Judge issues ruling on films using copyrighted 9/11 footage
Oliver Stone's World Trade Center is one of several films involved in the ruling
Film News World Trade Center
We’re rapidly approaching the 20th anniversary of September 11, 2001, the day that the [TK TK attempt to describe widespread cultural impact of 9/11 in a single sentence here TK TK]. In a coincidental concurrence with that anniversary, though, a judge has just given a wide-ranging copyright ruling on the use of footage of 9/11 in a wide number of documentaries and docudramas, ranging from right-wing conspiracy films to Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center. We don’t usually think of the kinds of iconic images that 9/11 produced in droves in terms of ownership, but photojournalist Anthony Fioranelli does as part of his livelihood, and he’s now got the ruling of a judge to back him up on at least some of his copyright complaints.
It all comes back to this: Back in 2001, Fioranelli was one of only four photographers allowed into the Ground Zero area in the wake of the terrorist attacks; he later licensed much of the footage he took that day to CBS for use in news coverage and potential documentaries. (All of this is pretty straightforward, although CBS and Fioranelli got into it later about whether the network had violated that agreement at certain points.) A few years later, though, CBS cut together its footage from those confusing days into a pair of newsreels that were then licensed (and sub-licensed) out to a whole bunch of other people, including the BBC. Those newsreels, as it happened, contained unauthorized usage of Fioranelli’s work—including shots of firefighters picking through rubble in NYC—and more than a dozen projects ended up using that copyrighted material for what they thought were properly licensed works.
Which brings us to the court case, which has stretched across more than 2 years of judgment, as Judge Vernon Broderick was forced to sift through Seven Signs Of The Apocalypse, Conspiracy Theory: Death Ray, Celsius 41.11, and more in an effort to determine which of these instances might pass the often nebulous bar surrounding “fair use.” Rather than hand down a blanket statement, Broderick went extremely detailed with his decision, noting, for instance, that Stone’s decision to use Fioranelli’s footage in World Trade Center, and his choice to only show said footage on in-film televisions, qualified as transformative, getting the film, and Paramount, off the hook. But, say, Crime Scene 9/11 was found to have used the footage in the way that the artist originally intended it himself, i.e., to provide ‘photographic memory of the events of 9/11 for posterity,” which brings it much closer to copyright infringement, and the likely need for a trial.
If you’re so inclined, you can read the full decision for yourself over at The Hollywood Reporter. (Warning: It’s 92 pages long, and pretty detailed, so you might be there for a minute.) It’s a fascinating look at the way copyright law and our attempts to understand our own history intertwine; it’s also a reminder that we used to let Jesse Ventura do a TV show where he investigated whether someone used a Death Ray to bring the towers down on 9/11, so there’s that, too.
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[TK TK huh? TK TK]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_come_(publishing)
“To come” is a printing and journalism reference, commonly abbreviated to “TK”. The abbreviation is used to signify that additional material will be added at a later date.
-30-
…OK. What does the K stand for? TC would make more sense, obviously.
“Kome.”Okay, there’s some dispute about that. For instance, the aforementioned https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_come_(publishing) continues:Originally, TK as an abbreviation may have come into use because very few English words feature this letter combination. Potentially by contrast, using the phrase “to come” could be mistaken as a deliberate part of the text. Plus, TK, and especially the repeated TKTK, is a unique and visually arresting string that is both easily seen in running text and easily searched for, helping editors ensure that placeholders don’t end up in published text.
Yeah, I read that and thought the idea of 000 would have been more visually arresting…hiding that phrase in the code itself (<—-”blah blah blah”...>) would make more sense, given that kinja blocks code from being executed. I assumed it was a reference to Tik-Tok, and I’d have to go watch 9/11 footage on the platform to understand what the Hell Hughes was talking about.ETA: And don’t spell it, “Kome.” We’re not an early-90’s pop-rock band over here. We have editorial standards.
Yah I work in newspaper publishing and “TK” is kind of standard, mostly because you don’t want some dopey editor letting “to come” slip in middle of the copy make it out to print so you write “TK” which is known to be a placeholder because it looks incorrect.
