Jason Whong: Renaissance Man-in-Training

The Democratic National Committee recently launched FlipperTV, a website that hosts pretty much every video of every Republican candidate that their operative create on the 2008 campaign trail. It would be fine if that were all it was, but it goes a step further. The site says:

With FlipperTV, Americans can now watch and download this video, and use the footage as they wish, putting raw material into the hands of the American people to hold these candidates accountable for their comments and actions.

This video is released to the public domain. You may download and use the video as you wish, with no restrictions.

This is where things get really weird, at least from a rights perspective.

For starters, the courts have long held that people have a right for their likenesses not to be used commercially without their consent. This is why non-journalist photographers and videographers carry waivers for their subjects to sign, and it’s also part of why motion picture companies hire “extras” to appear as extra bodies on-screen. it’s also the reason a lot of reality TV programs have a budget for obscuring the faces of people for whom no waivers are on file. If they were to slip-up and include a person who had not waived their rights, they could find themselves the targets of a lawsuit.

These videos released by the DNC easily contain the images of thousands of people. These people have the same rights as anyone else concerning the use of their likenesses, regardless of whether the work that contains their likeness was released by its creator into the public domain.

(I wonder what would happen if hundreds of the non-candidates in the videos complained to the DNC about the use of their likenesses for political purposes without their consent; perhaps something like that could kill the site even in its infancy…)

Other issues that beg questioning by anyone wanting to create a derivative work of video released by the DNC into the public domain:

1. Copyright provenance. The DNC says it is releasing the video into the public domain, but a central question is whether the DNC held the copyright to the videos (and, by extension, the right to release the videos into the public domain) in the first place. Under current copyright law, works created in the U.S. are automatically protected by Copyright at the time of creation. Which means that the work actually belongs to the operative that created the video, unless the operative somehow transferred the copyright to the DNC by contract. It’s possible that the work might be considered “work for hire”, and thus it would already belong to the DNC (just as my own images from work don’t really belong to me), but the DNC doesn’t say anything to assure us of this. It says “staffers” took the videos, but if they are volunteer staffers, it’s not clear that the work is considered work made for hire without an agreement.

Suppose for a second that the copyright somehow didn’t get transferred to the DNC: all it would take is one RNC infiltrator to give them a video, then sue for infringement when the DNC posts it, and everyone would have egg on their faces.

2. Do they know what they’re doing? It’s not clear to me that the DNC fully understands what it is doing with this site. On the front page, they release the video into the public domain, but on the bottom of every page, including the pages that include the video, they assert copyright, without an exception for the video they released into the public domain. (OK, maybe this makes sense because the site might be a derivative work that includes material in the public domain, which can be protected by copyright… But why leave it up to the imagination?) This makes me wonder whether they really thought to give all of their staffers work-for-hire agreements, since the whole venture is new for any U.S. political party.

Or, maybe they really know what they are doing. By encouraging others to use the video “with no restrictions”, they probably have already calculated that they can’t be held liable for misuse of the videos. But they don’t warrant that they will assist you when you get sued by someone who claims that their rights to privacy or publicity were violated. Video editors beware.

Technorati Tags: democratic national committee, video, copyright, public domain, legal, rights, privacy, publicity, democrats, flippertv

After much fooling around with ladders, I have put all of my storm windows up. Unfortunately, since the entire house is uninsulated, the storm windows don’t really do all that much.

I am working with a contractor to put in some insulation. Maybe the whole project will finish in 2007.

In other news, I am serving the government on the side. I will post more if the government says I can.

(briefly, because I am headed out the door)

I’m a substitute teacher on the side. Today, I guess a local high school is desperate because they know I can’t stay for the whole day. So I will work from 7:45 to about 1:30 or so as a sub, then go to my real job and work from 2 to 10.

Woot!

I found a treasure of my childhood on YouTube the other day:

Awesomely bad. What’s especially funny is that he had another ad that ran at the same time period, and it had completely different branding. It was put together so much better, used smooth optical letters instead of the low-grade font they chose for the subtitles. It even had a good announcer. But it didn’t end with the cute kids. I think one ad was aimed at adults and one was aimed at kids. But they seem so dissonant when compared to each other.

Technorati Tags: Washington, tae kwon do, self-defense, tv commercials, WTTG, WDCA, 1980s

Erin wrote about the Top Chef finale, so I figured I should weigh in, since Top Chef and Heroes are the only shows we both watch lately.

OK, Where do I begin? Dale, Casey and Hung were the last three. Hung was my favorite, and I liked Dale, but I liked Casey more, because, as Erin said, when I look at her, I see dollar signs. She could put her name on cookware or packaged sauces, or a cookbook or something, and much of America would buy it. I don’t see the same thing in Hung or Dale. I don’t know that it is race or gender or what. It’s just something about her face. Great skill combined with a great face will get you far in life, if you let it.

If I had a hundred thousand dollars I would try to use it for some sort of licensing deal with her. Then we’d make her a Target exclusive. But I bet Magical Elves, the company that makes the show, probably has first dibs on her name. So, I would not get very far. Plus, I don’t have $100,000.

