I hope you don't have children who sleep in another room. I would hate to think of the awful things that could happen while you staying put waiting for a police department that has no obligation to protect you to show up. Before we get to far, the no obligation part is a result of a court case that exonerated cops for not protecting someone as the court found the cops has no obligation to protect anyone. Anyways, the point is that it could take a long time before they show up. It might be a priority for them, but if something happened across town or something, there could be some significant time involved before they can make it to your home.
IF you don't have kids or someone sleeping in another room, then it sounds like a pretty good plan. However, if you do, I would go after the invader if nothing else but to keep them away from the other people.
He's been proven to be born in the US a million times already.
No he hasn't. People who were interested in his election have stated he was born in the US a million times but that is hardly proof. Disclosing the birth certificate would be proof yet for some reason, lots of money and effort is going into avoiding that. I'm not sure why that is, perhaps you can explain.
I know Republicans are great at sticking their head in the sand, but why don't you show some respect to the legitimately elected (and born in america for the code word racist idiots out there) President.
Lol.. I think it's funny because Obama holds the power in his hands to release one simple thing that can clear all this up and here you are saying things that aren't true in order to help him avoid that.
Barack Obama was born in Hawaii. It's been proven a million times already. The only people who see a bunch of half-baked bullshit as more conclusive proof than his fucking birth certificate are either racist or mentally retarded.
No it has not been proved a million time. Again, all the claims to such have credibility issues. They were made by obama supporters.
Here, lets go from another angle, If all this can be cleared up by simply releasing the official birth certificate, then what harm could come from doing that? Why is there crap loads of money and effort being invested to avoid that? If it's true, he was born in hawaii, this issue disappears. If it isn't, he loses the office he was elected to. So what is the problem with seeing the birth certificate? You know, I didn't buy into this BS, but now I'm wondering because I can't find a valid reason for the original birth certificate to not be shown. It's odd that people come in attacking the messenger as an idiot or racist instead of just showing the proof.
What if I don't have your special birth certificate?
Fuck You. That's what.
No one is saying he needs a special birth certificate, just the one issues by the state of Hawaii. The fuck you part is why this won't die as it should if he was a natural born citizen. I mean showing the actual birth certificate would easily clear this up and make it go away really quick. Yet, instead of doing that, we have you saying fuck you, we have the parent saying I'm a racists because I want my government to be constitutional, and the guy before saying I was an idiot for the same. But none of you showed any proof he was a citizen, you simply addresses the question by shooting the messenger. That doesn't make you win your point, in fact, it strengthens mine. What is there to hide?
DO you have some links to back that up? I did a google search for Bush removes reporter critical of him and got no hits stating that. I did however, find a lot of hits for Clinton and Obama. One reporter was even kicked off his tour bus during campaign coverage.
I'm not doubting what you say, I just want to see some creditable evidence of it. I think someone told you a lie or something.
Flickr is protected against lawsuits for copyright posed by third party members using their service. The have no fear from prosecution or civil suit unless Flickr itself created and posted the image. In right there in the copyright laws (title 17 of the US code). And yes, Fair Use is mentioned specifically in the copyright laws.
When you search the Flickr site for "time cover" or "Joker", you are presented with hundreds if not thousands of replies that are direct copies with no possible fair use claim. They seem to not be concerned with them. What do you think the reasoning for this is? And what is their concern if they are immune to lawsuits for the actions of third parties? Ordinarily a DMCA take down notice is filed with the company, it removes the content, forwards a copy of the notice to the person responsible, and there is an option for that person to assert their right to the content. None of that happens, someone said out of all these images of Time mags, time's covers, and the joker, we are concerned about this one that appears to be critical of Obama.
Try going back and searching for the "joker" and "Time cover".
Again, what was the problem? Is combining the two a hyper problem or something? This is about Obama being the focus and how people have used the image and portions of it to be critical of Obama. The thousands of other "copyright concerns" wouldn't otherwise be unconcerned to Flickr.
Google owns Youtube which is into providing specific government content and the first place to receive some of the content. Google is also directly involved with the government as a company as well as Google's founder had given extreme amounts of money and support to Obama. The pay off, well that's somewhat of a question but Obama put Google for government together, here is the US site and is expected to endorse quit a few laws that Google favors. There was even a pay off attempt.
Some people even believe that Google manipulated search results and canceled account of blogs critical of Obama. I'm not sure how accurate that is but here is something should be noted. I found in other blogs (which I can't seem to find right now) that at least with the accounts being canceled, the official Google reason is that people are filing complaints about them being spam blogs or racist speech and somehow no one at google is checking it before deleting the accounts, information, or posts.
Lol.. I didn't realize Flikr used Yahoo search. Makes sense, they are owned by them. Anyways, to get a better notion of how politically motivated this is, do a search for "Time covers" and "joker" on Flickr's search. You will quickly see thousands of copyright concerns they are completely unconcerned about. Well, unless combining them together somehow creates a super concern.
Imagine if Bush put all press releases, speeches and public disclosure on the Fox News site and you were subject to their political views only in order to obtain access to them.
The White house having a Flickr account is basically placing private services into public space but it is using a biased service that is protecting Obama from Criticism. You can't really deny that is what is going one either, it's a kickback for government contracts and content that is only availible on Flickr. The two remotely possible copyright concerns with the photo is the image of the Joker and Time Magazine. But if you search their site with the terms "time cover" or "Joker" you will see the thousands of possible copyright concerns they are completely unconcerned with. Obama is what made them concerned and the only reason for that is kickbacks to repay for the government contract that they benefit from.
