by V 42 Replies latest watchtower bible
Again TED, take note:
Welcome to the information war. You bruise us in the heel, we bruise you in the head. Whether or not the Watchtower Society instigated this action through Knocking or not, an example is being made. This is what happens when the truth confronts the "Truth."
Now what Ted?
sKally
I feel everything I need to say has already been said on the topic and I am no longer focusing on KNOCKING as I have moved on to other projects.
Well now, isn't that convenient.
I am going to take a wild guess and state that this will be his rehearsed statement to any media outlet and/ or others who approach him/ them for an interview.
I'll even take wagers!
sKally
As for the links you sent, those appear to be YouTube users that have placed authorized KNOCKING videos on their own channel in its entirety. They have not taken pieces of video from KNOCKING and used it to create their own video on another topic/issue. This of course would violate copyright protected material and we ask JWs and non-JWs equally to not use our footage for this purpose. But if someone wants to place a KNOCKING video in its entirety on their own YouTube channel, this is OK.
WHAT??!!
This guy has copyright totally backwards! Substantial non-transformative uses (e.g. if the entire video is a lengthy portion of a copyrighted work) are FAR MORE LIKELY to infringe copyright than insubstantial transformative uses. Again, I understand if he personally prefers people to just post clips of Knocking than using them creatively for their own productions, but that is not the same as what would "violate copyright protected material" -- the uses he prefers are precisely the ones that are more likely to be infringing. Should I quote from the Stanford Fair Use document again?
In its most general sense, a fair use is any copying of copyrighted material done for a limited and "transformative" purpose such as to comment upon, criticize or parody a copyrighted work. Such uses can be done without permission from the copyright owner....1. The Transformative Factor: The Purpose and Character of Your Use
In a 1994 case, the Supreme Court emphasized this first factor as being a primary indicator of fair use. At issue is whether the material has been used to help create something new, or merely copied verbatim into another work. When taking portions of copyrighted work, ask yourself the following questions:
- Has the material you have taken from the original work been transformed by adding new expression or meaning?
- Was value added to the original by creating new information, new aesthetics, new insights and understandings?
In a parody, for example, the parodist transforms the original by holding it up to ridicule. Purposes such as scholarship, research or education may also qualify as transformative uses because the work is the subject of review or commentary.EXAMPLE: Roger borrows several quotes from the speech given by the CEO of a logging company. Roger prints these quotes under photos of old-growth redwoods in his environmental newsletter. By juxtaposing the quotes with the photos of endangered trees, Roger has transformed the remarks from their original purpose and used them to create a new insight. The copying would probably be permitted as a fair use.....
2. The Nature of the Copyrighted Work
Because the dissemination of facts or information benefits the public, you have more leeway to copy from factual works such as biographies than you do from fictional works such as plays or novels....
3. The Amount and Substantiality of the Portion Taken
The less you take, the more likely that your copying will be excused as a fair use. However, even if you take a small portion of a work, your copying will not be a fair use if the portion taken is the "heart" of the work. In other words, you are more likely to run into problems if you take the most memorable aspect of a work....
4. The Effect of the Use Upon the Potential Market
Another important fair use factor is whether your use deprives the copyright owner of income or undermines a new or potential market for the copyrighted work. As we indicated previously, depriving a copyright owner of income is very likely to trigger a lawsuit....
http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/chapter9/index.html
And this is from the ACLU "Fair Use Principles":
Online video hosting services like YouTube are ushering in a new era of free expression online. By providing a home for “user-generated content” (UGC) on the Internet, these services enable creators to reach a global audience without having to depend on traditional intermediaries like television networks and movie studios. The result has been an explosion of creativity by ordinary people, who have enthusiastically embraced the opportunities created by these new technologies to express themselves in a remarkable variety of ways.The life blood of much of this new creativity is fair use, the copyright doctrine that permits unauthorized uses of copyrighted material for transformative purposes. Creators naturally quote from and build upon the media that makes up our culture, yielding new works that comment on, parody, satirize, criticize, and pay tribute to the expressive works that have come before. These forms of free expression are among those protected by the fair use doctrine.