There used to be an SF radio station with the call letters KOME. If I remember correctly, they got in trouble for saying in ads, “Don’t touch that dial; it’s got come on it.”
It stands for “we fired all our editors”
We’re rapidly approaching the 20th anniversary of September 11, 2001,
the day that the [TK TK attempt to describe widespread cultural impact
of 9/11 in a single sentence here TK TK].
To be fair that is a tough writing prompt.
“The Day America Died and ‘Murica Was Born?”
I would argue electing Junior was that day but 9/11 helped cement it
The seeds were planted on Election Day 1994, Dubya’s election was the harvest, and 9/11 was our first big bite of the shitty bitter fruit.
One thing I think the different reactions to 9/11 and Covid shows is how much people need a “them” to blame things on. Like, some people blame “copaganda” fiction for why we’ve overlooked police brutality, but I think it’s just a part of human nature to want to see things in terms of good guys and bad guys. When terrorists attack people become a lot more willing to sacrifice rights in the name of “freedom”, but when there’s no “them” to blame things on any restriction on freedom becomes an attack on our way of life no matter how many lives are at stake.
A lot of people (both on the left and right) complain about “security theater” in the wake of 9/11 — the way we have to take off our shoes, not pack water, not be able to go through security as a non-passenger to meet arriving friends and relatives at their gate or to keep them company before their plane leaves the way we used to. There’s no real evidence that any of these things actually make us safer. I think a lot of the anger at masking and so forth are from people who see the whole thing as “public health theater”, and while they may be wrong about thinking masks are useless, there is a fair bit of actual public health theater which is annoying — all this focus on “sanitizing” surfaces despite that we knew quite early on that surfaces are not how COVID spreads.
There’s no real evidence that any of these things actually make us safer.
Security checkpoints where people bottleneck make great targets.
I have a good friend who has bitched a lot about public health theater, and while he’s right about sanitizing surfaces and whatnot, he’s wrong in thinking that we’re only wearing masks to make it look like we’re doing something. But since masks help protect others and do very little for the individual actually wearing it, I think they still seem pointless to some people.
Blame It On The Death Ray
A schlocumentary by Todd. Coming this Christmas.
The difference is that the President of the United States saw that if the economy tanked due to Covid he ran the risk of losing re-election (plot twist – he did) and so he initiated a propaganda campaign to mobilize his party to ignore the initial outbreak and then use it to externalize it as a foreign threat to unify those party members. Because his cult members were looking for the pandemic that had swept across other 1st world nations to magically avoid the US and because an external enemy is always a way to close the ranks, they welcomed their savior, the Only One Who Could Save Them, God’s Choice, The most Corrupt DJT.
Surely the COVID “them” for the MAGA crowd was China, no?
The fact that so many Trump supporters downplayed the threat of Covid makes me wonder how committed they really were to the idea of it being a Chinese plot.
It’s a mistake to blame a nebulous abstraction like “human nature” instead of the real political objectives that usually explain history much more clearly. In fact, it’s a hallmark of right-wing politics, that things are inevitably the way they are and that trying to change them is folly. The cops are brutal not because “people are just like that” but because their job is to uphold property relations in a society with hideous inequality and artificially unequal distribution of resources; the brutality becomes necessary to paper over the contradictions. Likewise, security theater and rights constriction isn’t a natural phenomenon, it’s an intentional choice by a state that can use power to affect its own ends.That said, youre right that copaganda isn’t really the reason why we are inured to police violence, either- it’s more like the symptomatic cultural output of a country that needs to believe its police are good to stay sane.
“Was a death ray used to bring down the Twin Towers? No. Obviously not. I’m Jesse Ventura. Thankyou for joining us, and goodnight.”
Its funny but 9/11 truthers seem quaint in these QAnon times.
9/11 toofers are Qanon. You believe 1 stupid conspricy theory you believe them all even if they directly contradict each other. Show me someone that says Monsanto is da debil and I will show you an anti vaxxer. Its why Qanon is so big in the “wellness” industry.
