ABC/Disney Shuts Down Blog Exercising Fair Use 525
An anonymous reader writes "A blogger named Spocko had his blog shut down by ABC/Disney lawyers because he had posted clips from an ABC Radio-affiliated program and commented on their content, as well as informed show advertisers of what exactly they were paying for. Spocko merely pointed out the content that station KSFO was broadcasting, and as a result Visa pulled their advertising from the station. More companies were reportedly considering pulling their ads. A YouTube video summary is available. From the Daily Kos article: 'How'd he do it? He did it the way it's always done - by working within the law, identifying points of weakness, exploiting them and being absolutely tenacious ... It appears to me as if Disney is attempting to bully a little guy in an unethical manner. Any media lawyer worth the air she breathes knows that Spocko's use was well protected.'"
Re:Problem with things like torture (Score:5, Informative)
Christianity had no state support until AD 313. Right up until that point, it was heavily persecuted by the Roman Empire and was in no position to go out killing. Might want to get your facts straight.
SLAPP Reborn (Score:5, Informative)
One of the tactics that large companies have used in the past, when dealing with critics - particularly grass-roots activists - was the SLAPP : Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation. Someone against your project, or annoying you? File a lawsuit against them. Since you have the money to push it, and they generally don't (if you pick your target well), the only way out of it for them was to shut up. This had the "benefit" of shutting up your other critics, too.
It appears that Disney has dusted off the tactic here. Yeah, Spocko did nothing illegal. All he did was advocate a position, comment legally on what he saw wrong, and point it out to those who finance it. Rather than actually change anything, Disney decided the best move was to shut the critic up. This seems be backfiring though - and it'll be interesting to watch how Disney will twist and turn to try to spin this in a better light.
Re:Problem with things like torture (Score:3, Informative)
The factual errors in your post just cry out for more correction. You write of "the Church" doing various things, and identify this Church with Christianity. However, by the beginning of the second millennium, Christianity was not a single organization. The split of the Oriental Orthodox after the Council of Chalcedon, the existence of Nestorian groups in East Asia out of contact with the West, and the Great Schism between the Orthodox Church and Rome in the eleventh century all served to make it difficult to claim any sort of generalization about Christianity. The examples in your post must be specified as relating mainly to the Roman Catholic Church.
Please, for pete's sake take a look at a common reference like the Oxford History of Christianity [amazon.com] that any decent library is sure to have.
Re:Problem with things like torture (Score:3, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Council_of_Nic
A minor correction in date (Score:2, Informative)
counter-notification (Score:4, Informative)
I'm surprised that the blogger has given in so easily. I understand that he can't afford a lot of legal expenses, but my understanding is that at this point all he needs to do is file a counter-notification with his ISP certifying that to the best of his knowledge his use of copyrighted material falls under Fair Use, which it almost certainly does. Here's a how-to [cmu.edu]. This puts the ball back in ABC/Disney's court and doesn't require a lawyer at all.
Re:KSFO is in big trouble here. (Score:3, Informative)
*Personally I'm against these laws and wish we had our own "first amendment" protecting our freedom of speech.
Re:SLAPP Reborn (Score:3, Informative)
Re:DailyKos is a deeply partisan site (Score:5, Informative)
Re:counter-notification (Score:4, Informative)
Re:KSFO is in big trouble here. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Problem with things like torture (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Problem with things like torture (Score:3, Informative)
Of course, I personally don't give a damn. One imaginary invisible guy in the sky looks just like the other one.
Re:Problem with things like torture (Score:2, Informative)
Have you never heard of the field of philosophy of religion? In it theists outnumber atheists considerably, and atheists tend to go over to the other side, as Anthony Flew famously did a couple of years ago. General theism is extremely defensible by reason, and Richard Swinburne has of late proposed a number of arguments for specifically Christian concepts that are presenting quite a challenge to his atheist colleagues. See his The Coherence of Theism [amazon.com] (Oxford University Press, 2nd ed. 1993) on general theistic arguments, and The Resurrection of God Incarnate [amazon.com] (Oxford University Press, 2003) for his tour de force application of the Bayesian theorem to Christian claims.
Spockos blog up again (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.spockosbrain.com/ [spockosbrain.com]
For those interested, the new host has commented on his intentions to keep the
blog up and going
http://marc.perkel.com/ [perkel.com]
KSFO, KGO, and San Francisco Radio (Score:1, Informative)
At various times, Karel [karelchannel.com] has taken the following political stances. (1) After the American military overthrew Saddam Hussein, thousands of Iraqis staged loud anti-American demonstrations and began to initiate guerrilla warfare against the American soldiers. Karel actually supported the Iraqis. (2) Karel claims that people who oppose illegal immigration are bigots, racists, or Nazis.
