Showing posts with label fair use. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fair use. Show all posts

Thursday, March 27, 2008

Herself lies, flashback

Let’s pick on Herself for a bit. I can’t give a link for this story because I grabbed it off a fee-based search engine. Just trust me, or find it via alternative means. On November 10, 2001, The New York Post published on page 10 a story called, Chelsea Rebuts Mom's Story.

It seems Hillary needed a personal connection to the September 11 tragedy. She didn’t have one, of course, being from New York in the same way that Bobby Kennedy was from New York, so she made one up.

Roll tape …

HILLARY and Chelsea Clinton should have gotten their stories straight (what a great opening. They teach this stuff in journalism school, right? Education is such a wonderful thing). It turns out there are glaring discrepancies (do tell!) in their accounts of what Chelsea was doing on the morning of Sept. 11.

Appearing on NBC's "Dateline" shortly after the World Trade Center attack, Sen. Clinton told viewers how her daughter had cheated death on that fateful morning. (Cheated death? Cheated death? Think, think, think … sounds similar, pray tell, to the dodging-bullets-on-the-runway scene, no?)

"[Chelsea] had gone on what she thought would be a great jog," Clinton explained. "She was going down to Battery Park, she was going to go around the towers. She was going to get a cup of coffee and - that's when the plane hit!" (THIS is the best part of Herself. Never just one misperceived observation, you know, like a shade difference, or – “yeah, ok, you’re not right but I can see that, too.” Naw. Not Herself. We got 1. An activity; 2. A route; 3. A planned event afterward; and 4. A climax! Problem is, of course, of the 42 words, only the last three – the plane hit – are true. This girl is soooo funny.)

Clinton went on to share her fear and confusion when she could not get in touch with her daughter and didn't know where she was. (Ah, but read below. Tell me, tell me, tell me. Chels relates that she “talked briefly with an aide to her mother before the phone lines went dead.” We all know Herself’s iron grip – do you believe for a split second that the staffer did not seek Herself out? Talking to Chels would be information worth a smile or a please-do-not-hit-me card. It is impossible to believe this information did not get to Herself.)

"At that moment, she was not just a senator, but a concerned parent," Katie Couric told "Today" viewers the next morning. (Oh god, I just vomited. BRB …)

As cyber-columnist Matt Drudge reports, the result was widespread media coverage that portrayed Hillary, who was not in New York at the time, as a concerned and distraught mom who had personal ties to the WTC tragedy.

But Chelsea, who had declined to give any interviews, has broken her long silence by writing a first-hand account in Talk magazine. She reveals she wasn't jogging that morning (you don’t say!), and was actually miles away from the disaster (oh my!), safely ensconced in a pal's apartment on Park Avenue South.

"I stared senselessly at the television," Chelsea writes. She notes that she talked briefly with an aide to her mother before the phone lines went dead. She then ventured out on her own to try and find a public phone to call Hillary.

"Looking uptown I saw that every phone in view was surrounded by people. Then I looked downtown, the direction everyone was coming from; I assumed the lines would be shorter and went south. People told me later that I had been 12 blocks from the Towers . . ."

"I do remember standing in line at a phone somewhere and hearing a deafening rumble . . . a man standing next to me in line . . . said that one of the Towers had just collapsed," Chelsea recalls.

Calls to Clinton's office were not returned.

(Get this … still laughing …) The piece in Talk indicates Chelsea is as politically savvy as her parents. One of her first thoughts was, "I was worried that with the tax cut, we wouldn't have enough money to repair New York and D.C. and to help the families of the thousands I knew must have died." (Major attack under way – maybe a warzone in NYC – and she’s thinking about federal revenue from a Keynesian perspective. No, I do not believe it.)

A couple of hours later, "Once we stopped running I started praying," Chelsea relates. "I prayed for my country and my city. I stopped berating the tax cut and started praying the president would rise to lead us." (Funny. Just goes to show you the difference in world views. The first thing I do is pray. She does it last, and the press atheistic press laps away.)

Thursday, December 13, 2007

acidic spouses and fair use

It was a tough decision, but I finally found a winner: Here is the Spouse of the Week! We long suspected she would win, but we needed to wait until this headline was published: Wife Convicted in Husband's Acid Murder. YES!!!

Let’s peek inside …

Now-widowed Larissa and now-dead Tim owned a chemical lab. They had an assistant, James “The Gullible One in Apparent Need of Money” Fagone. The year was 2003. Larissa, or “Iss” as she was called by her friends, and Timmy were in the midst of a nasty divorce. A double shot – divorcing your spouse and business partner! Talk about your social, economic, and spiritual life going down the shitter in one fell swoop.

