Video search engine.

Smith, Roberta. "When One Man's Video Art Is Another's Copyright Crime." 6 May 2004. Thew New York Times.

Roberta Smith's When One Man's Video Art is Another's Copyright Crime digresses from the traditional discussion of visual artists' taking single images, and instead, focuses in on video artists appropriating. Jon Rouston is an artist that makes movies of already made movies. His process involves going to the theatre on opening night and recording what happens both on and off the screen. Although he doesn't sell his work, his installations still fall in that grey copyright area between theft and inspiration.

More troubling to Rouston is that Maryland, the state in which he works, is making it illegal to film inside movie theaters. Additionally, the Senate Judiciary Committee is taking harsh steps to ensure that illegal filming cannot happen in movie theatres. With 80 percent of pirated films coming from filming inside theatres, the MPAA has many lobbyists in Washington trying to create new laws that decrease piracy. However, Rouston argues that his films are not pirated DVDs that take away from seeing a film in theatres. Instead, he believes his film propone the movie going experience.

The author concludes that these new camcorder bans inhibit people from commenting and criticizing. According to Ms. Smith, our pop culture is comparable to 19th century landscape-would you ban 19th century artists from making pastorals? Her point hits home. Appropriation art that creates new meaning-whether parodic or scathing-should be allowed to exist, uninhibited by the law. In the end, Rouston decided to stop creating his films. This article is symbolic of artists moving away from appropriation (and thus, a type of commentary) because of laws that inadvertently protect copyright.

Start at 1:05, end at 1:20

            Andrew Bridges is the Google counsel on the board for this video and he brings up a couple very good points in favor of Google.  He points out one of Perfect 10's arguments, for the fourth factor of Fair Use, that Google's Image Search could severely hurt the market for a cell phone in the UK.  He pointed how ridiculous it would be if this large, very useful image search, could fail because of a single cell phone deal.  Clearly this shows that such an argument, from Perfect 10, should not be seriously considered.  He goes on to point out the Perfect 10 starts to combine trademark law with copyright law when they argue about framing.  He makes a very good case that the framing is very similar to hyperlinking, which is clearly not anywhere near copyright infringement. 

            Russ Frackman is the Perfect 10 counsel and brings up a potentially harmful argument against Google.  He argues that Google's linking is direct infringement because it links to copyrighted materials.  He cites a very good example of a South Park website that claims that it is not infringing because it is not hosting the video.  The video is imbedded on the page, but they do not actually host the video.  While this at first seems like a very strong argument, he fails to acknowledge the clear differences between Google and the South Park website.  Google Image Search is not directly linking to the website; rather a computer program is creating the thumbnails and the links.  The South Park website is purposefully linking to an infringing video.  He also points out that Google gains a lot by having their name on the screen in framing and the Image Search in general.  They are not merely providing a service.  While this is obviously true, it does not really hit the important issues.  Obviously the Image Search is important and beneficial to Google; if it was not, they would not have it.  It does not, in any way, contribute to the creation or even the linking to the infringing images.  For that reason alone, that aspect should not hold much importance.

 

video of Indian Guest Workers from New Orleans who marched to DC

China is building megacities like this at a pace and scale the
world has never seen before. Chongqing has 12 million people and counting.
It's part of the central government's plan to bring some of China's economic
boom to its impoverished interior province where three out of four Chinese
live. Vanguard takes you on a whirlwind tour of the city---from inside a
cramped boarding house where migrant workers to inside a starter apartment
of China's new class of yuppies; from inside ancient, crumbling teahouses to
gleaming new car factories.

Add

Morris, Chris. “Warner Finds Superior Source for ‘Citizen Kane’ DVD Set.” Billboard 11 August 2001. 10 April 2008 <http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=keh&AN=4958025&site=ehost-live>.

Chris Morris writes this article in August 2001, just as the popularity of the relatively new home video format DVD was starting to gain popularity.  Movie titles were released incrementally in this new all-digital format.

