DRM

UPDATE | 9 June 2006
It is amazing what money will do. While there are more then 15 prominent sites running the Brangelina photos --the embargo is over after all-- I was insulted and berated by one of the lawyers of the company that serves the IP to my hosting company.

There are proper procedures that IP and hosting companies have to go through when there is a C&D. A C&D is not necessarily an order for a take down. Can you imagine if everybody could invoke the DCMA on an email everytime they didn't like something written about them?

I have been informally adviced that it is illegal to not follow certain steps and procedures and so I am weighing my options. Especially since I did not use the image to write about gossip but to criticize corporate tactics meant to curtail fair use and freedom of speech.

I am writing a longer piece on this issue especially the need for cultural creatives and progressives to invest in rock hard IT businesses. Back in the days art collectives like The Thing [ www.thing.net ] where dial-up networks themselves, 20 YEARS AGO, because they knew of the danger of being shut down for unpopular art.

To save democracy we are going to have to build a new infrastructure capable of sustaining it. That means, investing in businesses that will fight for fair use and freedom of speech instead of cower to the bottom line.

I get an AIM from Lynn and her husband saying to call them immediately. I freaked out given her recent health woes; but they reassured me it had all to do with the Brangelina photo.

The lawyers for TimeWarner AOL and Getty Images invoked the Digital Millenium Copyright Act sent a Cease and Desist letter to AboveNet, a company that services hosting companies.

With no questions asked, AboveNet immediately contacted Simpli.biz, the company that holds our servers. They ordered a "DCMA TAKEDOWN". It means, it does not matter if TimeWarnerAOL is lying about the infringement of copyright allegations. They would force Simpli to force me to take down the image within 24 hours or risk losing their IP and their business by having it blacklisted. And they can force them to do so because this kind of harrassment is protected under the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act.

It really does not matter if I claim Fair Use. If I did not comply within 24 hours they would blacklist the hosting company and all IPs they held. What that means is that, once they blacklisted the IP, they would in effect put Simpli.biz out of business.

So what exists in place with the DCMA is a legally allowed harrassment system in place. If you are writing a blog that a big media company like TimeWarnerAOL finds to their dislike, they can use the DCMA to take you down, no questions asked. And the cost to fight to get back online makes it almost impossible for anybody to fight these kinds of battles.

So I asked Lynn what to do. She knows that ten years ago a similar thing happened to my kids' father with his Barbie spoof, The Distorted Barbie. It was the first in a string of actions that would culminate in Mattel v. Walking Mountain Productions [PDF].

This is what came out of our conversation :

My friend Joy Garnett, who is the the source of culturekitchen's guerrilla man logo, has also become an expert on fair use. She sent me this bit posted at the FairUseNetwork mailing list:

The fair use doctrine permits anyone to use copyrighted works, without the owners' permission, in ways that are fundamentally equitable and fair. Common examples of fair use are criticism, commentary, news reporting, research, scholarship, and multiple copies for classroom use.

[...]

News reporting = blogging.

TimeWarnerAOL owns People Mag. They happen to be one of the biggest lobbyists behind the DCMA (after the RIAA). They also declared with their new "anti-spam" policy how the stand against net neutrality : they want to create different paying levels of access to email, rss, web, ftp, you name it. The want as many tolls they can lay and control along the information superhighway as they can.

Which is why it puts into a whole different context these comments from the people of Hello! and Getty Images :

[via Shiloh Not Ready For Close-Up, Gets It Anyway - Yahoo! News]:

"It's a complete mystery," Hello!'s Herd told Reuters. "And we are very concerned at this breach of copyright.

"It is very difficult to control the Web and this proves how rampantly out of control it is. We have absolutely no idea how the picture was leaked."

A spokesperson for People magazine, meanwhile, had other ideas.

"Somebody from Hello! must have leaked it," the unnamed rep told BBC News. "I don't know how it got there."

However it did, it makes for a particularly pricey stealing of thunder.

As for Getty Images, which Pitt and Jolie announced earlier this week would market the photos, they claim the picture could be seen more as a teaser, enticing the celeb-savvy public into seeing the rest of the shots.

"Our legal team are looking into it and we will take it from there," spokeswoman Alison Crombie told Reuters. "But I really don't think it will devalue the pictures as everyone is dying to see the full set."

The C&D's are after the jump.

Because every single media outlet will link back to you as well.

We're experiencing some incredibly heavy traffic. Please be patient with us. In the meantime, check out at Perez Hilton's how Brangelina have, all by themselves, devalued the fabled exclusive.

Ah ... the power of the internets.

WELCOME PEREZISTAS!
WELCOME CBS READERS!
Media Advisory
Liza Sabater is available for comments about this post. Please use the "write to the author link" to get in contact with her.

UPDATE | 08 June 2006
TimeWarnerAOL has used a claim of DCMA against our Fair Use of the Hello! cover photo to force our webhosting company to take down the photo "or else".

Read all about how TimeWarnerAOL can get away legally with this kind of harrassment here.

A little levity for the end of the day; since babies past, present and future are everywhere.

Lawyers can be the scourge of democracy these days. You'd think the automatrons at People Magazine would have thought about all the digital details involving the publishing online of Brangelina's baby photo. No they obviously did not think of the little detail of time zones when paying for an "exclusive".

The photo has been disseminated all over the internet but thanks to Perez Hilton's growing notoriety, he's been slapped with a cease and desist; which he is obviously relishing at Celebrity gossip juicy celebrity rumors Hollywood gossip blog from Perez Hilton.

L Word preview.