Having done my fair share of divorces – both as an attorney and a spouse – I understand thoroughly the financial implications of death when it occurs on either side of the court decree. Seems Iss understood, too.

Here’s how it went down …

Iss: Hey, Jimmy, I got a business proposition for you.
Jimmy: Yeah?
Iss: See that guy over there?
Jimmy: Tim? Your husband?
Iss: Yeah.
Jimmy: Yeah, I see him. He’s, like, the only other person here.
Iss: Exactly.
Jimmy: Hunh?
Iss: You’re not getting it. Focus with me.
Jimmy: I’m trying.
Iss: See that 55 gallon drum over there?
Jimmy: Uh, yeah.
Iss: See this stun gun?
Jimmy: The one in your hand?
Iss: Yes, Jimmy, the one in my hand.
Jimmy: Uh, yeah, I see it.
Iss: Guy, stun gun, barrel.
Jimmy: Guy, stun gun, barrel.
Iss: Exactly.
Jimmy: Exactly what?
Iss: You’re an idiot, Jimmy.
Jimmy: You say that a lot.
Iss: You prove that a lot.
Jimmy: I’m sorry. You gonna hit me again?
Iss: No. Jimmy. I want to give you $2,000.
Jimmy: OK. Do I have to have sex with your pets again while you tape it?
Iss: No, Jimmy.
Jimmy: OK.
Iss: You ready?
Jimmy: Ready for what?
Iss: Guy, stun g-- …
Jimmy: … -un, barrel.
Iss: Exactly.
Jimmy: Exactly what?
Iss: Oh, my f---king lord you are stupid.
Jimmy: You shouldn’t talk about God that way.
Iss: Jimmy, focus with me.
Jimmy: OK.
Iss: I want you to walk over to Tim, use this stun gun on him, then I’ll use chloroform on him, and then you put him in the barrel. Upsidedown.
Jimmy: Why would I do that?
Iss: $2,000.
Jimmy: OK.
Iss: Go ahead and do it now.
Jimmy: OK.
Iss: Hey, Jimmy. You need the stun gun.
Jimmy: OK.

Jimmy: Hi, Tim!
Tim: Hi, Jimmy, what can I d--- ZAP! ARGGgghhh …
Jimmy: Sorry, Tim.

Iss: OK, Jimmy, pick him up.
Jimmy: OK. Upsidedown, right?
Iss: Yes, Jimmy.
Jimmy: OK. Thump! Do I get my $2,000 now?
Iss: In a minute. We aren’t done yet.
Jimmy: That’s that acid stuff, Iss.
Iss: Yes, it is, Jimmy.
Jimmy: Whacha gonna do with it? We got another experiment to do?
Iss: Something like that. Get his feet out of the way.
Jimmy: OK.
Iss: I’m just going pour this hydrochloric acid in here with Tim, and we’re going to time it and see how long it takes for him to dissolve.
Jimmy: OK.

Poor Jimmy was convicted in December 2006 of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole. Looks like Iss will get the same.

You just have to love a spouse that refuses to out quietly. I think the dissolving-in-acid was a nice touch.

We aren’t done yet. This notice appeared with the article: “Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.”

That seemed broad enough to piss me off. “Fair Use” came to mind. “Screw you, AP” also flashed by.

Let’s go to a rather reliable source for such issues, the U.S. Copyright Office. US Code 17 Section 107 lists four considerations for fair use:

1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
3. amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

Is my work commercial? No. I generate no income from this blog. The ads to the right are de minimus and if measureable, the amount attributable to this post is 1 divided by infinity, so zero.

The alleged copyrighted work was publicly distributed. I found it on the open internet. That does not defeat the alleged copyright, but it does put into perspective the nature of the work – it is intended to be read by the general public.

How much of their work did I use? A very small percentage. In fact, many other sources are available both subject to copyright and not (court docs). I, um, I read at least 25 different sources, filling my head with each, before I composed the vignette above. I merely chose to link to AP because I detest them and believe they need the business.

Do I affect their value? Oh no, they trashed that a long, long time ago. Have I touched their potential market? Yes. I increased it by linking to them.

A little more for the USCO: “The 1961 Report of the Register of Copyrights on the General Revision of the U.S. Copyright Law cites examples of activities that courts have regarded as fair use: ‘quotation of excerpts in a review or criticism for purposes of illustration or comment; quotation of short passages in a scholarly or technical work, for illustration or clarification of the author's observations; use in a parody of some of the content of the work parodied; summary of an address or article, with brief quotations, in a news report …’” Yeah, that’s me, particularly the I’m-your-clown part.

AP pisses me off. Stick your pseudo-broad copyright claims.