Morris writes that the popularity of Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane has created a high demand for the film to be released to the new DVD video format.  Warner Home had been working on a 60th anniversary release and it was planned for the 25 of September in that same year.  This new release was widely expected to be visually and sonically ungraded from the previous releases to home video.  Morris writes that Warner, in their attempts to rerelease Citizen Kane, had originally not been able to find a suitable quality source film.  RKO’s original camera negatives had been burned in a 1980 vault fire and as a result had also hampered past efforts a restoration.  The 1991 VHS release had featured the copy owned by New York’s Museum of Modern Art, however this print had dirt and scratches on it, among other defects.  Morris reports, however, that after patient and careful searching, Warner had found a new nitrate fine-grain print in a European archive and that this copy has offered better picture quality and served as an improved audio source.  The improved audio quality is very important because the original score had a very high dynamic range.  He also reports that the new DVD release would include an interview with Roger Ebert, a 1941 newsreel about the film’s premiere, and the documentary film of the Hearst-Welles conflict, The Battle Over Citizen Kane.

One might think that just like a personal computer user, large Hollywood movie studios would have countless backup copies of their master reels.  This seems not to be the case.  A fire at a single film vault destroyed RKO’s only master copy.  Orson Welles was the recipient of the actual production negatives and his copy was also lost in a fiery accident in the 1970s.  By re-mastering and fully digitizing the remaining high quality prints, the data can be stored in numerous locations very inexpensively and very safely.  As we learned in class, nitrate has a propensity to catch on fire and is very dangerous in that respect.  We also learned in class that Hollywood is usually very slow to adopt new media formats.  DVD hit store shelves in mid-1997 yet this movie was released in late 2001, almost 4 years later.  The studios might have an excuse in this case – the long and lucky search for a suitable master copy.

Croft, Martin, and Nathalie Kilby. "Mortal Kombat Viral Is Tool For Bullying, Claims Charity." Marketing Week 16 Nov 2006: 3.

 

This article explains how an anti-bullying charity group is complaining about a video game campaign for Mortal Kombat. In this campaign people are directed to a website where they can upload images of their friends to be superimposed on the fighting video game characters. These superimposed Mortal Kombat characters are then sent to that person in the form of a “Death Diss” whereby the character is brutally murdered. The charity Bullying Online worries that real life bullies will upload images of their enemies to this site and it will only cause issues between the two parties in question. It states that the site has already seen examples of people using this viral marketing tool as a malicious way to insult somebody. A complaint about this advertisement campaign was made to the Advertising Standards Authority, the leading groups in controlling advertising. It is unknown if this campaign will cause the dreaded actions Bullying Online is worrying about.

This article relates to the thesis because violent media is being used in a manner that could potentially cause a movement to action by the receiving end of this viral marketing campaign. There are great worries by Bullying Online that such an advertising campaign might enrage somebody so much that they might react very violently against the opposing person. Just as The Warriors caused a few kids to act violently due to the violent media being viewed, there is a concern that this viral marketing campaign could cause the same response.

Keegan, Paul. "Computer Games like Quake and Doom probably won't turn your son into a killer. But what is happening to kids raised on the most violent, interactive mass-media entertainment ever devised?." Mother Jones Nov 1999 04 Apr 2008 .

 

This article revolves around a visit to E3, an annual gaming tradeshow. Its focus is to discuss the different genres of video games, but in particular the violent ones. It then attempts to analyze why these violent games become so popular. Throughout, there is always a hesitant tone as the Columbine shootings had occurred only three weeks prior to this conference. There is discussion of the ESRB rating system and how it is hardly enforced by parents or rental stores. The article proceeds to look at Myst, an extremely popular game that involves no violence whatsoever. Its appeal was solely through beautifully rendered images and fog that the character walks through on its mysterious journey. It is however noted that something seemed to be missing from this experience. That is where real-time 3D comes into play. It is a new generation of cutting edge computer games that render the scenery on the fly, completely immersing the player in the gameplay. This type of play has an appeal due to the adrenaline rush and excitement it causes that more static, slow paced games like Myst cannot match. These types of games undoubtedly engage the player deeply into their digital surroundings. It suggests that playing violent video games for extended periods of time numbs the player to the violence and they create a level of tolerance for violence.

This article relates to the topic by examining super violent video games, real-time 3D games in particular and their effect on players. It is pretty evident that despite their incredible ability to immerse the player in the gameplay, the ones playing are able to keep the game and real life separate. The only times when this is untrue when other circumstances are involved, in the case of Columbine, mental instability in two kids who happened to enjoy these types of games were some other circumstances. Like viewers of The Warriors, most will not become overwhelmed by the violence and will respond absolutely normally. Those who act out in response to the film are doing so because they have issues and not solely because of the violence being seen.