Regardless of what you think of Fox News, it isn't the sole repository for a lot of public information released by the government. If the images were elsewhere, it might be different.
However, even Fox News with discuss the criticisms to their point of view, even if they attempt to slant it to their favor. Flickr basically censored the photo only because it was critical of Obama. If you goto their main page and do a search for Time Magazine, Time covers, and Joker, you will find the thousands of potential copyright concerns that they are completely unconcerned about. Obama gives them government contracts and steers visitors and they give kickbacks by removing content critical of Obama. This isn't the first time either.
Exactly, whether or not the site is privately owned, it is being used for official government purposes. I see no difference in this then I would if Bush attempted to place all video content on Fox News or host all press releases and speeches at the Republican National Comity website and they removed all critical speech of him.
In fact, I'm actually viewing this action as a government kickback for a contract that drives visitors and notoriety as well as popularity to Flickr. There is more then just a service going on here, the site is actively removing speech critical of Obama. DO a search for time magazine, time covers, and joker on flickr. They are unconcerned over the thousands of other possible copyright violations and only of the one which appears critical of Obama.
The worse part about it is that no one owning the copyright has made any complaints on it. The email from Flickr would have mentioned a DMCA take down notice as it's a law to forward it to the user so they can object to it and state they have standing.
Flickr simply asserted copyright concerns as the reasoning but if you search their site, Time covers produces a shit load of results of the use of the cover of time while Joker does too
Those are the only two issues with copyright I can find with the image, and Flickr doesn't seem to be concerned with them in the least.
The author of the flickr photo didn't put the socialism on it. Someone else removed the "TIME" word and labeled it with socialism. That wasn't the picture on Flickr, the one mentioning time was.
The author said he wasn't really making any political statement, he was learning to use photoshop and followed a tutorial on how to "jokerize" any photo. A couple hours later, he liked what he saw and posted it to his Flickr account. The author also said that he believes he needs to keep low because he lives in Chicago "Alkhateeb says he wasn't actively trying to cover his tracks, but he did want to lay low. He initially had concerns about connecting his name with anything critical of the president -- especially living in Chicago, where people are "very, very liberal," he said." But he also has a photo of Rahm Emanuel with criticisms of him. His lack of willingness to show a point may be because of where he is and how he is now associated to the photo.
The author did state "After Obama was elected, you had all of these people who basically saw him as the second coming of Christ," Alkhateeb said. "From my perspective, there wasn't much substance to him." which might play into your discussion concerning the character of the joker being used. You know, lack of substance "at worst completely insane with no real political views whatsoever".
I suspect there was probably a political motive behind posting the original picture and perhaps the author is afraid to disclose it.
I don't think he was calling them liberals because they think evolution makes more sense. He was pointing out that they are liberals and they want to forbid any other comment on it.
You see, the scientific approach is to actually discuss the issues and stick with the one that makes the most sense. Discourse is not prohibited in science, in fact, it's encouraged. It's how we expand out knowledge and validate what we thought to be true. Well, that is up until you get a liberal who insist that their views are the only ones that should be allowed.
Do Slashdot moderators have a politcal bias as well?
Yep. Not all of them but usually enough to make a point.
Yeah you might have a point that it could be unlawful, but trying to sue a company that big would take a lot of legal fees and you'll end up settling out of court for a smaller fee to avoid millions of dollars in legal fees due to the other side doing delays and other tactics.
I'm not sure I would have standing to sue the company. Suing the government for violating principles of the law if not actual laws (even though the actions were flickr's, it could be vicarious to the government). Yea! even more money needed now. However, I think the original author probably would have standing to sue.
I think a more applicable approach would be demand the government to stop doing business with Flickr until it institutes a policy of no political bias, restores this guys posts, and sets up provisions to ensure the political neutralism of the site itself in the future. If Obama is even pretending to be the hope and change he ran for, it would seem this would demand him to take that approach. Otherwise it's just another government kickback benefiting the politician who made the deal. The US government steers a lot of traffic to flickr due to the exclusive nature of the it's contracts.
The slavery was the part in disagreement I was going with too. The constitutional amendment before the civil war would have taken or surrendered that much of the state's right and placed it under the power of the federal government. I agree that it probably wasn't likely to happen anytime soon, but at least the federal government wouldn't have acted unconstitutionally.
In some ways perhaps, though the undermining was accelerated then not started. It was undermined 30 years, rounding, before. The Constitution was undermined after the US Supreme Court ruled against Jackson in the Worcester v. Georgia case in 1832 and Jackson said "John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it!"
I used to think that too. Now I'm unsure. Wikipedia says the quote is actually a misquote paraphrased to have the same effect. Several other sites have furthered that idea. I don't know if it is history revisionism or if it is true. The quote you mentioned has long been attributed to Jackson and the effects were certainly there. Roosevelt more or less did the same thing by telling the Supreme Court "make me" when they determined a lot of it's New Deal legislation unconstitutional and ordered it stopped. This forced the court to compromise and expand the interstate commerce clause to allow much of the meat of the new deal to stay.
