"My baby is a Japanese LOLcat" and Epic Boobs Girl

People are so hysterical about breach of privacy and copyright "in the online world" (yes, often complete with scare quotes) that it's remarkable when someone responds sanely.

A father in the US has only just discovered that his (now ten-year-old) baby is an internet meme in Japan.

According to Gawker,  the meme started when 2chan.net uploaded the baby's picture with interactive text bubbles:

From there, Japanese fans got creative and images of the "Japanese Gay Porn Baby" (natch) appeared "pasted onto Kurt Cobain's head, carved into Mount Rushmore and tattooed onto David Beckham's torso. He was an eight-bit video game character. He became a three-dimensional sculpture ... [and even] showed up on wacky television game shows ... [or] blotted out images of genitalia in pornography".

Yeah, this could be regarded as a breach of copyright in the photos. And yeah, in many jurisdictions this would be an invasion of privacy (however defined). But really, the baby's dad hit it on the head when he said he wasn't bothered by it because "the meme really had nothing to do with Stephen qua Stephen - the photo was being treated as a kind of open-source stock image."

Amen.

Of course, there are examples of very personalised meme "attacks" which may warrant a more hard-core stance.  Epic Boobs Girl comes to mind.

EBG posted pictures of herself on Bebo in December 2006 with the tag "Epic Boobs". A photo went viral and Loaded magazine eventually republished it (along with her name) under the headline “Wanted! The epic boobs girl!” Readers were offered a reward of £500 for assistance in encouraging her to pose for the magazine.

(In fact, it says a lot about just how viral the image went, when I can't find the original in a sea of thousands of hits, but here's one example of how it was used:

)

The Press Complaints Commission rejected her privacy complaint, saying that the pictures had been given such a wide circulation that it was no longer credible to describe them as private.

Had Loaded taken them from the Bebo site without them having appeared widely on other sites, the commission might well have reached a different decision.

EBG, perhaps privacy was the wrong cause of action - if your likeness become a meme, there isn’t much you can do about it. I'd be looking instead about the use of your image in a commercial capacity. Or, perhaps - since Loaded was paying people to convince you to pose for them, an action in harassment or nuisance.

Links:

Gawker "When your Infant is Secretly Famous in Japan": http://gawker.com/5640008/when-your-infant-is-secretly-famous-in-japan

Guardian "Epic Boobs Girl": http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2010/may/11/pcc-privacy

Prima Facebook evidence

Has twitter just solved its first crime?

Paris Hilton was arrested a couple of days ago after a bag of cocaine fell out of her purse. When she was being questioned by a cop. Who was asking her about the marijuana smoke coming out of her car. 

Paris claimed that the purse belonged to someone else (although all of the contents, except for the coke, belonged to her), and, when pressed, said she thought the cocaine was "chewing gum".

Paparazzi snapped photos of her, holding the purse, during the questioning:

radaronline is reporting that  a few months ago, Paris tweeted a photo of her "new purse" ... and guess what? 

Spectacular stuff.

Links:

Source: http://www.radaronline.com/exclusives/2010/09/radar-exclusive-paris-owns-purse-identical-one-she-claimed-was-borrowed-night 

Image of arrest from Gawker Media.

Defamation of celebrities

Ah, probably not, no.

Under the First Amendment of the US Constitution, a public figure - and as much as it pains me to say it, you are one - has to prove that an allegedly defamatory statement was made with "actual malice". That means that you have to prove that Star knew the statement was false, or acted with reckless disregard as to its truth.

Provided Star has an "eye witness" (as they claim they do) who told them they saw you with a "sexy young blonde", they're probably ok.


Now, if you decided to sue in Australia, that would be another matter. But I wonder if this allegation would even "lower you in the estimation of others"; we're all still seething after your slap down of Melbourne.


Image from Tweet Beat

Channel 10 launches "11" - Why the multichannels need local content obligations?

Network Ten have just announced that it will launch its third digital terrestrial channel next year, via a joint venture (Elevenco) with CBS Studios International. 

Yes, US juggernaut CBS, which has apparently made over 70,000 hours of its programming available to 11, including The Simpsons, The Good Wife, Futurama, The Cleveland Show, Supernatural, Stargate, Dexter, Smallville, The Office, Nurse Jackie, and 90210 (pleasepleasepleaseplease let it be the old 90210, not the recent rehash - although I note the presser also mentions an "upcoming" Hawaii Five-O so I'm trying to keep my expectations low).

After the re-affirmation of the Government's commitment to imposing local content quotas on Australian channels (remember Conroy's free-to-air licence fee rebate specifically for this purpose? And his announcement that Foxtel's local content "holiday" was drawing to a close?), it is kind of odd that multichannels are, so far, exempt from similar schemes.

Perhaps that's because Free TV has been telling anyone who'll listen that multi-channels will not survive if the government imposed a local content quota on them. Just like Foxtel (unsuccessfully) argued, once upon a time.

Fair dealing/use in "doctored" photos

Feminist website Jezebel has been fighting a pretty decent fight over the use of Photoshop in magazines and advertising. They've called out Lucky Magazine, Nordstrom, Ralph Lauren and others, and even received an apology from Ann Taylor for its over-zealous use of the liquify tool.


At least, that's what I think Jezebel has been doing - I can hardly bring myself to read the posts lest my eyes fall on the comments section. It's one thing to point out that Photoshop creates unrealistic expectations about what women look like; it's another to hear rants about whether photos of thin celebrities should carry health warnings (true story).


Yesterday it published these  photos of Jennifer Aniston:

Invite a friend to comment

claiming that they're examples of "before and after" Photoshop.


The first photo had not been published previously, and the photographer's agent's lawyer got on it pretty quickly with a cease and desist letter (published here). The author of the post (and, eventually, the owner of Gawker Media, Nick Denton) responded that it was "fair use" and refused.


Jezebel didn't articulate why it was fair use, but the context suggested they think it's news reportage. The problem is that the agent (along with pretty much anyone with a set of eyes) says the first photo is obviously retouched to make her look worse.

I don't think anyone's claiming that Jezebel doctored it themselves ... but can you really take misleading content, breach someone's copyright, create a scandal around the subject of the unpublished material and use the scandal itself to defend the breach of copyright allegation?

And looking at it from a different perspective, if the doctorer gets to hide behind Jezebel (as a confidential source) and Jezebel gets the benefit of the fair dealing exception because the scandal they create is newsworthy, who can provide a remedy for the photographer (or Poor Sad Jen, who will never get Brad Pitt back now he's seen her wrinkles)? 

Links:

http://jezebel.com/5619903/why-you-must-see-unretouched-images-and-why-you-must-see-them-repeatedly?skyline=true&s=i#ixzz0xameF9HC


http://jezebel.com/5618024/this-is-how-your-jen-aniston-sausage-gets-made#comments#ixzz0xbCvNvfH