Copyright owners are within their rights to pursue nontransformative verbatim copying of their copyrighted materials online. However, where copyrighted materials are employed for purposes of comment, criticism, reporting, parody, satire, or scholarship, or as the raw material for other kinds of creative and transformative works, the resulting work will likely fall within the bounds of fair use.
http://www.aclunc.org/issues/technology/blog/asset_upload_file939_6218.pdf
Why does he defend JW's so?
sKallyApocalypse Later: Jehovah's Witnesses decide the end is fluid
Jehovah's Witnesses decide the end is fluid
From Newsweek magazine, December 18, 1995, page 59. Article by Kenneth L. Woodard, with Joel P. Engardio.
THE THIRD MILLENNIUM is just four years away, and you'd think that Jehovah's Witnesses would be ecstatic. Ever since the movement's inception in the 1870s, the Witnesses have insisted that the world as we know it is about to end. According to their unique Biblical calculations, the countdown to Armageddon commenced in 1914 -- the first world war was a major sign -- and Christ would establish his millennial kingdom on earth "before the generation who saw the events of 1914 passes away." For countless Witnesses, this prediction was good reason not to save money, start a career or make burial plans. As one of their leaders famously preached in 1918: "Millions now living will never die."
Now, it seems, all millennial bets are off. In last month's issue of The Watchtower, the sect's leaders quietly acknowledged that Jesus was right in the first place, when he said that "no one knows the day or the hour." All previous references to timetables for Armageddon, the magazine now suggests, were speculation rather than settled doctrine. The year 1914 still marks the beginning of the last days. But those who hoped to witness the battle of Armageddon and the establishment of God's kingdom on earth will have to wait. Henceforth, any generation that experiences such calamities as war and plagues like AIDS could be the one to witness the end times. In short, the increasingly middle-class Witnesses would do well to buy life insurance.
If this serious revision of expectations takes the edge off the Witnesses' apocalyptic profile, it also buys them time. The generation that was alive in 1914 is rapidly disappearing, and the the sect's current leadership shows every sign of digging in for the long haul. In recent years the Witnesses have been on a building spree: they just completed a 670-acre educational center in rural New York state that includes 624 apartments, garages for up to 800 cars and a dining facility that accommodates 1,600 people at one sitting. Officials of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society (the Witnesses' official title) deny that the leadership felt a generational pressure to change. "The end is still close," says Witness spokesman Bob Pevy. "We just can't put numbers on Jesus' words."
So far, the new interpretation has caused no noticeable decline in membership among the 5.1 million Witnesses worldwide. But then, they rarely air their differences with outsiders. "Believing the end was imminent gave a special urgency to being a Jehovah's Witness," says Ray Franz, a former member of the society's governing board in Brooklyn, N.Y., who left the church in 1981. Older members, especially, heroically risked their lives and reputations by refusing blood transfusions, military service, allegiance to the flag and other acts prohibited by their faith -- all with the expectation that they would soon live forever in the paradise of God's new kingdom on earth. Charles Kris, 73, a retired autoworker from Saginaw, Mich., served three years in prison with 400 other Witnesses for refusing to fight in World War II. "It was prison life, but I took advantage of the time to study the Bible and witness to other prisoners," he recalls.
But for Kris, and especially for those younger Witnesses who have no memory of the rough early days (the Nazis interred many Witnesses in concentration camps), preaching God's message is more important than witnessing the end of the world. "I'd like to see it happen," says Kris, who still hands out tracts door to door.
"But if it doesn't happen in my lifetime, I won't be disappointed."
Here's the response I got from my second e-mail; I'm leaving it here because I honestly didn't do as much research into Knocking footage on Youtube and his claim of sending cease and desist letters to JW's might actually be true. Also I don't want my original claim to lose validity by arguing a point, I was asking for permission, his response raised a couple of questions, he answered them in the following e-mail, I think to press it further might raise some questions on his part.
Here is the response I got:
Tim -- I'm happy to answer your questions. No agenda on our part. Here's the simple answer: we produced short promotional "trailers" that we posted on YouTube on the "knockingdocumentary" channel. There are three promotional trailers that we cut from footage in the film and DVD extras. PBS also created a trailer from the film and that lives on YouTube as well. Soon, another short trailer will become available from Current TV, which was cut with input from PBS and the producers of KNOCKING.