Roosevelt knew his new deal legislation was largely unconstitutional before even attempting it. Two years before he became president, he made a speech about the 18th amendment which was reprinted in the March 3, 1930 edition of the New York Times. In this speech concerning the Volstead act and the 18th amendment concerning Prohibition Roosevelt said
"As a matter of fact and law, the governing rights of the States are all of those which have not been surrendered to the National Government by the Constitution or its amendments. Wisely or unwisely, people know that under the Eighteenth Amendment Congress has been given the right to legislate on this particular subject, but this is not the case in the matter of a great number of other vital problems of government, such as the conduct of public utilities, of banks, of insurance, of business, of agriculture, of education, of social welfare and of a dozen other important features. In these, Washington must not be encouraged to interfere."
He did his about face once in office and basically pulled the same Jackson-Marshal card in defying what he already knew to be true.
BTW, I know it's bad form to post in two different replies. But I forgot to say the I find it humorous that you were modded a troll for your comment. I do no believe it to be a troll, the humor is on the ranking system that attempts to bury comments. The moderation was obviously one attempting to hide your comments from people who change their threshold values to avoid negative comments. And this was done in a post concerning censorship over political speech where you laid out a case for Flickr's actions. I guess the problem went to where you said you believed it was fair use.
Hopefully, the meta moderation with take care of it for you.
None of the images you linked get to the heart of this issue, which is copyright. We only have evidence of one photoshopped Obama image being pulled, and it also happens to use a TIME magazine cover as its source. Regardless of their political motivations, about which I make no claim (yet!), copyright violation of TIME's image is a valid reason for them to pull the cover. Others including the submitter have mentioned that the image is parody, but not every manipulation is parody and I don't think the case for parody is obvious here--what aspect of TIME are they parodying?
The parody would be of times support and advocacy of Obama. Oboma has been on the cover of time magazine 7 times since he took office with another issue coming soon to make it eight. In 2008, he was on the in time mag almost 30 times with a total of 23 times to date on the cover since 2006.
Now here is something of concern. Copyright law explicitly protects flickr from copyright actions based on third party users of their service. Secondly, if Flickr was legitimatly concerned with copyright, then why are they ignoring all the other posted photos of Time magazine's covers. No DMCA take down has been claims as the core reasoning for the concern here. To date, it is just Flickr attempting to claim a concern in an area they hold legal protection from. But this isn't Flickr's first time protecting the administration.
This is, as others have said, perfectly within Flickr's rights, but the Streisand Effect has taken hold and it will probably bite them in the ass now whether the image is infringing or not, especially if the fact that there are tons of other infringing images remaining is spotlighted. It would be interesting to hear comments from Flickr about the takedown, though the article states that they won't respond. Tsk tsk.
I'm not entirely sure it is within their rights. Flickr holds some exclusive contracts with the government and is the only source for a lot of government information. Before I go further, I want you and anyone else reading to imagine a situation were all video content and speeches made by Bush was only availible at Fox News.
Anyways, without the content being availible on other sites as a matter of government policy, I'm not sure how they can promote political favoritism or specific political ideals. If it isn't illegal (as in using government resources for political gain), it should be and It's probably unethical for both flickr and the federal government to be in a practice where the sole source of some public information forces the exposure of certain political ideals and methodologies. I think it would be more obvious if you could only find white house pictures at the republican national comity website. I don't see this as much different when it is apparent that Flickr is pushing a political message. I mean they have taken down images and obliterated accounts of people critical of obama. I'm not sure how that isn't a kickback for those contracts in the least.
Yes, you can parody a public official, that doesn't mean you can use other peoples copyrighted material to make parody of something else. This has been seen many, many time.
Actually, the parody use of Time was political speech making fun of Obama's coverage in time magazine and how they seem to be supporting his every move as well as Obama and his health care debacle. That seems to me that it would place it as fair game. Oboma has been on the cover of time magazine 7 times since he took office with another issue coming soon to make it eight. In 2008, he was on the in time mag almost 30 times with a total of 23 times to date on the cover since 2006.
"Obama always said his candidacy was not about him, but "you," and now, along with Flickr, we're helping give "you" a voice. The presentation of these images in the magazine reflects the extraordinary work of Time deputy picture editor Dietmar Liz-Lepiorz, deputy art director D.W. Pine, reporter Jeninne Lee-St. John and picture-desk assistant Diana Suryakusuma. I also want to thank assistant managing editor Michael Duffy and deputy managing editor Adi Ignatius for doing the heavy lifting on this issue."
I find it odd that this voice is only if you agree with them. A simple search of Flick for Obama and time shows that copyright does not become an issue for the thousands of other people using time's covers.
I don't think it should have been pulled, but that'e irrel;event. This isn't about Obama, its about a company affriad they are going to get sued by time or the MPAA.
Not really, the DMCA exempts them from being sued for content of third parties on their service. The DMCA also has provisions in which the post can exert a right to the images as fair use or a matter of copyright and Flickr would be bound to put it back up (under the DMCA law). I'm not sure how far this has gone yet and I'm attempting to find more information about it. However, This isn't an isolated incident with Flickr. Google has yanked bloggers critical of Obama too. It should be noted that Google was perfectly fine with this blogger's crazy comments when it was about bush but had to remove it when they started including Obama.
It's a symptom of out of control copyright enforcement abuse.
I don't give a damn how someone parodies the President. Never have, never will.