Don’t lump legitimate criticisms of Monsanto’s business practices in with paranoia over GM crops. Just because the wellness crowd are after them doesn’t mean they don’t have actual issues.
All of the criticisms of Monsanto’s business practices are basically conspiracy nonsense.They don’t sue farmers. Less than 2 dozen over the last 25 years and it was for outright theft or contract violation. Its why its the same 3 farmers in every one of the anti GMO videos on netflix.Before their merger with Bayer they where not even the largest seed company let alone monopoly.The seed industry constantly sues each other yet still everyone still cross license the latest traits.Seeds have been patentable for nearly 100 years.Farmers don’t cant save seed for maize and where moving to buy new seed before the introduction of bt cotton and soy. Farmers like the guarantee.The products are designed to use less inputs not more. Or the great Farmers are dumb rubes gambit.
I am sure I am forgetting some other ones but I will never forgive anti gmos for making me a capt save a company.
You forgot the bit where they cornered the market on herbicide with a weedkiller that harms everything but their own patented crops.While we’re at it, Bayer are fucking scum. I didn’t know they’d merged, but that’s a bigger mark against them than anything Monsanto have been accused of.
More nonsense. Glyphosate (round up) has been off patent since 2000. Monstano has not been the market leader in glyphosate sales in 15 years white label generic dominates this market.Right, the entire point of Round Up ready is to kill weeds and the crop. Why do you think farmers want it and buy it? They want to kill weeds and grow crop. You can buy Round Up ready seeds and use white label all you lose is your guarantee.And you can buy Round Up ready from every commercial seed producer. Oh by the way most of the 1st gen Round up Ready is off patent yet no one is rushing to make products with this because the industry has moved on to round ready 2 traits and traits like enlist.
Uh for those of us who were legit traumatized by it, could you maybe not have an image of the attack just sitting there on the front page of a film and television website?
…you cannot possibly be serious.
I guess you’re right, my bad for having an unstoppable sense memory of what burning bodies smell like when I’m trying to browse a website that one wouldn’t at all expect to be covering 9/11 in early August.
If that’s how you feel, I would suggest spending all of next month offline.
I literally do avoid news sites around the anniversary, thanks.
So potentially I could produce a documentary where it’s just me watching, say The Suicide Squad on tv at home. And that’s it, me watching the movie and you see the whole movie playing while I am watching it. Lts call it performance art. Obviously Discovery Brothers or whatever will sue, but potentially based on this ruling (which I have not read all 92 pages just this) my scenario may be kosher now in the eyes of the law.
Fair use is decided case-by-case, not by strict derivation from precedent. They’d whip out the four point rule ( https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/four-factors/ ), argue (A) your work was not transformative, (B) it’s derived from fiction rather than fact, (C) it contains most of the original, and (D) someone watching it wouldn’t have to go pay the twelve bucks to see the original in the theater—and the judge would rule agin’ you so fast it’d make your VCR’s heads spin.
A lot of people missed that- the day that the [TK TK attempt to describe widespread cultural impact of 9/11 in a single sentence here TK TK].Was quite intentionally used? Since writing that as a single sentence has all been said to the point of cliche and/or is practically impossible.
I recognized that it was a joke, although I did check the byline so I could mentally prepare myself for the, “Barsanti is a hack,” comments that surely would have followed in that situation. But is TKTK even moderately well known? I would imagine that most people don’t know what Lorem Ipsum is, and this seems a lot less likely to be in the public consciousness. I know I had to look it up, even though I could understand the idea from context. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it before, joke or not.On the other hand, it did make me wonder anew at the age we live in, as I still remember a time where if I saw that printed somewhere, I’d have to spend way longer than 4 seconds to find out what the hell was going on.
