyond the vague generalization that all politicians are out for the same thing? I really want to know because I think this myth that they're all alike so what's the point is extremely dangerous. You suggest voting for a third party, but there are greater things at stake here than saying, "well don't blame me, I voted for Nader!" at the dinner table. C'mon people! There are bigger things at stake in this election than even DVD fair use, all due respect to the Slashdot audience. Ask the family of a soldier who hasn't seen the end of his tour of duty in Iraq, or a member of their family. Ask a couple who are in love, but are continuously discriminated against publicly because they happen to be of the same sex and it happens to be any easy wedge issue to get Bible thumpers to perk their ears up to. Ask anyone who doesn't like the way the wind has been blowing in this country since 9/11--some good people crippled in the head because they've started to believe that any voice of discent might seem un-American. Ask a muslim child what it's like to go to public school in middle America in this day and age. Or at least ask yourself if you have done a reasonable job yourself looking at the wrecklessness of misguided flag-waving and the folly of playing Coyboys and Indians in the world theatre. Please. Let's move beyond this all politicians are alike myth and take a stand for change in this desperate time. I am begging you. And if you think I am a crazy asshole fuck up too late trying to fix his wife's laptop who's off on a tirade, fine. Sure, that sounds like me. Write me off. But before you do, download Barack Obamma's Democratic convention keynote from the iTunes music store (free), then tell me that is the same voice of the Republican party. Man, that guy makes me proud to be a Democrat. I used to subscribe to that, "i'm really an independent Anti-Republican" bullshit. Never again, folks.
From the good folks at snopes: link.
I trust you won't be repeating such bullshit lines again.___
Cogito cogito, ergo cogito sum.
"Naturally, the common people don't want war, but after all, it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a facist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country." ~Herman Goering speaking at the Nuremberg trails after WWII
~S
You are think of Hobson's Choice, named after the owner of a livery stable in Cambridge who would let customers choose any horse they wanted as long as it was the one closest to the door. Hobbesian would normally be in reference to the philosopher Thomas Hobbes who is unrelated to this expression.
not quite, just pointing out that there ARE repubs trolling sites masquerading as lefties to encourage people to not vote for kerry. same as there ARE microsoft astroturfers posting pro-microsoft fud on various blogs. Of course not all anti-kerry or pro-microsoft stuff is such astroturfing or trolling, but it does exist, and i want to let people know about it.
no pot/kettle/black since i'm obviously pushing kerry and stating it. i don't see how i could have been a troll. I can see you someone either right or left of me would not like what i'm saying, but that doesn't make me a troll.
make world, not war
RTFA. This guy wanted to use a short clip from NBC's Meet The Press in his documentary and offered to pay for a license to use it, just like all the other clips he paid for in his documentary.
NBC said no, not for any copyright related reason, but because it was "not very flattering to the president."
Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.
You sound like you might be familiar to a Parliamentary election. United states has an electoral college which was quite practical for its time. That way each state by itself could (through the will of it's people) voice its opinion regarding its favorite canditate. It is a compromise between pure democracy and representative democracy, which traditionally is always the case in the US. In a parliamentary democracy, you have the first round--they might be candidates or parties which win either a simple majority (fifty percent plus one) or a plurality (more votes than any other candidate) go to a second round. The second round is used form coalitions to shore up support from the other factions (therefore, theoretically forming a stronger more moderate and compromising legislature) and supporting a Prime Minister who is favored by the majority. In a parlimentary election, the person or party who wins in the first round of elections is not guaranteed to win the Prime Ministry in the second round. Although some countries have resolved this paradox by granting electoral power to the legislative body, and the party that has the most popular votes gets the most seats in the legislative/electoral body and so can chose the P.M of their choice.
In America, it's different. We've evolved into a two party system, which some theorize is more stable because the coalitions don't break apart over crisis and the leadership and government cannot be dissolved by parliament, but only by the electorate (except in extreme cases like criminal wrong doing) With less factions, there is also less chance of paralysis do to infighting (although a hefty part of our government is set up to paralyze the powers) Elections are handled by a general populace election. In EACH STATE not NATIONALLY the canditate must win a plurality of votes (more than any other candidate). If the candidate wins the popular vote IN THAT STATE then he can send his (or the party's) hand picked delegates (the electoral college) to chose him IN THAT STATE as the president. The person wins the most votes from the electoral college (the number go delegates to the e.c from each state is determined by population) wins the election. Therefore, Al Gore might have won more votes, but did not win more states and so lost the election. Very complicated. most Americans have a hard time explaining it to you.
It is also possible that the electoral college can chose some one other than the person who won the plurality of votes in the state. Eg. If Ross Perot ran for Florida but did not win the state, George Bush Sr. Delegates could theoretically vote for Ross Perot anyway: the delegates are not (theoretically) automatons although traditionally they have consistently voted according to the will of the people).
http://cincyboys.blogspot.com/ Everything Cincinnati. Including the word 'Finnih'
I know this is the number one attack, Kerry is flip-flopping, but can you actually give me an example? I say this because I know of several examples of Bush flip-flopping.