All of these trailers were produced by us to specifically promote the film and we have released these trailers on YouTube to be viewed and shared in their entirety. Remember, "entirety" means a trailer that is only a few minutes long. The actual film runs one hour. It would certainly be illegal for someone to view and share the full one-hour film on YouTube or anywhere online, and we have sent "cease and desist" letters to JWs and non-JWs alike who attempted to post the entire film. We do the same for people who take pieces of our work and use it as footage in other videos. We feel that it is unfair for someone to take footage we worked hard for when they could go out and shoot their own footage of JWs going door-to-door, for example.
So we are happy if people want to view and share our promotional trailers online as they were produced and intended by us. What we object to is when people cherry pick shots and scenes from our work to use the footage for their own purposes.
I hope this answers your questions. When in doubt it is always best to just shoot your own footage when making your own videos. "Fair Use" has a very high bar in court...the footage has to come from a universally well-known and established source and be used to illustrate a social commentary or analysis and not be used for entertainment value or simply a means to tell or move your story forward.
Joel
My response was to simply thank him for the clearification, and that the links I had provided did not mention being an official trailer and seemed to be just large portions of his video online. So I hoped he understood my confusion. This is where it lays for me, with my question I would clearly be using the footage for entertainment purposes. I hope this helped some folks.
Understood Tuesday..Leo brings up another good point. The one thing I really disagree with Joel on is this statement:
the footage has to come from a universally well-known and established source and be used to illustrate a social commentary or analysis and not be used for entertainment value or simply a means to tell or move your story forward.
I am pretty sure this wrong. It doesn't have to be universally well-known. It also can be a means to move the story forward so long as it is illustrating social commentary. I still stand that it would be legal under The De Minimis Defense that is the segment in question was so small no one would even know it where it was from and therefore wouldn't hurt the producers of Knocking. Either way Joel should just come right and say, "hey it's my film and I have a legal right to decide who can use it and who can't.". It's America and if he wants to do it he can. Just don't pretend like your trying to be even handed if your not.
All of these trailers were produced by us to specifically promote the film and we have released these trailers on YouTube to be viewed and shared in their entirety. Remember, "entirety" means a trailer that is only a few minutes long. The actual film runs one hour. It would certainly be illegal for someone to view and share the full one-hour film on YouTube or anywhere online, and we have sent "cease and desist" letters to JWs and non-JWs alike who attempted to post the entire film.
Promotional material that is specifically intended to be circulated freely on Youtube would of course be authorized, but he goes on to say that it is illegal for someone to "post the entire film" (which is impossible on Youtube which limits posters to a length of 10 minutes), which of course is true, but which also conflicts with his earlier statement that it is legally OK "if someone wants to place a KNOCKING video in its entirety on their own YouTube channel". I suppose he meant not just any "KNOCKING video" but those specifically intended to be used as promotional material.
we have sent "cease and desist" letters to JWs and non-JWs alike who attempted to post the entire film. We do the same for people who take pieces of our work and use it as footage in other videos.
And this is where they leave no room for the right to "fair use" that the law provides. They may want to discourage others from using "pieces" (even pieces as short as three seconds) in new creative ways in their own productions, they may feel it is unfair, and it is their right to challenge such uses in court, but such use is not necessarily infringment a priori.
"Fair Use" has a very high bar in court...the footage has to come from a universally well-known and established source and be used to illustrate a social commentary or analysis and not be used for entertainment value or simply a means to tell or move your story forward.
This I believe is an overly restrictive view of what "fair use" allows, in light of the legal sources cited earlier. There is no requirement that the footage "has to come from a universally well-known and established source", and transformative use is not limited to commentary and analysis -- it could certainly be used to "move your story forward" if it alters the meaning or message of the original footage and meets the other requirements. The Supreme Court has defined the meaning of "transformative" as "altering the original with new expression, meaning, or message". WT Comments took the original footage of someone commenting at a JW meeting and used it to illustrate the purpose and function of the WT Comments video as (ironically) analogous to a comment one would NOT hear at a meeting. This meaning is especially clear because the clip is sandwiched between title frames with the words "Comments" and "You Will Not Hear at the Watchtower Study" (and this is notion is expressed as well on the channel homepage itself). This is quite similar to the example that the Stanford Law School judges as a fair use:
EXAMPLE: Roger borrows several quotes from the speech given by the CEO of a logging company. Roger prints these quotes under photos of old-growth redwoods in his environmental newsletter. By juxtaposing the quotes with the photos of endangered trees, Roger has transformed the remarks from their original purpose and used them to create a new insight.