MAS President Kent Barwick offers a brief history of the Moynihan Station project and explains how principles for the development of a great new Penn Station would put the public interest first, would ensure an efficient transportation portal and a great new work of contemporary civic architecture; would protect the character of the historic Farley Post Office; and make the station the fulcrum of a great new Moynihan Station district.

will capture video frames

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The first time I heard anything about people in the sewers in Colombia was back at the beginning of the 90s when ABC Primetime Live did a piece about all the children living down there. It became a fairly big humanitarian story in the media for a while, with other networks in America and Europe sending in crews to cover it and folks setting up charities abroad. And rightfully so—the situation at the time was a complete fucking nightmare. The sewers were filled with packs of kids living waist-deep in shit and taking in copious amounts of glue and crack in order to cope.

This was at the height of Colombia's "Dirty War", and the whole reason the street kids had gone down into the sewers in the first place was to get away from the violence. But then the paramilitary death squads who had chased them off the street started to come into the pipes and shoot them or douse them in gasoline or rape them. Ten-year-old girls were giving birth and trying to raise babies in the middle of sewage (the early onset of puberty having been brought on by the constant molestation by adults and older kids as well as the general stress on their bodies). It was about as fucked as things get.

video series by Vice TV about pollution in/near williamsburg, brooklyn

1997 Super 8 footage of New York City... 1997 Super 8 footage of New York City's illegal demolition of 537-539 East 5th Street. People's belongings and pets were still inside, as was resident Brad Will...who emerged atop the building as the wrecking claw began destruction.

I am working on creating a short video piece using clips from a number of different DVDs. By using short segments (one word or less), I plan to have the characters in the films I borrow from speak out portions of the anticircumvention provisions of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. In this way, I will be using appropriated (and, most likely, non-DMCA-compliant) video footage to comment on the questions raised by the conflict of the DMCA and appropriation art themselves.

Newman, Jon O. EFF: Appellate Decision in Universal v. Reimerdes. Electronic Frontier Foundation. 22 November 2006. <http://www.eff.org/IP/Video/MPAA_DVD_cases/?f=20011128_ny_appeal_decision.html>.

This famous court case involved the publication of the "DeCSS" decryption program on the website 2600.com.  "DeCSS" was designed to break through the CSS encryption on DVDs.  The action of posting this program challenged the Digital Millenium Copyright Act which bans any measure of breaking through digital encryption, or any publication or distribution of any such measure. Eight film studios, including Universal, brought a suit against the operators of 2600.com, seeking to have "DeCSS" and any links to other sites containing it removed from 2600.com for violations of the DMCA.

The appeal challenged the constitutionality of the DMCA, claiming that it restricts free speech, and called for a narrow construction of its terms.  They also claimed that "is rooted in and required by both the Copyright Clause and the First Amendment," and that the DMCA restricts this.  However, the appeals court found no reasoning for these claims, and upheld an earlier injunction by a lower court requiring the removal of the "DeCSS" program and any links to it.

This case is extremely important because it establishes that arguments regarding fair use and free speech are almost no match for the terms of the DMCA.  Were it not for the DMCA, I think it would definitely be easy to argue for my video project as a fair use; however, cases like this clearly state that this is no defense.  The court states that there is no constitutional requirement for a fair use standard, and that such claims cannot supersede violations of anticircumvention laws.

McLaren, Carrie. "Illegal Art: Freedom of Expression in the Corporate Age." illegal-art.org :: A Project of Stay Free! magazine. 2002. Stay Free! magazine. 22 November 2006. .

This is the web site of the "Illegal Art" exhibition which has traveled the United States in the past year. The site contains a copy of curator Carrie McLaren's introduction to the show, in which she states, "The laws governing "intellectual property" have grown so expansive in recent years that artists need legal experts to sort them all out... If the current copyright laws had been in effect back in the day, whole genres such as collage, hiphop, and Pop Art might have never have existed... Should artists be allowed to use copyrighted materials? Where do the First Amendment and "intellectual property" law collide? What is art's future if the current laws are allowed to stand? Stay Free! [the magazine sponsoring the "Illegal Art" exhibition] considers these questions and others in our multimedia program." The site also includes a gallery of the various pieces included in the exhibit, which include a Mickey Mouse gas mask, photographs of Barbie dolls in kitchen appliances, a re-interpretation of the Starbucks logo as a "Consumer Whore", and various pieces including the "DeCSS" program.  Many of the artists involved in the "Illegal Art" show were or are the targets of legal action by the holders of the copyrights to the works they appropriated.