I agree, I'm just concerned with the attempts to stop it.
"It can legitimately be seen as the government controlling the access to negative speech." only uf there is some sort of person telling them to pull it.
This is a Grey area that has backfired many times in the past. People can be influenced into actions without a person specificaly telling them to do something. An example of this was a industrial accident in my area a few years back which cost the life of an employee and severely harms a few others. The company was rwquired to provide safety tie off for some work being performed. They weren't in place and when the employees complained, instead of them being put in place, they were simply taken off of the schedule for a few weeks at a time. It didn't take long for the employees to figure out that if they wanted to make a paycheck, they either had to perform the work without the safety tie offs or find another job. This lead employees to working in a direct violation of OSHA rules. One day, a worker slipped and on the way down, hit three other
White Presidents only have to show their birth certificate once, and everybody believes it. A black guy with a funny name shows his birth certificate until we are all sick of looking at it, but for some reason a bunch of racist pieces of human garbage don't believe it. They will never believe it. No matter how many times the President shows the same birth certificate that you or I would produce to prove we are born here, they (and you) just don't believe it.
Nice counter punch. Now everyone is a racist if they don't agree or have questions. That too totally shot the argument out of the water without ever addressing it.
Here are some facts, Obama never showed a birth certificate to anyone not interested in his being elected. That is hardly showing it until everyone is sick of it. Obama also provided a certificate of live birth which is different from the Hawaii birth certificate in use at the time of his birth. This has been shown many times in many places and sparked the hunt for his real birth certificate that caused the governor of Hawaii to seal it and all of the ones supposedly around it. The question of his actual birth is based around a time line developed from Obama's own admissions through public speaking, books he authored, and public information.
Here is the most alarming fact, Obama possesses the means to end everything right now by simply showing the actual birth certificate. There is nothing that preventing it from being shown but him. Instead of showing it and ending it once and for all, walls of secrecy have been put in place, people like you attempt to squash the question by insulting and attacking the messenger or spreading misinformation rather then addressing any of the points brought up.
Even the nonsense about John McCain wasn't about whether his birth certificate was false, but about whether that location qualifies as a natural born citizen.
As I said before, they went into the area, it became fair game by their actions. The people who claim he isn't a natural citizen claim that the time line offered by Obama himself places him as being born in a foreign country which wouldn't automatically negate his natural citizenship rights except for the time span involved was over the limits of the law in force of the time. Again, that was derived from Obama's own words.
Long story short, you are full of shit, and you are siding with racist idiots.
I'm actually not siding with anyone. You are the one imparting racism too. No one that I know of is saying Obama can't be president because he black, they are saying he can't be because he isn't constitutionally qualified. His race is completely ancillary to the topic. You are the one bringing it up in some failed attempt to conflate constitutional qualifications with racism.
So I have to ask you. If a representative was only 21, would he be constitutionally disqualified from taking office only if he was white? If a senator was elected to office at age 31, would he only be constitutionally disqualified from holding office if he was white? Where is the exception in the constitution for black men and minorities? And why is it important to exclude certain races from constitutional qualification?
Also, when the easiest way to put this entire issue to rest is to show the actual birth certificate on record with the hospital he was born in, why is the path Obama has chosen to take seem to do everything but that? Why are the attempts to verify his legitimacy and constitutional qualifications blocked. Is there something special about black people which forbid this?
No, because flickr who is the sole outlet for certain information to many of the government agencies, they cannot deny a particulate point of view. If the government exclusively used Fox News to disseminate information, even if it was just video feed, they shouldn't be allowed to express views or deny views either. But Flickr in this regard is not like Fox News or any other organization (corporation) as many government agencies and public information is exclusive to them. That trumps other rights. If the government was limiting their involvement to running ads, it would be different. But in effect, they are saying you have to be exposed to this political view to view public information disclosed by the government. I'm not sure how you cannot see that as wrong. Try imagining Bush doing it. It should scare you no matter who is in office.
I'm glad we got our disagreement hammered out. While we do but heads, I do enjoy our talks.
As for the civil war and the south, Yes, I have seen a lot to that effect. When you study their points for secession, I really think the premise the south held was valid even if I don't agree with the core reasoning behind the actions. To me, in a lot of ways, this is the pivotal point when the US constitution started getting undermined.
If I could change history, I wouldn't because I don't think I would have liked the old south existing today. But I do believe the basis in which H.L. Mencken and others have claimed, that the south was fighting for their right to self government. The federal government has taken on too much power, power that constitutionally should be left with the states. If we would have had a constitutional amendment before the civil war the ended slavery instead of a presidential decree, I think things would have been a little different.
An interesting read is Lincoln's first inaugural address and compare that with how history shaped out. Lincoln said things like
"Resolved, That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of power on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depend; and we denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes."
"I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so."
"No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in consequence of any law or regulation therein be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."
" This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing Government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it."
Of course this address was 2 weeks after Jefferson Davis was inaugurated as the President of the Confederacy.
Actually, I think the problem is that if there is no criticism, then the approval ratings will never drop. This is a reasoning behind removing criticism.
It wouldn't be that bad if the US government didn't have contracts with Flickr and use their services as a means to communicate with the population. This is as unacceptable as if Bush used "only" Fox News to fulfill his communications and public disclosure requirements. Actually, it's a little worse because Fox news will discuss criticisms even if there seems to be a slant on it.