The problem for Kerry and many less ideology driven (may I say single minded) politicians are that today even the most complex policy is supposed to be summarized in a few words, preferably in a slogan to be repeated in a TV commercial. Why not see for yourself what Kerry said at the Senate floor, October 9, 2002, when Kerry cast that vote? Some quotes that I found relevant:
But you are right, it all ends up into one "yea" that is supposed to say it all...
Read the quotes I gave above once more and ask yourself if Bush would ever be caught saying something similar. Then ask once more if there is any difference between Kerry and Bush.
bring it on! --- JFK
What, so you could have something happen like what happened in France in 2002?
You have Chirac (right of center by French standards / left wing by US standards), Jospin (left / ultra-left wing) and LePen (far right / fascist) in the "first round". Chirac gets 20%, LePen gets 17%, Jospin gets 16%. Now suddenly the election is between Chirac and LePen, and Chirac is now the shoe-in even though the majority of the voters originally wanted "Anything but Chirac" (sound familiar?).
From his mailing list when I posted a this direct question:
Q: "...Does anyone know where Mr. Badnarik stands in regards to the issues I mentioned (DMCA, P2P/RIAA, ETC?) I think that in my little circle those would probably be some of the most persuading issues in the campaign, and they are being ignored by the big two."
/. interview
happens, Mike will have come up with some solid positions on those issues.
A: I asked him about "Intellectual Property" last night on the conference call. He admitted that it was an issue he had not worked on much yet, and that he had more studying and thinking to do on it, and reserved the right to change his answer... but he said that one thing he believed was that copyright should be limited to the lifetime of the copyright holder.
He didn't really address patents, DMCA, etc. He did say that he fundamentally agrees with the concept of "IP" though, although he also said that it was "very abstract and hard to define."
Even within the Libertarian Party there is considerable debate about those issues, apparently. Hopefully by the time the
Hope this helps, also Michael Badnarik has been told that he will be interviewed by /. editors in the month of September. He did state in his constitution class that I took that he is a firm supporter of the Government not being allowed to limit technology (he comes from a comp. geek background as weel) like encryption, etc. because they don't deserve to be handed the lock to your "papers" due to the fourth ammendment, I think of all the canditates, he is most in tune with the /. crowd's concerns.
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence in society - M. Twain
As if that's NBC's call to make. What if Abraham Zapruder had said the same?
I remember watching this Meet The Press when it first aired. The reason it's "not very flattering to the president" is because he was being himself; smug yet clueless, telling off-topic lies with well written sound bites, then looking like a stammering idiot caught in the headlights when Russert refused to take the bait and asked the same questions two and three times.
"There's nothing complicated about supporting our troops in combat" - apparently supporting them in Veterans Hospitals is a little trickier.
Would be replies, finish reading before reacting.
I was raised Catholic. My two sisters and I regularly argued theology with the parish priest-- mutually educational and broadening. =)
Under the contemporary view of Catholicism on marriage, marriage is a sacrament, an external sign of god's grace. Furthermore (and pay attention), Matrimonium facit consensus, i.e. Marriage is contracted through the mutual, expressed consent. Therein is contained implicitly the doctrine that the persons contracting marriage are themselves the agents or ministers of the sacrament. In other words, any two people who declare themselves married before the community have ipso facto married. However, it has also held that marriage, like other sacrements, must be performed with the approbation (spiritual approval) of the church.
Even when leaving aside questions of non-Christian faiths, not all faiths recognize the Authority of the Patriarch of Rome to give approbation. Furthermore, under the American precepts of the separation of church and state, the government of the United States lacks jurisdiction to establish whether the Patriarch has that authority or not.
Therefore, any union recognized by the state is ipso facto a civil union. Whether it is also a marriage is not a question for the courts of men, but for the court of God-- and ought be presumed valid by the state given the acceptance of any church.
Therefore, I would hold that the government has no business discriminating between ANY "marriage". Mind you, they might conceivably have some business deciding which civil unions to recognize (which is why arbitrary declarations as above may be valid canonically but not civilly without a marriage licesne), but that would be a fairly straightforward civil rights case... which neither the politicians nor the preachers like the taste of.
In short, I'd say that the problem is that the politicians aren't theologians, and that the theologians want to be theocrats. Technically, the only thing politicians can discuss by definition is whether gays (or straights!) can have civil unions, not whether they can get married! Of course, neither the politicians nor theocrats are that precise in their speaking or thinking.... which is Unhelpful in discussing the issues.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
How about you take the World's Smallest Political Quiz. It's by no means exhaustive -it's only of value to an US voter as most of the other Western countries have an entirely different political atmosphere- but a lot of my 'republican' and 'democrat' acquaintances have found themselves in a strange place with the test.
For the record, I'm a Left-liberal leaning towards Statist.
Marxist evolution is just N generations away!
No, John Kerry is not suing. The photographer who own the copyright and makes his living selling his pics through a stock agency is suing. Same thing as NBC.
