B12 Solipsism

A few interesting links collected January 18th through January 20th:

• Change of Subject: W.W.R.D? — What Would the Republicans Do? – [Republicans]

  now control the U.S. Senate, 41 votes to 59.The Democrats, based on this one very notable setback, seem poised now to attempt a strategy of retreat and appeasement, exactly as is being demanded by their harshest critics on Fox News. Evan Bayh, Barney Frank and the coalition of the pouty and lily livered seem to think voters in the fall will be drawn to the sight of their fluttering white flags.

• 

• Chicago Transit Authority urges commuters to report photographers | Photography is Not a Crime -

  The Chicago Transit Authority is so “committed to safety,” that it is urging commuters to report people committing “excessive photography/filming.” The sign posted inside the train stations places photographers on the same level as, say, a non-CTA employee walking the tracks or an unattended package or “noxious smells or smoke.”

  In other words, it accuses photographers of being possible terrorists or just suicidal maniacs.

  The problem is that these signs not only encourage commuters to dial 911 when seeing someone taking photos, which will tie up real emergencies, it contradicts the CTA’s own policy on photography and videography within train stations

• 

• Econundrum: 10 Eco-Apps for Your iPhone | Mother Jones – Econundrum: 10 Eco-Apps for Your iPhone

So how many photos of St Paul’s Cathedral are taken every day? How easy would it be for someone to find a photo without even having to visit London? Pretty easy, methinks.¹ Or just purchase a postcard, usually sold right in front of the building in question. And of course, what terrorist needs to have snapped art photos of architecturally and culturally significant buildings before planning their attack? None, remember? It’s just a movie plot, never happened in real life.

A BBC photographer was stopped from taking a picture of the sun setting by St Paul’s Cathedral in London. A real police officer and a fake “community support officer” stopped the photog and said he couldn’t take any pictures because with his professional-style camera, he might be an “al Qaeda operative” on a “scouting mission.” Now, St Paul’s is one of the most photographed buildings in the world (luckily, there is zero evidence that terrorists need photographs to plan their attacks), and presumably a smart al Qaeda operative with a yen to get some snaps would use a tiny tourist camera — or a hidden camera in his buttonhole. An ex-MP² goes on to describe being stopped for talking into a hand-sized dictaphone in Trafalgar Square (where thousands of people talking in their phones — most of which have dictaphone capabilities — can be seen at any given time).

The real damage from terrorist attacks doesn’t come from the explosion. The real damage is done after the explosion, by the victims, who repeatedly and determinedly attack themselves, giving over reason in favor of terror. Every London cop who stops someone from taking a picture of a public building, every TSA agent who takes away your kid’s toothpaste, every NSA spook who wiretaps your email, does the terrorist’s job for him. Terrorism is about magnifying one mediagenic act of violence into one hundred billion acts of terrorized authoritarian idiocy. There were two al Qaeda operatives at St Paul’s that day: the cop and her sidekick, who were about Osama bin Laden’s business in London all day long.

[Click to continue reading BBC photographer prevented from shooting St Paul's because he might be "al Qaeda operative" - Boing Boing]

Indeed.

video interview at the BBC:

BBC News photographer Jeff Overs was stopped and questioned for taking photographs in Westminster.
Speaking on The Andrew Marr Show, for which he takes photographs, Mr Overs said he was worried that policing against terrorism was making the UK feel like “the Eastern Bloc”.

[Click to continue reading BBC News - BBC photographer on being stopped by police]

Know Your Rights! These Are Your Rights!³ /⁴

1. 54,464 items just at Flickr [↩]
2. Mathew Parris [↩]
3. apologies to The Clash. This is a public service announcement. With guitars! [↩]
4. Bert Krages Photographer’s Right in handy PDF form [↩]

I mean, what is the FBI going to say? “Well, there are a lot of stupid people accusing others of being terrorists, and we don’t have the mental energy to examine all of the leads.” Of course not. Still, perhaps they’ll stop harassing photographers one of these days:

The bureau now ranks fighting terrorism as its No. 1 priority. It has doubled the number of agents assigned to counterterrorism duties to roughly 5,000 people, and has created new squads across the country that focus more on deterring and disrupting terrorism than on solving crimes.