It is unethical, but not unlawful, it is discrimination, but discrimination by political beliefs is not covered by the US Constitution. It violates free speech and freedom of expression, but Flikr is a private company so they can act like Communists or Fascists or whatever and censor as they see fit.
I'm not entirely sure this wouldn't be unlawful. At least in the flickr case. Flickr as well as several other internet sites have government contracts and government agencies use them to their benefit. When those sites show their political leanings in more then a "I support this guy" and turn it into a "You can't criticize the guy I support", it's as if the government who is rewarding them is actually saying it.
If that doesn't violate a law as in no campaigning from government offices, government rewards or the use of government services for particular political speech, or a violation of the first amendment by the government who is in control of the services they use, then it should be.
Please understand, when I say the first amendment, I understand that flickr is a private company, however, when the US government contracts with and used a private company that imposed a particular political speech and forbids dissenting views, the government has effectivly taken the first amendment away from the people. This is the theory behind all the controls on costs, message, and all with other media like radio and TeleVision. The US government should be bared from doing business as essential services with these companies as long as those types of policies are in place to avoid conflicts with the first amendment. Currently Flickr is one of the main places to view administration photo's and such. I see it as no different then taking ads out in only politically biased media outlets in order to fulfill government disclosure in some misguided attempt to expose people to a particular political view.
Political speech and criticism is a completely codified exemption to copyright as fair use and is backed by numerous cases and case law (tort) and is embodied in several international treaties that the US has signed and ratified.
Copyright in which there is a clear case of political speech and fair use is not an excuse. Neither is an approval rating or the amount of time in office. It's obvious that if negative speech is blocked from being seen, the approval ratings will remain higher then they would have had the negative speech remained in the public view. What makes this more dangerous then anything is that Flickr has government contracts and is used by the government. It can legitimately be seen as the government controlling the access to negative speech. I don't care how much you want to suck Obama's dick, that should scare you.
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Wouldn't refusing to leave be a physical harassment?
I hope you don't have children who sleep in another room. I would hate to think of the awful things that could happen while you staying put waiting for a police department that has no obligation to protect you to show up. Before we get to far, the no obligation part is a result of a court case that exonerated cops for not protecting someone as the court found the cops has no obligation to protect anyone. Anyways, the point is that it could take a long time before they show up. It might be a priority for them, but if something happened across town or something, there could be some significant time involved before they can make it to your home.
IF you don't have kids or someone sleeping in another room, then it sounds like a pretty good plan. However, if you do, I would go after the invader if nothing else but to keep them away from the other people.
No he hasn't. People who were interested in his election have stated he was born in the US a million times but that is hardly proof. Disclosing the birth certificate would be proof yet for some reason, lots of money and effort is going into avoiding that. I'm not sure why that is, perhaps you can explain.
Lol.. I think it's funny because Obama holds the power in his hands to release one simple thing that can clear all this up and here you are saying things that aren't true in order to help him avoid that.
No it has not been proved a million time. Again, all the claims to such have credibility issues. They were made by obama supporters.
Here, lets go from another angle, If all this can be cleared up by simply releasing the official birth certificate, then what harm could come from doing that? Why is there crap loads of money and effort being invested to avoid that? If it's true, he was born in hawaii, this issue disappears. If it isn't, he loses the office he was elected to. So what is the problem with seeing the birth certificate? You know, I didn't buy into this BS, but now I'm wondering because I can't find a valid reason for the original birth certificate to not be shown. It's odd that people come in attacking the messenger as an idiot or racist instead of just showing the proof.
No one is saying he needs a special birth certificate, just the one issues by the state of Hawaii. The fuck you part is why this won't die as it should if he was a natural born citizen. I mean showing the actual birth certificate would easily clear this up and make it go away really quick. Yet, instead of doing that, we have you saying fuck you, we have the parent saying I'm a racists because I want my government to be constitutional, and the guy before saying I was an idiot for the same. But none of you showed any proof he was a citizen, you simply addresses the question by shooting the messenger. That doesn't make you win your point, in fact, it strengthens mine. What is there to hide?
Now go kiss your mom with that mouth.
DO you have some links to back that up? I did a google search for Bush removes reporter critical of him and got no hits stating that. I did however, find a lot of hits for Clinton and Obama. One reporter was even kicked off his tour bus during campaign coverage.
I'm not doubting what you say, I just want to see some creditable evidence of it. I think someone told you a lie or something.
Flickr is protected against lawsuits for copyright posed by third party members using their service. The have no fear from prosecution or civil suit unless Flickr itself created and posted the image. In right there in the copyright laws (title 17 of the US code). And yes, Fair Use is mentioned specifically in the copyright laws.
When you search the Flickr site for "time cover" or "Joker", you are presented with hundreds if not thousands of replies that are direct copies with no possible fair use claim. They seem to not be concerned with them. What do you think the reasoning for this is? And what is their concern if they are immune to lawsuits for the actions of third parties? Ordinarily a DMCA take down notice is filed with the company, it removes the content, forwards a copy of the notice to the person responsible, and there is an option for that person to assert their right to the content. None of that happens, someone said out of all these images of Time mags, time's covers, and the joker, we are concerned about this one that appears to be critical of Obama.
Try going back and searching for the "joker" and "Time cover".
