Fair Use

So Kos uses his blog, just like Michelle Malkin, to parachute on the AP controversy and call himself a hero. In the post not only does he quote an AP article (something I had done earlier that day for fisking purposes), but proceeds to dump on both Rogers Cadenhead, Bob Cox and Ron Coleman for having the temerity to talk with the AP about guidelines :

"The dumbasses at the Media Bloggers Association, of course, are walking right into that meeting because they crave nothing more than creating the impression that they, you know, represent bloggers (they don't)."

This, mind you, after the fact that Rogers had asked for those guidelines. Here's the back story :

I don't care how much of star journalist is Scott Hansell (whom I've met before when he has covered Net Art events here in New York City). Scott ought to know better than to publish something like this :

The A.P.’s effort to impose some guidelines on the free-wheeling blogosphere, where extensive quoting and even copying of entire news articles is common, may offer a prominent definition of the important but vague doctrine of “fair use,” which holds that copyright owners cannot ban others from using small bits of their works under some circumstances. For example, a book reviewer is allowed to quote passages from the work without permission from the publisher.

I think this is part of the reason why he never seemed to get Net Art : He really doesn't understand that quoting, re-mixing and mashups are intrinsic to the vernacular of the digital age. That quoting is an essential part of showing "the real deal", of presenting things unadulterated and unfiltered so that when a blogger or an net.artist creates their own interpretation of that source, it allows for the readers, commenter and art audience to parse the quote from the interpretation and, in their own way, to render their judgement and interpretation.

Having a piece of the original is absolutely imperative in the age of reproduction. In the blogosphere for some, quoting is the version of a courtroom's witness box. Nobody was better at that than Steve Gilliard. Steve would present, if possible, the entire article before proceeding to fisk the writer's thesis and shred their logic to pieces. Yet the quote and link back to the source without alteration allowed for Steve's readers to have access the source's words right there and at that moment, giving them the opportunity to render as fair a judgement as possible.

The other way of quoting is more akin to cooking.

Last time you heard me rant about the Associate Press was in relation to Rogers Cadenhead's plight, where he was hit with more than 7 take-down demands and threatened with a lawsuit. Please read "AP has their legal vampires chasing bloggers. I blame Hilary Rosen" and "More about the AP copyright takedowns against Rogers Cadenhead" for the back story.

Well, within hours there was a boycott of the Associated Press by a big chunk of the single and community blogs that form the "netroots". Why? Because we have back channels of communication through which we talk to each other for either political or business purposes.

That was the case this past weekend.

OMG! This is a whole phenomenon. Via Librarian's Matter, I found more Code Monkeys. Here's my favorites :

• The Anime One
• Awesome Clockwork Orange version
• Those Asian dudes
• OMFG! A machinima version made with "The Movies Game", for a machinima show called TrashTalk ... Sweet!
• And another machinima version made with Sims2.

I have just wasted almost an hour of my life following my sons recent obsession. LOL!

This post wouldn't be complete if we didn't include the original code monkey. I give you, Steve Ballmer --Microsoft's Monkey Boy-- The Remix :

I am a member of The Open House Project, a collaborative and bipartisan effort organized by The Sunlight Foundation to bring practices of transparency and openness to Congress through the use of digital and internet technologies.

Today we are able to declare a huge win for bloggers and citizen journalists alike. This is what Beltway Blogroll reports :

C-SPAN To Offer Free Access To Hearings
Andrew Noyes, one of my senior writers, has been covering this breaking story for Technology Daily the past couple of weeks. It started when House Republicans criticized House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. -- and then retracted that criticism -- for posting footage from House floor debates on her new blog, The Gavel.

The story sparked a movement to make more congressional video freely available, and C-SPAN quickly obliged.

Here's what two C-SPAN executives said about the change in policy:

-- Executive Committee Chairman William Bresnan, the CEO of Bresnan Communications: "The C-SPAN board sees this as helping us carry out C-SPAN's public service mission. The cable industry created this network to allow citizens greater access to their government, and this enhancement appropriately reflects the rapid changes in the online information world."

-- President and co-chief operating officer Rob Kennedy: "Giving voice to the average citizen has been a centerpiece of C-SPAN's journalism since our network's founding in 1979. As technology advances, we want to continue to be a leader in providing citizens with the tools to be active participants in the democratic process.

This is huge.

Government cameras film all Congressional proceedings. The footage though, is broadcast mostly through C-SPAN. It is not clear to me if C-SPAN is a 501c(3) --even though their tag line is "created by the cable companies, offered as a public service" nowhere in their site does it say they are a not-for-profit.