You can join Karel's online chatroom [karelchannel.com] to offer your opinions during his on-air program. If you poignantly criticize his stances, then he arranges for the moderators to kick you out of the chatroom.
Meanwhile, Ray Taliaferro has taken the following political stances. (1) Taliaferro claims that Washington is a terrorist government. (2) He insists that the Americans are the primary agent preventing the third world from becoming prosperous. (3) He cheered the death of Ronald Reagan.
If you doubt what I am saying, then I challenge you to prove me wrong. Listen to the talk show hosted by Karel. Join his chatroom, and in it, criticize his extremist positions. Then, see what happens to you.
By the way, I am a liberal. However, there is a difference between a liberal and a leftwing mental case.
Note that I am not saying that KGO is unbalanced. KGO does include a fair representation of the political spectrum. However, Karel and his ilk are leftwing extremists. He hates Dr. Bill Wattenburg [kgoam810.com] (and other moderates) with such a vengeance that he has censored Wattenburg's last name in the chatroom. Go to Karel's chatroom and type "Wattenburg". The software powering the chatroom will automatically replace "Wattenburg" with a sequence of "****".
Note that Wattenburg is another talk-show host at the same station, KGO.
the "God" of Hebrews and Arabs (Score:5, Informative)
They're completely different deities because they teach completely different things. They're polar opposites. You may as well claim that China and Norway have the same leader.
Maybe you need to go back to school. The Hebrew and the Arab "God" is the same one. Hebrews are decendents of Abraham's son Ishmael and Arabs the decendents of his son Isaic. The split between the two came when Sarah, Ismael's mother forced Abraham to send Isaic and his mother Hagar into the desert. They all worshipped the same diety. And as Abraham was a decendent of Noah's son Shem [wikipedia.org], from where Semites [wikipedia.org] come from, both Ishmael and Isaic are Semites as well therefore both Arabs and Hebrews are Semites.
FalconRe:SLAPP Reborn (Score:1, Informative)
Heres the snopes reference
http://www.snopes.com/disney/wdco/daycare.asp [snopes.com]
Re:SLAPP Reborn (Score:3, Informative)
The target of a SLAPP suit can file a motion that basically freezes the entire case until the plaintiff proves they aren't engaging in SLAPP. If the company loses, they end up having to pay the defendant's attorneys fees, and, IIRC, damages as well.
Re:Not protected by Fair Use Law (Score:2, Informative)
"Limits of free speech" (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Problem with things like torture (Score:2, Informative)
"Allah" ("al", the + "ilah", god) is "Yahweh" (YHVH, Jehovah) is the Christian "one God, the Father Almighty". Christianity, Islam, and modern Judaism are all descended from the original Yahweh cult, the Abrahamic monotheistic tradition, with Islam being descended from Ishmael rather then Issac. The Koran is seen by Islam as a continuation of the Old and New Testaments - Moses and Jesus are characters found in it.
Obviously Christianity, Islam, and Judaism all have rather differing conceptions about Yahweh, but that doesn't change their historical relationship and the fact that the worship the "same" god. Do the differing notions of Jesus between Catholics, Quakers, Calvinists, and Nestorians mean that they don't believe in the "same" Jesus? (Do the differences between Shiites, Sunnis, and Sufis mean that they don't believe in the "same" Allah?)
Doctrinal and dogmatic differences don't mean you all don't worship the same god. The rest of us wish you'd iron out your differences about him/her/it a little more peacefully and quietly.
Re:Not protected by Fair Use Law (Score:3, Informative)
No, because before the digital age where everything is reproducable, the reproduction of something could hurt your ability to sell it. For example, if you wrote a book called "The Four Things That Could Save Your Marriage," and someone printed those four things in a review, you could claim that they are acting as a market substitute for your good. Or if someone offers a download of the hit song off of an album, but not the whole album, and claims it's fair use. That supercedes the need for your album. It specifically does NOT include parody or negative review.
Disney may have a legitimate case. I don't know. It depends on the length and content of the clips. But you cannot restrict someone from showing, say, a screenshot from a defective game to illustrate that it is defective, or even that it's just shoddy or stupid.