Again, what was the problem? Is combining the two a hyper problem or something? This is about Obama being the focus and how people have used the image and portions of it to be critical of Obama. The thousands of other "copyright concerns" wouldn't otherwise be unconcerned to Flickr.
Google owns Youtube which is into providing specific government content and the first place to receive some of the content. Google is also directly involved with the government as a company as well as Google's founder had given extreme amounts of money and support to Obama. The pay off, well that's somewhat of a question but Obama put Google for government together, here is the US site and is expected to endorse quit a few laws that Google favors. There was even a pay off attempt.
Some people even believe that Google manipulated search results and canceled account of blogs critical of Obama. I'm not sure how accurate that is but here is something should be noted. I found in other blogs (which I can't seem to find right now) that at least with the accounts being canceled, the official Google reason is that people are filing complaints about them being spam blogs or racist speech and somehow no one at google is checking it before deleting the accounts, information, or posts.
Lol..
I didn't realize Flikr used Yahoo search. Makes sense, they are owned by them. Anyways, to get a better notion of how politically motivated this is, do a search for "Time covers" and "joker" on Flickr's search. You will quickly see thousands of copyright concerns they are completely unconcerned about. Well, unless combining them together somehow creates a super concern.
However, this isn't the first case of it happening.
Imagine if Bush put all press releases, speeches and public disclosure on the Fox News site and you were subject to their political views only in order to obtain access to them.
The White house having a Flickr account is basically placing private services into public space but it is using a biased service that is protecting Obama from Criticism. You can't really deny that is what is going one either, it's a kickback for government contracts and content that is only availible on Flickr. The two remotely possible copyright concerns with the photo is the image of the Joker and Time Magazine. But if you search their site with the terms "time cover" or "Joker" you will see the thousands of possible copyright concerns they are completely unconcerned with. Obama is what made them concerned and the only reason for that is kickbacks to repay for the government contract that they benefit from.
Regardless of what you think of Fox News, it isn't the sole repository for a lot of public information released by the government. If the images were elsewhere, it might be different.
However, even Fox News with discuss the criticisms to their point of view, even if they attempt to slant it to their favor. Flickr basically censored the photo only because it was critical of Obama. If you goto their main page and do a search for Time Magazine, Time covers, and Joker, you will find the thousands of potential copyright concerns that they are completely unconcerned about. Obama gives them government contracts and steers visitors and they give kickbacks by removing content critical of Obama. This isn't the first time either.
Exactly, whether or not the site is privately owned, it is being used for official government purposes. I see no difference in this then I would if Bush attempted to place all video content on Fox News or host all press releases and speeches at the Republican National Comity website and they removed all critical speech of him.
In fact, I'm actually viewing this action as a government kickback for a contract that drives visitors and notoriety as well as popularity to Flickr. There is more then just a service going on here, the site is actively removing speech critical of Obama. DO a search for time magazine, time covers, and joker on flickr. They are unconcerned over the thousands of other possible copyright violations and only of the one which appears critical of Obama.
The worse part about it is that no one owning the copyright has made any complaints on it. The email from Flickr would have mentioned a DMCA take down notice as it's a law to forward it to the user so they can object to it and state they have standing.
Flickr simply asserted copyright concerns as the reasoning but if you search their site, Time covers produces a shit load of results of the use of the cover of time while Joker does too
Those are the only two issues with copyright I can find with the image, and Flickr doesn't seem to be concerned with them in the least.
The author of the flickr photo didn't put the socialism on it. Someone else removed the "TIME" word and labeled it with socialism. That wasn't the picture on Flickr, the one mentioning time was.
The author said he wasn't really making any political statement, he was learning to use photoshop and followed a tutorial on how to "jokerize" any photo. A couple hours later, he liked what he saw and posted it to his Flickr account. The author also said that he believes he needs to keep low because he lives in Chicago "Alkhateeb says he wasn't actively trying to cover his tracks, but he did want to lay low. He initially had concerns about connecting his name with anything critical of the president -- especially living in Chicago, where people are "very, very liberal," he said." But he also has a photo of Rahm Emanuel with criticisms of him. His lack of willingness to show a point may be because of where he is and how he is now associated to the photo.
The author did state "After Obama was elected, you had all of these people who basically saw him as the second coming of Christ," Alkhateeb said. "From my perspective, there wasn't much substance to him." which might play into your discussion concerning the character of the joker being used. You know, lack of substance "at worst completely insane with no real political views whatsoever".
I suspect there was probably a political motive behind posting the original picture and perhaps the author is afraid to disclose it.
I don't think he was calling them liberals because they think evolution makes more sense. He was pointing out that they are liberals and they want to forbid any other comment on it.
You see, the scientific approach is to actually discuss the issues and stick with the one that makes the most sense. Discourse is not prohibited in science, in fact, it's encouraged. It's how we expand out knowledge and validate what we thought to be true. Well, that is up until you get a liberal who insist that their views are the only ones that should be allowed.
Yep. Not all of them but usually enough to make a point.
I'm not sure I would have standing to sue the company. Suing the government for violating principles of the law if not actual laws (even though the actions were flickr's, it could be vicarious to the government). Yea! even more money needed now. However, I think the original author probably would have standing to sue.