If you examine each of the criteria for fair use, WT Comments appears to fulfill each quite well: (1) Transformative use of the clip in the video to create a new expression, meaning, or message, (2) The nature of the copyrighted work as a documentary source, (3) Insubstantial use of the clip, as it was under three seconds and was not from the "heart" of the work, and (4) the lack of an effect of the use on the potential market of the copyrighted work. If it constitutes fair use, then it is the user's right to make such uses despite the copyright holder's wishes:
Because of the defendant's burden of proof, some copyright owners frequently make claims of infringement even in circumstances where the fair use defense would likely succeed in hopes that the user will refrain from the use rather than spending resources in his defense....The frequent argument over whether fair use is a "right" or a "defense"[18] is generated by confusion over the use of the term "affirmative defense." An affirmative defense is simply a term of art from litigation reflecting the timing in which the defense is raised. It does not distinguish between "rights" and "defenses," and so it does not characterize the substance of the defendant's actions as "not a right but a defense." The First Amendment, for instance, is generally raised as an affirmative defense in litigation, but is clearly a "right." Similarly, while fair use is characterized as a defense in terms of the litigation posture, Section 107 defines fair use as a "limitation" on copyright law and states clearly that "the fair use of a copyrighted work … is not an infringement of copyright."[19]
Here is a great video by the Center for Social Media on fair use in videomaking:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GY-2YshuJ8o
and here is the document referred to in the video:
http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/rock/backgrounddocs/bestpractices.pdf
And here is the section relevant to the transformative use made by WT Comments:
TWO: QUOTING COPYRIGHTED WORKS OF POPULAR CULTURE TO ILLUSTRATE AN ARGUMENT OR POINTDESCRIPTION: Here the concern is with material (again of whatever kind) that is quoted not because it is, in itself, the object of critique but because it aptly illustrates some argument or point that a filmmaker is developing—as clips from fi ction fi lms might be used (for example) to demonstrate changing American attitudes toward race.
PRINCIPLE: Once again, this sort of quotation should generally be considered as fair use. The possibility that the quotes might entertain and engage an audience as well as illustrate a filmmaker’s argument takes nothing away from the fair use claim. Works of popular culture typically have illustrative power, and in analogous situations, writers in print media do not hesitate to use illustrative quotations (both words and images). In documentary filmmaking, such a privileged use will be both subordinate to the larger intellectual or artistic purpose of the documentary and important to its realization.
The filmmaker is not presenting the quoted material for its original purpose but harnessing it for a new one. This is an attempt to add significant new value, not a form of “free riding” —the mere exploitation of existing value.
In the case of WT Comments, the very brief "quotation" of Knocking was clearly used to illustrate a new point by the filmmaker, i.e. the purpose of the video itself and how it contrasts with the kind of comments heard in the kingdom hall as seen in the video clip. It is making a point not only about the WT Comment video but also the nature of the commenting seen in the Knocking clip.
Yea Leolaia I agree with you more and more on this issue. Joel is pretty much grasping at straws. I am sure if the Fair Use issue was pushed they would back off. Especially if you let them know that you were not a novice at Fair Use law. Too bad everything already got fixed. I was going to email my friend whom is a public defender but I think focused his studies mainly on copyright law (as when was in college Mp3 stealing was the hot button issue). I might still ask just to see.
Well, I am glad nonetheless it got fixed because nothing about fair use per se would prevent a copyright holder from taking you to court; it comes into play only as a defense unless the case is dismissed on a de minimis basis. The law is definitely stacked against the "little guy" in this matter, especially when it comes down to the DMCA take-down notices, which occur frequently with legal "fair use" material (as a means of intimidation). DMCA § 512(f) is supposed to make copyright holders liable for illegitimate claims, but it does not seem to much of a deterrent these days since few are willing or able to defend their rights in this area.
It does seem that WTComments has a case to use this footage, in my case that I used here it probably wouldn't really stand much of a chance anywhere. I felt the need to press the issue a little further so I sent an e-mail. If anyone would like to try as well please post the e-mails and the responses as I'm sure everyone here would be interested in seeing the responses.