"Moreover, the statement that "lawyers representing John Kerry's interest threatened our Internet server with legal action unless the picture was removed" is a false statement of fact. As stated above, this firm represents George Butler. John Kerry is not, and has never been, a client of this firm. In addition, we did not threaten your Internet server, EastLink, with legal action. "
The revolution will NOT be televised.
They propose a combination of juries being volunteer and having the ability to override existing law.
You sir, have not read your jury pamphlet. Jury Nullification. Juries are _supposed_ to override unjust laws. It's in their mandate. The judges just don't tell you.
Iraq was a debacle because the US government wanted a war, despite necessity, and lied to the Americans about it. For example, just this past week, some Nixon/Kissinger tapes were published showing their coldblooded considerations of continuing the "unwinnable" war in 1972, to preserve their chances at reelection. Sound appropriate to Iraq? How about Johnson's "Gulf of Tonkin" fraud, inventing an attack by North Vietnamese on American troops to incite Congress into backing his Vietnam escalation. A blueprint followed by Bush, with his Cabinet's incessant talk of WMD, "45 minutes to launch", "smoking gun / mushroom clouds". Even the Vietnam "domino theory", discredited by the Chinese invasion of Vietnam, sucessfully repelled, following American retreat, shows the Vietnam precedent of persuasive fallacy in oversimplifying "enemy of my enemy is my friend", fraudulently equating Hussein to bin Laden.
The soldiers were "muzzled" by the government, which ran an unwinnable war from afar for its political benefit, as well as its military contracts. It's well established that the troops themselves were tactically superior (over 1M Vietnamese dead to about 55K Americans, >20:1), while the Pentagon was strategically incompetent - to end the war, but very competent to stay in the war business. Kerry is a good example of people who supported the troops, like the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, which he headed, but fought the politicians keeping them in a meatgrinder. When the troops returned home, they weren't supported by the public, because the politicians identification of "the troops" with "the war" backlashed when the war became unpopular. The actual atrocities committed by some soldiers, necessarily revealed to stop the war, added to their shame. Despite the dignity with which people like Kerry made the case that the war's victims included our own troops, unjustly sent to fight on false pretenses of cause and conclusion.
Kerry's vote to send troops to Iraq was, along with everyone else in Congress, a vote based on not only the intelligence, but presidential assumption of authority for it, and the policies they voted for. In fact, the vote Kerry joined was a sensible, responsible vote for "necessary force" to disarm Hussein:
"I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force, if necessary, to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security." (October 9th, 2002).
When WMDs were shown to be a Tonkin-style hoax, Kerry worked against the use of force. On his vote against the specific $87B Iraq war funding bill, Kerry voted against that version because its $18B for reconstruction had no accountability to ensure its application - and to date, only $0.5B has been spent on reconstruction, just as Kerry suspected. While several billion has been sucked up by Halliburton overcharges, to Cheney's delight. That's why Iraq is already another Vietnam, and Kerry has the experience, insight, and leadership to get us out.
Sure, all those politicians grabbed the "faulty intelligence" cover story that exonerates their bad judgements, including accepting it. Clinton at least had the judgement not to invade Iraq just based on the bad intelligence, while his campaign disarmed Iraq. The "bad intelligence" that overestimated Iraq's threat at worst led him to contain and defang Iraq, while Bush's people devoured it and demanded more, to justify their invasion. Where we're still stuck today, years after they declared the war over, losing more troops than ever.
The perpetuation of these conflicts is testament to the inconclusive power of foreign policy developed by, for, and of the Pentagon. The Korean stalemate that Eisenhower produced has kept over 40,000 American troops there for over a half century. Carter's Israel/Egypt peace is kept by another 40K American troops on the border. American troops
--
make install -not war
Ah, you do have a point. However, according to this primer from Stanford, the owner of the copyright can challenge you on the "fairness" of your use, no matter what. Something scary to be sure, because of how deep their litigious pockets can be.
They propose a combination of juries being volunteer and having the ability to override existing law. Too late. Juries have been able to override the law since before the dawn of the Republic; it's an English Common Law tradition. Justice Samuel Chase was impeached at the end of the 18th century because while he was presiding individually over a circuit court (justices did that then); he neglected to instruct a jury that they had the duty to judge the law as well as the facts. That duty still exists, though modern judges would prefer you didn't know it or use it if you're on a jury.
States *always* recognize marriages granted by other states. Which does not mean that states are *required* to recognize marriages granted by other states. States are required to recognize one another's judicial proceedings (ironically including divorces) but not one another's licenses (fishing, driver's, concealed handgun, marriage). Most states recognize each other's marriages as a courtesy; but if a state has a public policy against something (first cousins marrying, or homosexual marriage) they can and do refuse. This has been well established in federal court. Loving v. Virginia created a narrow exception that requires states to recognize other states interracial marriages, and only those. Last I checked, homosexuality wasn't a race, so this is going back to the Supreme Court. Where I hope the gay couples win, but it's far from guaranteed.