I think a more applicable approach would be demand the government to stop doing business with Flickr until it institutes a policy of no political bias, restores this guys posts, and sets up provisions to ensure the political neutralism of the site itself in the future. If Obama is even pretending to be the hope and change he ran for, it would seem this would demand him to take that approach. Otherwise it's just another government kickback benefiting the politician who made the deal. The US government steers a lot of traffic to flickr due to the exclusive nature of the it's contracts.
The slavery was the part in disagreement I was going with too. The constitutional amendment before the civil war would have taken or surrendered that much of the state's right and placed it under the power of the federal government. I agree that it probably wasn't likely to happen anytime soon, but at least the federal government wouldn't have acted unconstitutionally.
I used to think that too. Now I'm unsure. Wikipedia says the quote is actually a misquote paraphrased to have the same effect. Several other sites have furthered that idea. I don't know if it is history revisionism or if it is true. The quote you mentioned has long been attributed to Jackson and the effects were certainly there. Roosevelt more or less did the same thing by telling the Supreme Court "make me" when they determined a lot of it's New Deal legislation unconstitutional and ordered it stopped. This forced the court to compromise and expand the interstate commerce clause to allow much of the meat of the new deal to stay.
Roosevelt knew his new deal legislation was largely unconstitutional before even attempting it. Two years before he became president, he made a speech about the 18th amendment which was reprinted in the March 3, 1930 edition of the New York Times. In this speech concerning the Volstead act and the 18th amendment concerning Prohibition Roosevelt said
BTW, I know it's bad form to post in two different replies. But I forgot to say the I find it humorous that you were modded a troll for your comment. I do no believe it to be a troll, the humor is on the ranking system that attempts to bury comments. The moderation was obviously one attempting to hide your comments from people who change their threshold values to avoid negative comments. And this was done in a post concerning censorship over political speech where you laid out a case for Flickr's actions. I guess the problem went to where you said you believed it was fair use.
Hopefully, the meta moderation with take care of it for you.
The parody would be of times support and advocacy of Obama. Oboma has been on the cover of time magazine 7 times since he took office with another issue coming soon to make it eight. In 2008, he was on the in time mag almost 30 times with a total of 23 times to date on the cover since 2006.
Now here is something of concern. Copyright law explicitly protects flickr from copyright actions based on third party users of their service. Secondly, if Flickr was legitimatly concerned with copyright, then why are they ignoring all the other posted photos of Time magazine's covers. No DMCA take down has been claims as the core reasoning for the concern here. To date, it is just Flickr attempting to claim a concern in an area they hold legal protection from. But this isn't Flickr's first time protecting the administration.
I'm not entirely sure it is within their rights. Flickr holds some exclusive contracts with the government and is the only source for a lot of government information. Before I go further, I want you and anyone else reading to imagine a situation were all video content and speeches made by Bush was only availible at Fox News.
Anyways, without the content being availible on other sites as a matter of government policy, I'm not sure how they can promote political favoritism or specific political ideals. If it isn't illegal (as in using government resources for political gain), it should be and It's probably unethical for both flickr and the federal government to be in a practice where the sole source of some public information forces the exposure of certain political ideals and methodologies. I think it would be more obvious if you could only find white house pictures at the republican national comity website. I don't see this as much different when it is apparent that Flickr is pushing a political message. I mean they have taken down images and obliterated accounts of people critical of obama. I'm not sure how that isn't a kickback for those contracts in the least.
Actually, the parody use of Time was political speech making fun of Obama's coverage in time magazine and how they seem to be supporting his every move as well as Obama and his health care debacle. That seems to me that it would place it as fair game. Oboma has been on the cover of time magazine 7 times since he took office with another issue coming soon to make it eight. In 2008, he was on the in time mag almost 30 times with a total of 23 times to date on the cover since 2006.
Time magazine, in their article Why We Chose Obama stated
I find it odd that this voice is only if you agree with them. A simple search of Flick for Obama and time shows that copyright does not become an issue for the thousands of other people using time's covers.
Not really, the DMCA exempts them from being sued for content of third parties on their service. The DMCA also has provisions in which the post can exert a right to the images as fair use or a matter of copyright and Flickr would be bound to put it back up (under the DMCA law). I'm not sure how far this has gone yet and I'm attempting to find more information about it. However, This isn't an isolated incident with Flickr. Google has yanked bloggers critical of Obama too. It should be noted that Google was perfectly fine with this blogger's crazy comments when it was about bush but had to remove it when they started including Obama.
I agree, I'm just concerned with the attempts to stop it.
This is a Grey area that has backfired many times in the past. People can be influenced into actions without a person specificaly telling them to do something. An example of this was a industrial accident in my area a few years back which cost the life of an employee and severely harms a few others. The company was rwquired to provide safety tie off for some work being performed. They weren't in place and when the employees complained, instead of them being put in place, they were simply taken off of the schedule for a few weeks at a time. It didn't take long for the employees to figure out that if they wanted to make a paycheck, they either had to perform the work without the safety tie offs or find another job. This lead employees to working in a direct violation of OSHA rules. One day, a worker slipped and on the way down, hit three other
Nice counter punch. Now everyone is a racist if they don't agree or have questions. That too totally shot the argument out of the water without ever addressing it.
Here are some facts, Obama never showed a birth certificate to anyone not interested in his being elected. That is hardly showing it until everyone is sick of it. Obama also provided a certificate of live birth which is different from the Hawaii birth certificate in use at the time of his birth. This has been shown many times in many places and sparked the hunt for his real birth certificate that caused the governor of Hawaii to seal it and all of the ones supposedly around it. The question of his actual birth is based around a time line developed from Obama's own admissions through public speaking, books he authored, and public information.