But the manpower costs of this focus are steep, and the benefits not always clear. Of the 5,500 leads that the squad has pursued since it was formed five years ago, only 5 percent have been found credible enough to be sent to permanent F.B.I. squads for longer-term investigations, said Supervisory Special Agent Kristen von KleinSmid, head of the squad. Only a handful of those cases have resulted in criminal prosecutions or other law enforcement action, and none have foiled a specific terrorist plot, the authorities acknowledge.

…

Security guards have questioned people taking pictures of oil refineries in the Los Angeles area. Many turned out to be college students fulfilling assignment for class projects.

[Click to continue reading F.B.I. Agents’ Role Is Transformed by Terror Fight - NYTimes.com]

Photography is not a crime, remember?

A while ago¹, before Flickr became my website of choice to host photos, I made some t-shirts and posters at the online print shop, Zazzle, from photos I took. I made a few for myself, but afterwords, left the account there, active, in case somebody stumbled upon one of my designs and decided to buy it. Not likely actually, and exactly zero people have done so in the six years or so I had the account.²

Today I got an email from Zazzle, reading:

Thank you for your interest in Zazzle.com, and thank you for publishing products on Zazzle.

Unfortunately, it appears that your product, Garfield Conservatory, contains content that is not suitable for printing at Zazzle.com.

We will be removing this product from the Zazzle Marketplace shortly.

The details of the product being removed are listed below:

• Product Title: Garfield Conservatory

• Product Type: Print

• Product ID: 228639274743114826

• Result: Not Approved

• Policy Violations:

o Design contains an image or text that is copyrighted.

If you are interested in purchasing Official Licensed Merchandise from Zazzle please visit: www.zazzle.com/brands

I’m pretty sure the image was this photo of a Chihuly exhibition at Garfield Conservatory.³

Notice that I had modded the image in Photoshop so that it resembled nothing so much as just a magic marker sketch⁴. So for all the Zazzle zealots knew, I drew the image by hand. Is copyright law really that much in favor of factory artists like Chihuly? He’s famous for churning out thousands of glass pieces in his sweatshop, touching none of them, having his interns do all the actual work, he just markets the pieces. So my manipulated photo violated this copyright, somehow. Seems like this would be protected under “fair use” doctrine, especially since it isn’t a straight photo.

Strange world we live in.

I have deleted the remaining four items that were still listed at Zazzle, and have requested my account be deleted as well.

Funny also, on the Chihuly wikipedia page:

In 2006, Chihuly filed a lawsuit against a pair of glassblowers, including Robert Kaindl, whom he accused of copying his work. Chihuly was unsuccessful: the glass blower federation argued that Chihuly’s designs feature basic shapes; therefore any novice would be able to create the spiral glass which is featured in many of Chihuly’s composition

Looking at the simple vase floating in a pond – how could you copyright something as mundane?

1. somewhere around 2003 [↩]
2. of course, I haven’t added any new items there in six years either – my initial experience was pretty shitty to tell the truth. The shirts were poor quality and the prints faded within a few wash cycles. I recall the entire “creation” process being incredibly awkward and cumbersome – the tools were poorly engineered and clunky. They might have improved since 2003, or maybe not [↩]
3. can’t tell for sure because the image had already been deleted and long ago that Google cache no longer had a copy [↩]
4. my Photoshop skills not that polished at this time. Ahem. [↩]

A few interesting links collected August 10th through August 11th:

• Which Tweets Matter ? – icerocket has added a Twitter search function, and allows a searcher to save more than the 10 searches that Twitter restricts a searcher to.
• 
• Nearly Getting Arrested in Downtown Atlanta – “I had a run-in with the law this evening while I was with my friends Scott Kublin and Rick Shearer. Just next door to the Olympic Park is the aquarium and the Coke Museum with a big field in between. There were about a fifty people or so there at the park. I set up my tripod to take a photo of downtown and the Coke Museum was in the middle of the shot. A female cop of came over and told me I had to take down the tripod because I looked like a professional. Coke does not allow that, so she said. I said I’m a blogger with expensive toys and hardly a threat. Then she got quite huffy and agitated before telling me if I did not take down the tripod that I would be arrested.”
• 
• Let’s talk about tasers – “Tasers are routinely used by police to torture innocent people who have not broken any law and whose only crime is being disrespectful toward their authority or failing to understand their “orders.” There is ample evidence that police often take no more than 30 seconds to talk to citizens before employing the taser, they use them while people are already handcuffed and thus present no danger, and are used often against the mentally ill and handicapped. It is becoming a barbaric tool of authoritarian, social control.”