I’m really happy for Hung. Erin is right, I can be arrogant at times, and I see a bit of that in him. Though, I tend not to be as obnoxious as the cameras made him out to be. I wish I could cook like him. Or even cut food like he does. The fact that he immigrated to the country and loves it, and became Top Chef on top of that, is inspirational and awesome.

Technorati Tags: Top Chef

So, I learned a bit about grant writing recently, when I applied for an artists re-grant from the local agency that administers state arts funds. In the past, I have had a libertarian bent, especially when it comes to using public funds for this sort of stuff. But I have never been totally 100% libertarian, and I guess my political philosophy keeps changing.

Anyway, the grant is called a “Crossroads Grant,” and it’s quite competitive. I am up against some really talented artists. These are people who might know a lot more about arts than me. Especially since I have not considered myself an artist as my main line of work. Photojournalism is an art, but it is a very geeky one, and when it’s done right, all of it is just a matter of luck (and preparation).

I am mostly a dormant artist: I think of artistic things, but I never seem to find the time or money to do them. Case in point: my animation project, “Totally Outstanding Teen Crimefighting Girls.” I never finished it, because I didn’t shoot it properly and had nasty, hummy audio. I thought that by putting my point-and-shoot camera on the tripod and taking a bunch of pictures, I could animate people. Little did I know that every time I pressed the shutter, it made the camera move slightly, enough to destroy the illusion of animation in some cases. Also, my failure to work with ISO and aperture settings to create a shallow depth of field caused moving backgrounds to distract from the animation.

But since I like this technique, and want to see how it would look with soft backgrounds, I proposed a grant for creation of a different animated story, and included some of the unfinished animation in my grant proposal. I uploaded it to YouTube below. I don’t like what YouTube did to it (it actually messed up some of the animation’s timing, but lots of people use YouTube, so here you go):

You can also see the Hi-Res QuickTime version (13.7 MB, 640×480 H.264; requires QuickTime 7 and a reasonably quick computer).

I am a patient guy, for the most part.

The only think I am really impatient about is when a computer is too slow.

For years, it seems I only ran into these things away from home. At the departmetn of motor vehicles. At work. It didn’t seem to matter where. So at home, I always had a computer that didn’t make me wait. And it’s not like I was spending top dollar on computers. I like to hang on to computers for at least four years before I replace them.

Well, my PowerBook didn’t make it into its fourth year, because it got rained on. It’s a long story, but basically if we had air conditioning in this house, my windows would have stayed closed, and I would not have had a problem with my laptop. (Though its 640 MB limit of RAM was irking me slightly, I knew i could have dealt with it for at least another year.)

Because I have lined up some freelance work, I have enough money to replace the laptop with a new Mac mini. Some of you may think I am nuts to go for what is essentially a low-end Mac. Here’s why I chose the mini:

1. I already have a good 21-inch CRT that I picked up at a county government surplus auction for $12. It’s not calibrated, but a decent CRT at least displays all the colors, unlike the latest low-end iMac, which uses a Twisted Nematic LCD panel (making it less useful for toning photos).

2. If I get enough money later, I can use an Apple Cinema Display like the one I have at work. (Yes, I know, I could connect one of these to a new iMac and use it as a second display. But, why would I want to do that?)

3. If I decide I want to use the Mac mini for work, I can stick it in a bag and connect it to a monitor there. Or I can bring my $12 monitor and leave it at work. (This might be useful when covering LPGA or NASCAR.) I would not feel comfortable lugging around an iMac, and since I would also not feel comfortable leaving it places, I’d be doing a lot of lugging when covering some events.

4. It’s cheaper, but it doesn’t suck all that much. My only regret is that it can’t run Civilization IV, because of its relatively weak 3D graphics support. Boo.

5. It’s not really the low-end Mac, because I got the faster Mac mini available (2 GHz), with the DVD burner on it, so I can store the gigabytes of photos I’ll be taking on blank DVDs. Also, I upped the RAM to 2 GB, which is a bit out of character for me as a DIY type, but I am not really interested in opening a Mac mini. I’m really not.

So, why am I writing about patience? Because I ordered this thing Sept. 1 and it’s still not here yet. It shipped (likely from a Taiwanese factory) on Sept. 5 and was handed off to FedEx Ground on Sept. 6. FedEx says it is scheduled to arrive tomorrow, which is good because one of my freelance deadlines is coming very soon. Y’know. The freelance deadline that inspired me to buy this thing. The one that is paying for it.

And every time I wait for my backup computer to do something (it’s a six-year old iBook 500MHz with a screen that doesn’t always turn on), I get even more impatient, knowing that I’ve paid for something better, but because I wanted to save $20 on shipping, it’s not here yet.

A strange thing happened at work Friday. I don’t know that it is really all that strange. But it’s not something I have encountered before.

I was covering the Watkins Glen Grand Prix reenactment, which is basically a street festival in which people drive antique cars a few laps around the village of Watkins Glen, and no competitive racing is allowed (probably because if it were allowed, no insurance company would cover it.)