Here is the most alarming fact, Obama possesses the means to end everything right now by simply showing the actual birth certificate. There is nothing that preventing it from being shown but him. Instead of showing it and ending it once and for all, walls of secrecy have been put in place, people like you attempt to squash the question by insulting and attacking the messenger or spreading misinformation rather then addressing any of the points brought up.
As I said before, they went into the area, it became fair game by their actions. The people who claim he isn't a natural citizen claim that the time line offered by Obama himself places him as being born in a foreign country which wouldn't automatically negate his natural citizenship rights except for the time span involved was over the limits of the law in force of the time. Again, that was derived from Obama's own words.
I'm actually not siding with anyone. You are the one imparting racism too. No one that I know of is saying Obama can't be president because he black, they are saying he can't be because he isn't constitutionally qualified. His race is completely ancillary to the topic. You are the one bringing it up in some failed attempt to conflate constitutional qualifications with racism.
So I have to ask you. If a representative was only 21, would he be constitutionally disqualified from taking office only if he was white? If a senator was elected to office at age 31, would he only be constitutionally disqualified from holding office if he was white? Where is the exception in the constitution for black men and minorities? And why is it important to exclude certain races from constitutional qualification?
Also, when the easiest way to put this entire issue to rest is to show the actual birth certificate on record with the hospital he was born in, why is the path Obama has chosen to take seem to do everything but that? Why are the attempts to verify his legitimacy and constitutional qualifications blocked. Is there something special about black people which forbid this?
No, because flickr who is the sole outlet for certain information to many of the government agencies, they cannot deny a particulate point of view. If the government exclusively used Fox News to disseminate information, even if it was just video feed, they shouldn't be allowed to express views or deny views either. But Flickr in this regard is not like Fox News or any other organization (corporation) as many government agencies and public information is exclusive to them. That trumps other rights. If the government was limiting their involvement to running ads, it would be different. But in effect, they are saying you have to be exposed to this political view to view public information disclosed by the government. I'm not sure how you cannot see that as wrong. Try imagining Bush doing it. It should scare you no matter who is in office.
I'm glad we got our disagreement hammered out. While we do but heads, I do enjoy our talks.
As for the civil war and the south, Yes, I have seen a lot to that effect. When you study their points for secession, I really think the premise the south held was valid even if I don't agree with the core reasoning behind the actions. To me, in a lot of ways, this is the pivotal point when the US constitution started getting undermined.
If I could change history, I wouldn't because I don't think I would have liked the old south existing today. But I do believe the basis in which H.L. Mencken and others have claimed, that the south was fighting for their right to self government. The federal government has taken on too much power, power that constitutionally should be left with the states. If we would have had a constitutional amendment before the civil war the ended slavery instead of a presidential decree, I think things would have been a little different.
An interesting read is Lincoln's first inaugural address and compare that with how history shaped out. Lincoln said things like
"Resolved, That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of power on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depend; and we denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes."
"I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so."
"No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in consequence of any law or regulation therein be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."
" This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing Government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it."
Of course this address was 2 weeks after Jefferson Davis was inaugurated as the President of the Confederacy.
Actually, I think the problem is that if there is no criticism, then the approval ratings will never drop. This is a reasoning behind removing criticism.
It wouldn't be that bad if the US government didn't have contracts with Flickr and use their services as a means to communicate with the population. This is as unacceptable as if Bush used "only" Fox News to fulfill his communications and public disclosure requirements. Actually, it's a little worse because Fox news will discuss criticisms even if there seems to be a slant on it.
I'm not entirely sure this wouldn't be unlawful. At least in the flickr case. Flickr as well as several other internet sites have government contracts and government agencies use them to their benefit. When those sites show their political leanings in more then a "I support this guy" and turn it into a "You can't criticize the guy I support", it's as if the government who is rewarding them is actually saying it.
If that doesn't violate a law as in no campaigning from government offices, government rewards or the use of government services for particular political speech, or a violation of the first amendment by the government who is in control of the services they use, then it should be.
Please understand, when I say the first amendment, I understand that flickr is a private company, however, when the US government contracts with and used a private company that imposed a particular political speech and forbids dissenting views, the government has effectivly taken the first amendment away from the people. This is the theory behind all the controls on costs, message, and all with other media like radio and TeleVision. The US government should be bared from doing business as essential services with these companies as long as those types of policies are in place to avoid conflicts with the first amendment. Currently Flickr is one of the main places to view administration photo's and such. I see it as no different then taking ads out in only politically biased media outlets in order to fulfill government disclosure in some misguided attempt to expose people to a particular political view.
Political speech and criticism is a completely codified exemption to copyright as fair use and is backed by numerous cases and case law (tort) and is embodied in several international treaties that the US has signed and ratified.
Copyright in which there is a clear case of political speech and fair use is not an excuse. Neither is an approval rating or the amount of time in office. It's obvious that if negative speech is blocked from being seen, the approval ratings will remain higher then they would have had the negative speech remained in the public view. What makes this more dangerous then anything is that Flickr has government contracts and is used by the government. It can legitimately be seen as the government controlling the access to negative speech. I don't care how much you want to suck Obama's dick, that should scare you.