I have to say that this really irked me, a real let down compared to the hype. I don't want to slag on Jill, but we are the same age and I'm trying to figure out, why so much of me wants to agree and yet I can't. Is it the fact that she appears to live in a world of striving upward mobility --and that's the problem? I'm not saying it's wrong for her to have done so. I am thinking that this might account for the different perspectives -- at least in part. Someone pointed this out at her blog, in the comments section. Living in the lower 25% gives you a different perspective: you never feel dependent on a man. Well, you do. What you know is: you are dependent on one another to survive, to have the basics, just to squeeze by.

And I'm not clear: the only enemy is men? Really? Am I asking too much of a blog post? I dunno.

But I'm thinking that, if anything, I'm a slave to a wage. I'm a slave to someone, man or woman, who's willing to pay my for my labor. I can't imagine a world where I'm not wondering what power and authority are thinking about me. I can imagine a world, though, where men aren't thinking much about me per se, where, if they do, it won't matter.

Still, what I can't envision, at least not with the tools I'm offered in the above link, is a world where I won't be a slave to having to earn a wage and, thus, subject to The Gaze (and, here, to my friend who asked, The Gaze isn't about men, it's about the Big Other. But more on that later.

I was in a feminist department in grad school. I'm here to tell you that it doesn't change much with feminist women as your boss. Some dynamics are different, but what I wore still mattered, it was just a different 'mattering'. But I still had to perform, be on display, etc. etc. And no, I'm not going to blame it on internalization of patriarchy or anything of the sort. I'm definitely not going to chalk it up to unique personalities.

We living in a system where the goods are limited. By goods I mean _everything_: approval, social status, money, things, time. Everything.

Think about it this way. When I taught sociology of work, the first day of class, we'd talk about grading. To that, there was always the usual grumble. One day, I ran with it. I said, "Well, hey, let's just give everyone an A. As long as you come to class, do your work, write your papers, you get an A.

Awesome. The students were thrilled.

Then I said, "Wouldn't be cool if the whole department did that? Everyone got As?"

"Yeah Bitch, that would be so totally awesome. Everyone in the department, including majors, gets As. Wow! Let's start lobbying to see to it that the entire school gets As."

And they would be all abuzz about how great that would be. After all, students at an elite liberal arts college knew that it didn't matter what they learned, it was about their connections after college as to what kind of jobs they'd get. That was consistently confirmed for them by siblings, parents, and alum. College was just a hoop you jumped through, more important for the social connections you made or the reputation of the school than the actual stuff you learned at school. Everyone knew that. It's not what you know, but who you know.

Then I said, "Well, hey, after, say, 5 years of everyone at this college getting As, where would the reputation of this school be?"

Oh. Long faces.

You see? Grades have to be doled out in a certain way, otherwise an A would be worthless. As have to be limited for As to mean anything in particular. And, if we are anything at all, we are meaning making animals. What does it take to make an A mean?

Not A.

And there you have it. That's the system we live in.

It's one where we can't all have the best, well-paid jobs, where we can't all get As, where we can't all have the most highly-trafficked blogs.

We live where the goods are limited -- that's where we are. The goods are limited, they are scare, they are doled out, not generously, but in a miserly way.

Whether they are limited for real or artificially or some combination -- it doesn't matter. The goods are lmited. The system simply doesn't work without the scarcity, without the lack, without the limit, without them empty, without the competition for a job, with the competition for a wage, for a freelancer's salary, for anything.

You own your own business? You're competing for customers. You write books? You're competing for the best contract, for the best publishing house, for the best readers, for the most money, for the widest audience, for the best reviews by the most important reviewers. March, march, march. We throw our bodies, our minds, our hearts, our souls under the juggernaut, listening to our bones crack and our organs explode. March march march.

You think the worst thing in the world is to sell your fingernail for advertising space? Would you sell your opinion on your blog? Aren't you doing that every single fucking day? So you can be the most linked to blog on other people's blogs? So you can watch the traffic and the stats grow? So you can sell blogads? So you can be important, listented to, read, heard? so you can influence people? I'm not saying any of those things are bad in and of themselves. I am saying, though, that they are scarce goods and it's time to ask yourself why?

The goods are limited.

But more: We are all, whether we like it or not, slave to someone paying money for something we make, do, think, feel, write, teach, opine. We sell a piece of ourselves every single day to earn that buck to pay that bill to buy those groceries to fuel that habit to see that movie that everyone's talking about.....

Buy the dildo.
Buy the vibrator.
Buy the sperm.
Buy the cock.

Rotate.

We live in a world where the goods are limited. And those goods include social status and identities, don't they? The goods are limited. The IT is this, not the other. It is that over there, not the other way over there.

That's how they are limited.

A not A. I am not that there. I am not that here. I am not that. I am not that under here. I am not that up there. I am not that over there.

You can not say, I am this here, without implying that you are not that over there.

I am a not.

For, in that limit, in that lack, in that empty, in that nothing -- that is where the I lives.

I am not.

The economy of desire as lack, as limit, as empty, as nothing.

I am not.

The goods are limited. We live in world where we believe that some women are whores and some women are, well, women -- because dog knows, if we let every so-called woman in to be called that name, women, then where would we be? That wouldn't do, because some of "them" might be here, near me, and I'd have to call them something other than "not me."

Some of them still have to be relegated to the sidelines, to bear the burden of social dope, complicit with patriarchy, women who know not what they do, women who perform for men, who wouldn't know how to be for themselves and other women if they tried, duped by patriarchy. Poor dears.

You want to talk about angry and sad?

let's talk.

Speaking of which, I was pleased to see that, while a few feminists don't think Bitch is really one of them (you know who you are), feminism is still a top draw at Bitch | Lab for 2005!