If they are indeed a non-profit, they have been quite bullish about the "copyright" they hold on the public domain footage they broadcast. Basically they've made it impossible to use congressional video footage by having a few seconds of original content a the beginning of all congressional videos, slapping their logo on it and claiming, then it's their original content.

As much as I would like to take at face value the comments made by the higher ups at C-SPAN, this admission of fair use shows they are scared of losing what made them precious : their role of gatekeepers.

From the brilliant people of Gizmodo :
Putting Our Money Where Our Mouths Are: Boycott the RIAA in March - Gizmodo:

Alright, we've been following the RIAA's increasingly frequent affronts to privacy and free speech lately, and it's about time we stopped merely bitching and moaning and did something about it. The RIAA has the power to shift public policy and to alter the direction of technology and the Internet for one reason and one reason alone: it's totally loaded. Without their millions of dollars to throw at lawyers, the RIAA is toothless. They get their money from us, the consumers, and if we don't like the way they're behaving, we can let them know with our wallets.

With that in mind, Gizmodo is declaring the month of March Boycott the RIAA month. We want to get the word out to as many people as humanly possible that we can all send a message by refusing to buy any album put out by an RIAA label. Am I saying you should start pirating music? Not at all. You can continue to support the artists you enjoy and respect in a number of ways.

The campaign is simple. Basically boycott anything put out by Warner Music (US), EMI (Britain), Vivendi Universal (France) and Sony BMG (Japan and Germany), the companies that fund the RIAA and their ridiculous campaigns.

This is what I got late last night :

From: margaret_langston@timeinc.com
Date: 28 February 2007 06:57:58 PM EST
To: Liza Sabater ...

Subject: Re: DMCA Copyright Notice

Dear Website Proprietor:
I am an attorney for Time Inc., the corporate publisher of People Magazine. This will put you on notice that Time Inc. has concluded an agreement with a photo agency for exclusive rights to publish photographs of Patrick Dempsey and his family (including his newborn twins) in People Magazine and on People.com. These are the only photographs of Mr. Dempsey and his twins now in existence.

In the past your website has posted photographs which have been licensed exclusively to Time Inc. for publication in People Magazine and on People.com, in violation of Time Inc.’s exclusive rights.
This letter is an official notification under the provisions of Section 512(c) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that the posting of any photographs of Patrick Dempsey and/or any other members of his family with his newborn twins, would infringe Time Inc.’s rights in North America, Australia and New Zealand.

I have a good faith belief that use of such photographs in the manner set forth herein would not be authorized by of Time Inc., its licensing representatives, or the law. The information provided herein is accurate to the best of my knowledge. I hereby swear under penalty of perjury that I am authorized to act on behalf of Time Inc. for matters pertaining to notification of infringement of its exclusive rights in its copyrighted material.

Very truly yours

Nicholas J. Jollymore
Deputy General Counsel
Time Inc.
nicholas_jollymore@timeinc.com

Here is my response:

It's Friday, the perfect day for a time waster. So what did I find on YouTube while looking for silly cartoons? An awfully funny and definitely politically incorrect parody of Nickelodeon's SpongeBob Sqarepants.

Check out the totally not safe for work (NSFW) clip after the jump.

I haven't done any business blogging in a long while. Well, I have a reason now : The idiots of Splash News and 6 other agencies are happy slapping themselves on the back for threatening Perez Hilton with a lawsuit for photographs they claim he "stole" from their website.

Perez Hilton is to be hit by a multi-million dollar federal lawsuit from the top seven paparazzi agencies in the US.

Splash News, INF, Ramey, Bauer Griffin, WENN, Most Wanted and Flynet have joined forces to stop Perezhilton.com from using copyrighted images.
"Perez claims he is making a fortune off exploiting pictures taken by photographers. He blatantly violates copyright and makes advertising revenue off other people's works," said Gary Morgan of Splash News.

[...]

The seven agencies have spent the last few weeks conferring over how to stop Hilton. In an unprecedented co-operation between paparazzi and showbusiness agencies, the heads of the agencies agreed to take action.
A letter was sent demanding full payment of all infringed material or face a lawsuit next week.

I honestly do not understand why people in the gossip business hate Perez Hilton (aka Mario Lavandeira) so much. I don't know if it's because he is :

1. A successful blogger
2. A successful gay blogger
3. A successful gay latino blogger

Even if professional gossip bloggers like Mario wanted to register with the Splash News site and check the prices on their photos (which are not posted publicly, by the way), this is what they are hit with:

And Ask A Ninja makes it effing hilarious to understand.

[via YouTube - Ask a Ninja: Special Delivery 4: Net Neutrality]

Doesn't he sound like Strongbad?

Now back to net neutrality.