Death Ray?
it’s also a reminder that we used to let Jesse Ventura do a TV show where he investigated whether someone used a Death Ray to bring the towers down on 9/11, so there’s that, too.Jesse knows the truth…
I am resisting sharing my “Where were you story” because I am sure we will all be doing that in another month on the Anniversary.I remember as a kid, my parents mentioning how everyone remembered where they were when Kennedy was assassinated and didn’t understand what they meant. But 9/11 opened my eyes. Still some of the most clear memories I have of my early 20s
I was in high school, and I only really remember two moments, once after the first plane hit, and then later in the day watching the TV in class after a day full of students gradually being pulled out one by one. I understand how the moment crystalized for people —in a way that I also didn’t understand the Kennedy stories from older generations before then— but it’s not like I remember much more than I might of any other mundane day in high school. Do you remember more of the whole day, or is it just that the memory itself stands out particularly clearly? For all that it’s closer and possibly still nearly as traumatic as 9/11, I remember watching the 2016 election play out much more vividly, and can still feel the slow building dread of it now if I dwell on it for longer than a few seconds.
Yeah I remember a lot of the day. I was in college and I didn’t have class on Tuesday that semester. I had been out late the night because one of the local college bars had trivia, wings and dollar beers on Monday nights. I had to get up for work so I took my shower and when I came out my roommate was awake(He was never up before noon any day) and had the TV on. The first plane had hit but we had not see what kinda plane and the new reports didn’t know. We figured it was like a little private plane. Then the second plane hit. I don’t recall if we hear about the Pentagon attack before or after the buildings come down. Then I leave for work(I would have skipped class if I had it but I was a poor college student so I need to the cash). I worked in the media lab at college so I didn’t go far and nobody was actual working. It was there I heard about Flight 93. I think at this point no one still knew who had done it and I remember arguing(wrongly) that this could have easily been done by domestic terrorists and we should not jump to conclusions about this being an attack “by crazy Muslims”(her words, not mine). I would say it blurs out by the afternoon. I remember going to the bar that night and the mood being really fucking weird. Lots of drinking, little talking, a good deal of crying. I don’t recall if classes were official cancelled the rest of the week but no one went anyways. My mom was pissed at me that I did not call home at all that day, I was in the middle of central Illinois, so at the time I didn’t get why she was worried. As a parent now I get it. I remember the phones themselves not working great for a few days on campus(I had a cell phone by then but it was crap even on a good day). By the end of the week I remember things getting back to normal but also remember being a little put off by the instant “American Fuck yeah” jingoism that started to creep up. I was on a college campus, so frat boys were already unbearable but now they were chanting “USA USA USA” and wearing the American flag more. I would graduate a few months later and start a job that would have me flying in planes frequently for the next decade and that scaring the hell out of my mom.
The worst part of election night 2016 was hearing cheers from three houses down when the result was called.
My where were you story is just another I was at work and we all left, it was weird bad sad confusing etc. Getting home to Brooklyn was hard because the subways shut down etc etc.My many years after story is weirder. I was at a bar in Midtown were all the staff and wait staff wore “Never Forget” t-shirts with an outline of the Twin Towers. It wasn’t the anniversary or anything it appeared to be their regular uniform. I’m all for remembering and honoring, but shit it was such a downer. I had a beer and left. I couldn’t understand why they’d be outfitted in that when it was over a decade later.
I was at home in bed, because it was like six in the morning on the West Coast. Got a phone call from a friend (my future ex-girlfriend, actually) who told me that a bomb went off at the Pentagon, and I told her, “That’s ridiculous. The Pentagon is one of the most secure buildings in the world.” Before long I went to some friends’ house across the street, since they had TV and I didn’t, and got the whole story.
I have three “where I was” moments in my life now: The Challenger expolosion (I was in high school,) The OKC bombing (I was working in Tulsa,) and 9/11.
I get what you’re saying. I’m not gonna do my 9/11 story, but that you brought up Kennedy…I had to do a history report on my parents reactions to historical events. JFK came up at the dinner table in 1990 and it was interesting to say the least for a 14 year old Rogue. My 9/11 story is much better than what they had to say about politics and the state of the nation in 1963.