A couple of things were weird about this event: A lot of people were wearing blue photo bibs issued by Watkins Glen International, which is a racetrack up the hill from the village. So it made anyone who wasn’t wearing a photo bib look like they didn’t belong. (Despite the fact that the bibs don’t really belong off the track…)

So as I was walking in the street, doing my job, festivalgoers who weren’t allowed onto the street were telling me that I was blocking their view, and asking me to move (in an angry tone.) I was bothered by them not asking people with bibs to please move.

Later, when I was photographing the race, I wanted a different angle, so I found a nice spot near another photographer. I started taking pictures, and eventually I saw another person’s head about two inches in front of my lens. So I pointed the lens to the left and kept shooting. People get in front of my camera all the time. If I don’t like the frame, I have to change what’s in it.

I heard the owner of the head shout “that’s what you did to me!” but I didn’t realize what he meant, because I didn’t think it was a big deal that his head was in my frame… so I wasn’t sure what “that” was. Plus, I was shooting, and my mind was not in guessing games mode. I looked at him and saw he was holding a cheap point-and-shoot digital camera, pretending to take pictures of oncoming cars. So I asked him what he was talking about. “You stood right in front of me,” he said. This was untrue, because I was at least five or ten feet away from the sidewalk, which is the limit of where the festival volunteers would let the masses stand. So I didn’t understand his objection and kept on shooting.

Eventually I figured out why he had come to stand in front of my lens. He was so upset that I had blocked his view, that he felt the need to obstruct my view. But since I am not bothered by unexpected things in my shot, I don’t think he got whatever response he expected from me.

There are two ways of looking at this, as I can see it:

1) The street was closed to the public, and I was standing in the street because the organizers of the festival and law enforcement officials permitted me to be there. The upset fan should have known that there would be a chance for his view to be blocked, especially since most of the photographers covering the event were standing nearby. His entrance onto the closed street to obstruct me was inappropriate.

2) Photojournalists are ordinary citizens like any other; they have no more rights than other citizens. Just because I was not stopped by nearby police for entering a street that was closed to the public doesn’t mean that I had permission or right to be in that particular spot on the street. Perhaps my being on that part of the closed street was inappropriate because I obstructed the view of others. If I had been about ten paces to my right, there would be nobody to obstruct. (But the angle there was less interesting.)

I haven’t figured out the answer, though the idealist egalitarian in me is leaning toward the second option. Though, I think if I had one of those blue bibs from the track up the hill, I bet nobody would have said a word about where I was. And I really don’t think I was right in front of him, since I was so far away from the masses, and because he would have had plenty of opportunities to see the cars, which are wider and longer than I am.

Technorati Tags: Watkins Glen, Grand Prix, vintage cars, ethics

I don’t always post photographs that I took at work. Today I’m excited about a shot I took at a Revolutionary War reenactment.

Getting there was a hike; I had the fortune of being able to drive to the state park where the reenactment was held. In 1779, most people would have walked there, with a lucky few on horseback.

Anyway, when I got there, I ended up following some people who were walking on the wrong trail, so it’s a good thing that my assignment was for an hour before the battle began. I eventually made my way to the Colonial encampment, where I met reenactors from various parts of the country, and took a picture of local people interacting with them.

After that I headed toward the Indian village, where a number of British forces and Loyalist units were rallying before their certain defeat. I also found a few local people in that crowd.

Then I found some people in green calling themselves the “Queen’s Rangers.” I walked and talked with them for a bit, until we were smack dab in the middle of the woods. In the distance, people were gathered to watch the reenactment. Nobody seemed to know when to stop walking, so the loyalists ended up walking past the colonialists they were supposed to be ambushing. It might have been easier to coordinate with a radio, but no reenactors seemed to carry them.

Anyway, I was standing next to the loyalists taking pictures of them while they discussed the choreography of the battle, and shots started to ring out from the colonial militia.

“I guess the war’s on,” said the leader.

I hadn’t planned on being next to the reenactors during the battle, but the shooting started while I was still on the field, so I just tried to stay as far away from the spectators as possible.

I had several lenses at my disposal: the Canon EF 300mm f/2.8L, the Canon EF 70-200 f/2.8L, and the Canon EF 17-35 f/2.8L. Maybe the bigger glass might be more useful in today’s war, but I think that if photographers were covering this battle in the forest, they’d have wanted to get in close with the wide-angle lens. It helped me get my best shot of the day:

JASON WHONG/Star-Gazette
Reenactors portraying British soldiers load and fire weapons at Colonial reenactors Saturday during the 228th anniversary commemoration of the Battle of Newtown at Newtown Battlefield Reservation State Park in Elmira.
Image and caption © 2007, Star-Gazette.

You can see more Battle of Newtown photos at Star-Gazette.com. And like most of the Star-Gazette’s photos, this one is for sale.

Technorati Tags: revolutionary war, reenactor

After chaperoning Kingdom Bound, I worked five days straight (Wednesday to Sunday, three days of which were spent covering a NASCAR race) and was generally busy and tired, so I did not post anything.

I’ll post something this week, I promise.

In the meantime, have a look at some photos I took recently:

St. Baldrick’s Day

Yaeger wins Twin Tiers Idol 2007

There are also some NASCAR photos at the Photo Gallery page. Quite a few, actually.