WNDU-TV responds to RTFA about Roseland, Indiana attack video
From: Scott Hums
Subject: RE: YouTube Roseland Police video
Date: September 28, 2007 11:51:39 AM PDT
To: farkinga
I am the Web Director at WNDU. You may most definately use me as a source and if you ever have any more questions, please feel free to email me any time.
Like I said earlier, I have no problem with people uploading parts of the video. Completely ignoring the legal argument, it’s the best for both parties. The information is spread and the topic is discussed without “giving away” the power of the full version of the video. Using 20 or 30 seconds is perfectly fine and I wished everyone did that.
The problem comes from people thinking they have a right to just show the whole or nearly whole video. That’s what we are fighting. There’s no reason anyone has to upload the whole thing when we are offering it for free to anyone who follows a link. All they are doing is encouraging us to never put this material on the internet in the first place, which is something that is obviously not good for everyone involved.
“Fair use” is about having access to material to make further commentary without damaging the marketability of the copyright holder. That’s a concept that most YouTube users fail to understand from my recent experience with this video.
Also, to say WNDU is instigating a media blackout couldn’t be farther from the truth. WNDU put the video on the internet before it even made broadcast, we submitted the link to various sites, the biggest one being what appears to be your namesake, fark.com. EDITORS NOTE: I am unaffiliated with fark.com - this is merely a coincidence that dates back to the 1990s. We also sent the video to CNN and MSNBC where it aired numerous times the week after it happened. It was also made available to every NBC affiliate in the country as part of NBC News Channel video sharing system. Shipping the clip to some of the biggest blogs, cable TV networks, and about 200 TV stations doesn’t fit the description of a media blackout.
Obviously it is WNDU’s gain the bigger the story gets, but the only edge we have is the copyrights for the entire 5 minute video. Having someone upload the whole clip is not fair use.
Like I said, we are very grateful for what you did and I wish everyone else had the same understanding of copyright law that you did. In fact, you really didn’t have to put all that fair use and copyright info in your description and video. I didn’t report the other video like yours (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrfRQbdxQFs) because it too falls under fair use guidelines and we are glad it is online. All we ask is you link to the original story and properly credit WNDU, which you did. You can get rid of the copyright information if you so choose, or better yet, explain why your video is fine but the other 95% of the videos out there are not.
It also goes to show just how clueless some people are. Honestly, if they would have sent me an email asking me why it was deleted or why it wasn’t fair use, we could have very easily come to an understanding. Instead people just assumed we want to hide the video, which doesn’t make any sense since we are the ones who originally put it on the internet, marketed it, and left it on the internet. I’ve only been contacted by one organization asking for permission to use the clip or asking about what we would allow. I have no problems clarifying anything. In fact, if they ask, I’m more than likely going to give them a little more slack in using the video just because they asked. I am not an unreasonable person.
There is an obvious middle ground out there on this topic and I’m glad you managed to find it.
First, I must apologize for the delay in posting the full text of the explanation. I realize now that other people wanted to comment on the attack, but without this full text, they weren’t sure where their fair use claim would be valid.
As I read the WNDU-TV letter, it appears they sanctioned my “fair use” video of the attack because it used such a small portion of the raw video. However, “fair use” is notoriously inconsistently applied, and it may not be the case that the next fair use claim would stand so firmly on the “quantity argument.”
As I understand it, there is now another video of the attack that is MUCH more informative, as it provides a great deal of context for the situation. The amount of commentary is really fantastic. [EDIT: 2007-10-20]I am assuming that the author of the video has used the DMCA counter-claim provisions to get the video back online, and so has been in direct contact with WNDU-TV. To be clear, this is just inference, and hasn’t been confirmed yet. The author states they have been in touch with YouTube, not with WNDU.[/EDIT]
The author, BadCase, describes the video as:
“This is a updated version of the one that was removed. All aspects of fair use laws are met in this version. It is only a small amount of footage in relation to the entire work,it is transformative, educational, not for profit, and does not hurt the market of the copyright holder instead it will benefit the copyright holder by increasing traffic to their site.”
I tend to agree.
[EDIT: 2007-10-20]
I must clarify that this email is a correspondence, and not an official statement of WNDU-TV.
[/EDIT]
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October 20th, 2007 at 1402
How did WDNU get the video and copyright it in the first place? Every official political meeting should be videotaped and made public domain.
October 22nd, 2007 at 1147
Interesting question. I’ll follow up on it.
Also, I agree that this sort of material should be public domain. Although my childhood hometown was significantly larger than Roseland (30k versus 0.7k) the town council meetings were broadcast on cable. Even then, I felt this fenced things off too much, since we didn’t have cable until the late 1990s.
This speaks to a fundamental principle of democracy. If the meetings are secret, then it’s not possible to have a sufficiently informed citizen population. The same is true of meetings that happen but that are not accessible to the citizens. In the 1700s-Philadelphia days of the US, this was clearly a major barrier to participation. Without a job to support your absence for several months, it would be impossible to be an active proto-US citizen.
Without an informed population, it’s impossible to have an informed democratic election. At a certain level, it also makes any notion of representation irrelevant; the representative of its constituency can never fully honor the will of the people it represents, because the will of the people is based on incomplete information.
It is very difficult to create a realistic model of the political situation based on incomplete information. If the constituency is out of touch with reality, then the democratic republic amounts to a mass, consensual hallucination, in the sense that:
1) the perception is of a distorted reality, and
2) it is accepted as if it were actual reality
A political body that:
1) values the will of its constituency must also
2) value informing its constituency, so that their will is realistic.
Unless both conditions are met, that political body will envetually drift farther and farther away from making its constituency happy.
Now that old-tech video cameras cost $100, and thanks to Internet video distribution (a la YouTube), it’s possible for even a town of 0.7k to reasonably distribute the proceedings of its council meetings. I think this is great, but the next step is clearly rights. I can’t think of something that more obviously needs to be in the public domain than the proceedings of public meetings.
In the same way that C-SPAN weasles out a private license for the federal video it creates, I imagine that the people at the Roseland meeting are the owners of the video they shoot, too. From the raw WNDU Roseland video, it seems like there’s a person holding the camera the whole time, and it seems like they’re sitting in the audience. I bet it was a private citizen.
October 22nd, 2007 at 1327
I’m glad you brought up the idea of an informed population as a necessity to democracy. I’ve had similar thoughts, but I offer a question. America is not a democracy but a federal republic. Actually the CIA define our government as “Constitution-based federal republic; strong democratic tradition”. The reasons I justify having representatives instead of direct voting:
1) The majority is not always right
2) People don’t have time to become fully informed, so it should be beneficial to have representatives who’s full time job is to be fully informed.
3) There are times when information should be classified to the public, but our representatives should have access to this information.
I think the last point is the most important. My question is, how do you know a representative is voting the way you want based on information you don’t have access to?