The "Illegal Art" website is definitely a valuable resource in the creation of my project; through the gallery of the included works, I will be able to see how other creators used appropriated materials to comment directly on the nature of copyright issues.  The artists involved in the exhibition used many different media to create their pieces, including a number of video pieces. 

Slater, Derek. "Take Another Little Piece of My Art." Illegal Art | Creative Commons. July 2003. Creative Commons. 28 November 2006. <http://creativecommons.org/image/illegalart>.

This article describes "Illegal Art", a traveling exhibition which was displayed at the SF MOMA Artist's Gallery in July 2003. The show contained pieces in a variety of media, with a full-length CD and several films and videos in addition to various two- and three-dimensional artworks. Carrie McLaren, curator of the exhibition, began working on an appropriation art exhibit in response to unsuccessful challenges to copyright term extensions; the goal of the exhibit was "to make copyright's problems as real to the average person as they are to [the] featured artists".

The article attempts to place the "Illegal Art" exhibition in the context of the larger legal debate surrounding appropriation art by comparing the pieces in the show to famous copyright cases, such as the 2 Live Crew case. The author also pays close attention to the economic constraints place on appopriation artists by licensing fees, cease-and-desist letters, and other tools of copyright permission holders. Overall, the article sides firmly with the validity of the art and the necessity for its legalization - no surprise, considering that the article is written for the Creative Commons. Succintly summarizing his point, Slater writes, "Had these legal limitations [on appropriation art] existed years ago, perhaps collage, rap, and Pop Art would have been sued to death before they ever had a chance to flourish. These days, the implication is that these appropriations are lower artforms, deserving legal treatment suited to petty thievery."

This article will definitely be very helpful for my project; it provides a general background on the use of appropriation art to comment driectly on copyright issues.

Electronic Frontier Foundation. EFF: Digital Video Restrictions. Electronic Frontier Foundation. 22 November 2006. <http://www.eff.org/IP/digitalvideo/>.

 

As could be expected from an article written by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, this article was firmly opposed to DRM and DMCA restrictions. It gives a general overview of the ways in which digital video technologies are encrytped, and accuses Hollywood of using "scrambling, down-rezzing, and a host of other restrictions" for purposes that have nothing to do with their originally stated intent, the prevention of piracy. Most of the article is occupied by a listing of the ways in which DRM is used on a different digital video technologies, from DVDs to cable TV; each of these descriptions also lists "Why It's Bad" and the ways in which the EFF is planning to fight the restrictions. At the bottom of the web page, there is even a listing of ways in which Hollywood is attempting to expand restrictions on video technologies, from to filling in the "analog hole" to blocking the creation of unrestricted video outputs; each of these newer techniques also has a listing of the ways that the EFF is fighting against it.

This sort of information will definitely be very important to my project, as the project itself relys on avoiding DRM to use clips from DVDs. Although it is, at the moment, rather easy (albeit illegal) for anyone with certain technical knowledge to bypass the CSS encryption on a DVD, expanding control over these technologies (as Hollywood seeks to do) could definitely make it nearly impossible in the future. This could have many consequences for the creation of appropriation art pieces; I think it would be interesting to judge how a project such as the one that I am working could be created if Hollywood does get its way.

The black church has been at the forefront of black leadership and social protest in America. In fact, Abyssinian Baptist Church was founded out of protest.
A video with Rev. Calvin Butts.  The conversation discusses the change from efforts focusing on protest to community and economic development within the Abyssinian Baptist Church.

Danwei TV is an Internet TV station that shows short programs about China

Distinguished geographer David Harvey joins host Harry Kreisler for a discussion of how the analytic tools of geography and Marxism can contribute to our understanding of the new imperialism. Series: "Conversations with History"

A web-accessible collection of images, videos, lectures and other digital media for use by neuro-ophthamology professionals, educators, students and patients.

EPIC video about the state of media in 2014, mentioned at Hyperlinked Society Conference

Jesus2.0 - tape sculpture from mark jenkins and the Graffiti Research Lab (GRL) at Eyebeam

shareware shareware and freeware applications that allow you to convert between codecs and video formats:

• Avery Lee's VirtualDub. VirtualDub is a free program under GNU General Public License.
• Stoik's free Video Converter.

Common problems associated with the use of multimedia in PowerPoint presentations

An on-line searchable database and ordering service which includes thousands of Latin American titles and unites the collections of hundreds of U.S. and foreign distributors and individual film/video makers into a central, on-line location.

video on future of technology/culture/society in hands of google and others...first saw at IEEE